You're running a B2B business and have dozens of key customers, each with different pricing, discounts, and terms of sale. For now, your account manager is handling it all – they have their own Excel spreadsheet, know the rates by heart, and make sure no one sees anyone else's prices. It works. Until you decide to launch a B2B store.
Then it turns out that the problem, which was previously invisible, becomes a blocker for the entire project.
Why is individual pricing a technological challenge, not just a commercial one?
In B2C e-commerce , a single price list is enough. In B2B, you have dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different trading terms – for specific customer groups, specific contractors, for specific quantity thresholds, depending on the batch or billing period.
Imagine a store with 150,000 products and 9,000 active customers, each with some form of personalized pricing. That's 1,350,000,000 combinations to manage—one billion, three hundred and fifty million. And that's before you even factor in volume discounts or bundle promotions, which further multiply each number.
A standard e-commerce engine isn't built to handle this scale. The classic approach—querying the platform's price to the ERP system for a specific customer on every page reload—works well with low traffic and a narrow product range. In real-world B2B sales, it begins to cause performance issues, causing the ERP to slow down or become unresponsive.
Hence the need for a separate tool that is optimized for one specific thing: instant pricing calculation and delivery.
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What is the Price App?
The Pricing application is a microservice—an autonomous, independently operating service whose sole purpose is to manage pricing logic. It acts as an intermediary between the ERP system and the B2B e-commerce platform.
Instead of querying the ERP for every price in real time, the Pricing Application responds asynchronously to data changes and stores ready-made, recalculated price lists for each customer. An e-commerce platform (such as Sellina) retrieves prices directly from the Pricing Application—instantly, without involving the ERP for each query.
The result: each customer sees their individual price immediately upon entering the product page. No delays, no loading times, no risk of error.
How does the Price Application architecture work?
The operation of the Price Application is based on three pillars:
Modern connection architecture. The ERP isn't queried every time a customer visits the store. Instead, the Pricing Application subscribes to data changes from the ERP and updates its inventory in the background. Store prices are always up to date because synchronization is continuous—but without burdening the ERP with real-time requests.
Proprietary calculation algorithm. ERP systems typically don't store ready-made prices for every customer-product combination. They calculate them on the fly, which is slow when dealing with large numbers of queries. The Pricing application has its own, optimized algorithm that performs these calculations in fractions of a second—even for billions of combinations.
Independence from ERP architecture. Different ERP systems have different API standards, varying performance, and varying limitations. The Pricing application operates independently of these limitations, translating pricing rules and presenting them to the e-commerce platform regardless of the sales system technology.
Who does the Price App make the most sense for?
Not every company needs a dedicated pricing management system. A pricing app solves a specific problem—and it's worth being honest about when that problem actually exists.
It makes the most sense for companies that meet several conditions simultaneously:
Manufacturing and distribution companies with a wide product range and complex trading conditions. If you have hundreds or thousands of products and dozens of customers with negotiated prices, a standard discount mechanism in an e-commerce platform likely won't be enough.
Wholesalers and sales networks , for which quick response to changes and price management for many customer segments simultaneously are crucial.
B2B e-commerce systems require immediate display of individual prices. In B2B, customers must see their prices when browsing the catalog—not only in the shopping cart or after submitting a request for quote. This is a UX requirement that, given the large number of combinations, can only be met with a dedicated tool.
If your company has a few regular customers, unchanged trading terms, and a simple product range, a Price App isn't a priority. Before considering this tool, it's worth diagnosing where the problem actually lies.
Two roles: ERP price relay or independent source of pricing policy
Not every company needs a dedicated pricing management system. A pricing app solves a specific problem—and it's worth being honest about when that problem actually exists.
It makes the most sense for companies that meet several conditions simultaneously:
Manufacturing and distribution companies with a wide product range and complex trading conditions. If you have hundreds or thousands of products and dozens of customers with negotiated prices, a standard discount mechanism in an e-commerce platform likely won't be enough.
Wholesalers and sales networks , for which quick response to changes and price management for many customer segments simultaneously are crucial.
B2B e-commerce systems require immediate display of individual prices. In B2B, customers must see their prices when browsing the catalog—not only in the shopping cart or after submitting a request for quote. This is a UX requirement that, given the large number of combinations, can only be met with a dedicated tool.
If your company has a few regular customers, unchanged trading terms, and a simple product range, a Price App isn't a priority. Before considering this tool, it's worth diagnosing where the problem actually lies.
What do you gain besides performance?
Efficiency is a technical argument, but implementing the Price Application also brings real business benefits that can be seen at the level of everyday work.
No more prices being kept in the heads of account managers. Commercial terms negotiated with a client no longer live solely in a salesperson's Excel spreadsheet. They're now housed in a single, centralized system with controlled access. Every authorized person in the company can see the current price list for every customer—without having to call a colleague.
ERP Independence in the Future. Imagine that in a few years you decide to change your ERP system. In a traditional model, this would mean recreating the entire pricing logic in the new environment – a costly and risky project. If pricing policy lives in a separate microservice, the ERP change becomes much simpler because it doesn't involve migrating price lists.
Individual pricing for a single product for a single customer. In many ERP systems, setting a unique price for a specific customer for a specific product requires creating dozens of separate price lists. In the Pricing Application, this is accomplished in just a few clicks. This gives salespeople a tool to implement advanced strategies—without involving IT.
Mobile access for salespeople. Instead of searching the ERP before speaking with a customer, salespeople can check the current price list on their phone. Prepare offers faster, and make fewer mistakes.
How to prepare for implementation?
Before implementing the Pricing Application, it is worth going through a few steps that will allow you to assess the scope of the project and avoid surprises.
Step 1 – Analyze your existing pricing policy. What does pricing look like in your company today? Are prices centralized in the ERP, or do some of them live in Excel or in the heads of salespeople? How often and to what extent do prices change? The more dispersed the pricing policy, the more work is required before launch.
Step 2 – ERP Integration Diagnosis. Does your ERP have an API for price export? How does it perform with bulk queries? Are there ready-made connectors, or does the integration need to be built from scratch? These are questions worth asking your ERP system manager before speaking with a pricing application provider.
Step 3 – Engage the right people. Implementing a Pricing Application is a project that requires business knowledge—not just technical expertise. It's essential to engage people who understand the pricing process within an organization: the sales department, the finance department, and often the management team. Without their knowledge, it's difficult to embed pricing logic in the system.
Frequently asked questions about the Price App
Can the Pricing App be tailored to the specific needs of my company?
Yes. This is a tool built for specific needs – both in terms of pricing logic and integration with existing systems.
Do I need to implement a B2B store at the same time?
No. The Price App can function as a standalone component. You can connect it to your existing e-commerce platform or build an integration with another sales channel. It supports Magento integration out of the box, but it also has its own API that allows you to connect it to Prestashop, Sylius, Shopify, SAP Commerce Cloud, Medusa JS, and other platforms.
Will the pricing engine slow down the store?
On the contrary, its goal is to eliminate this problem. The Price App runs alongside the e-commerce platform , without burdening its engine or ERP with every price request.
How long does implementation take?
From several weeks to several months, depending on the scale of the project and the complexity of the ERP integration. The quality and availability of data on the client side are crucial.
What are the costs?
The cost of implementation depends on the scope of the project – contact us to get a quote tailored to your needs.
Summary
The Pricing App isn't for everyone. It's for companies that have a real problem managing complex, individual prices on a large scale—and want a systematic solution, rather than adding layers of Excel.
If you're planning to implement B2B e-commerce or already have a store but individual pricing is a weakness, it's worth starting with a diagnosis. Before choosing a tool, determine whether the problem truly lies with the pricing engine or elsewhere.
Fill out the form below and schedule a free consultation – we'll talk about how pricing management works in your company and what's actually worth changing.
