The most common question when a company evaluates a wholesale B2B platform is not about features. It is: how long until it is live? And the honest answer almost always surprises, because it sits between two extremes that the market tends to promise.
It is not three days. And it is not nine months. The realistic range is 30 to 90 days depending on three variables: ERP complexity, SKU volume, and commercial rule depth.
Stage 1 · Discovery (weeks 0–2)
Map the channel, document commercial rules, identify the ERP, define critical workflows. This is the moment for fine-grained detail: are orders placed with or without withholding tax? Do customers pay on 30 or 60 days? Are there accounts with special terms? The more ground is covered here, the less gets discovered late.
Stage 2 · Functional design (weeks 2–4)
A document covering the key flows: catalog, customer segmentation, pricing rules, order workflow, integrations, dashboard. It is reviewed with sales, finance, and technology. If everyone signs off, execution begins. If anyone hesitates, corrections happen before touching code.
Stage 3 · ERP integration (weeks 3–8, running in parallel)
The heaviest block and the one most consistently underestimated. Native connector or middleware, field mapping, error handling, retries, monitoring. For SAP Business One, Business Central, Odoo, Tango, and Calipso we have connectors that compress the curve significantly. For custom or in-house ERPs: REST API and scheduled batch jobs.
Stage 4 · Catalog loading (weeks 4–6)
Data sheets, photos, attributes, variants, segmentation. Done with Excel templates for 80% of the catalog and manual rich content for the 20% that drives the most sales.
Stage 5 · Pilot with selected customers (weeks 6–8)
Ten accounts with strong rapport, frequent purchases, and open communication. One week of real use reveals issues that no internal testing catches: confusing fields, aggressive validations, unclear payment terms.
Stage 6 · Progressive go-live (weeks 8–12)
Rollout by customer segments. Sales team trained to place orders on behalf of customers during the transition period. Dedicated WhatsApp support for the first 30 days.
When the timeline stretches to 90+ days
- Multiple legacy ERPs coexisting (post-merger, multi-country).
- Commercial rules with more than 5 layers (customer × region × season × product × volume).
- Migration from an existing ecommerce with data to preserve (customers, order history, price lists).
- Regulatory traceability requirements (pharma, food).
When it accelerates to 30–45 days
- A single standard ERP (SAP B1, Business Central, Odoo).
- Manageable catalog (fewer than 5,000 SKUs).
- Simple commercial rules (2–3 price lists, standard volume discounts).
- No migration: net-new ecommerce, not a replacement.