Organizational management roles
WebSphere Commerce supports the following organizational management roles: Buyer Administrator, Buyer Approver, Organization Participant, Buyer (buy-side), Procurement Buyer Administrator, Procurement Buyer (buy-side), Seller Administrator.
The following table describes each role and the business model each role applies to.
Tip: The term buyer refers to a user who is created in a buyer organization
and who has the Registered Customer role in the seller organization.
Role | Description | Business model |
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Buyer Administrator | The Buyer Administrator manages organizations and buyers for the buyer organization, which
involves the following tasks:
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Buyer Approver | The Buyer Approver approves orders that buyers place before the orders are submitted for purchase with the Seller. |
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Organization Participant | By default, buyers are entitled to shop under their parent organization. However, if a buyer must be entitled to contracts in other organizations, the buyer requires the Organization Participant role in the other organizations. For more information, see Organization Participant role. |
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Buyer (buy-side) (see note after this table) |
The Buyer (buy-side) creates Requests for Quote (RFQs) for a specific variation of goods and services in the catalog. When the RFQ is approved, the Buyer (buy-side) can then place orders that contain the products and services covered in the RFQ. |
|
Procurement Buyer Administrator | The Procurement Buyer Administrator registers users as Procurement Buyers. They create and
administer the suborganizations within their buying organization and manage the various users
including approving users as buyers.
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Procurement Buyer (buy-side) | The Procurement Buyer is an individual who belongs to a buyer organization which uses a procurement system to connect to WebSphere Commerce. Procurement Buyers are registered when a request comes from the procurement system. Procurement Buyers use the account belonging to their buyer organization to make purchases from the seller. After purchasing, the Procurement Buyer sends their order to the procurement system for approval. |
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Seller Administrator | The Seller Administrator manages the information for the selling organization. Seller administrators create and administer the organizations within the selling organization and the various users in the selling organization, including the assignment of the appropriate business roles. |
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Note: For a user to be able to shop as a buyer in a B2B direct store under a specific organization
and its contracts, the following setup steps must be complete:
- The user must self-register through the storefront and specify the organization, or a Seller or Buyer Administrator must create the user in the organization. If the user self-registers, and if the organization has enabled buyer registration approvals, the user must also be approved.
- The user must have the Registered Customer role in the seller organization. Users are assigned this role automatically when they self-register. If the Seller Administrator creates the user, the administrator can manually assign the Registered Customer role to the user.
To give the user more privileges, you can assign any of the roles in the previous table, except for Seller Administrator. If you have customized WebSphere Commerce, the roles might not apply as described.