Enable B2B e-commerce
Before you can set up, or manage customers with, the customer hierarchies, you'll need to enable them inside of the Feature management workspace. To do so, go to the workspace and select the All tab. Filter the information by searching for Module: Retail and Commerce, find the Enable the use of B2B eCommerce capabilities feature, and then select Enable now in the lower-right corner.
After you've enabled the feature, you can set up customer hierarchies. To do so, you'll first need to set up a number sequence specifically for a customer hierarchy. Number sequences generate readable, unique identifiers for master data records and transaction records that require such identification. You'll use the number sequence that's needed for the customer hierarchies to generate the ID for each hierarchy.
To set up the number sequence, go to the Retail and Commerce module and select Headquarters setup > Number sequences > Number sequences. Create a new number sequence or use an existing number sequence to reuse it. Then, go to Retail and Commerce > Headquarters setup > Parameters > Commerce shared parameters. On the Number sequences tab, add the number sequence that you created or selected to the Customer hierarchy ID reference.
Approval process
When a business partner submits a request to join a B2B e-commerce site, the system will save the request as a prospect. The Commerce headquarters persona, such as a retail operations manager, can approve or reject these requests. When the prospect has been approved, the system will create two new customer records: one record of the Organization type that represents the organization that's requesting to become a business partner, and another record of the Person type that represents the person who submitted the request. A new customer hierarchy record will also be created, which has several properties, such as Customer hierarchy ID, Name, Purpose, and Organization ID.