How to Create a B2B Customer Portal (Complete Guide)

Business-to-business (B2B) customer portals are an indispensable tool for modern businesses. They help streamline customer interaction, boost your business's productivity, all while keeping you and your client's data secure.

In this guide, I'll show you step-by-step how to create a B2B customer portal using Foyer, and how to integrate it with your business to secure and streamline all your customer interactions.

With Foyer, you get a ton of features that are a perfect match for B2B use cases. Here are a few essential features you get, and how they'll benefit your business:

• Secure File Sharing: Safeguards sensitive data transfers, crucial in preventing data breaches and unauthorized access.
• eSignatures: Streamlines the signing process for agreements and contracts, enhancing speed and legal compliance.
• Custom Forms: Enables tailored data collection, optimizing processes like onboarding and feedback gathering.
• Internal Knowledge Bases: Provides centralized repositories for crucial information, improving internal decision-making.
• Secure Email: Offers encrypted email communications within the portal, maintaining the confidentiality of messages and attachments.
• Groups: Organizes users for each external business, streamlining access controls for entire businesses at a time.

Before we get into how to create your own B2B customer portal, let's go over what a B2B customer portal is and a few use cases in a couple industries.

What is a B2B Customer Portal?

A B2B client portal is a service that manages all interactions between you and your clients (i.e. businesses). With a B2B client portal you can do anything from sharing documents, signing contracts, sending group messages and sharing knowledge bases.

B2B client portals come with a range of different features that are catered to different industries.

Let's go over a few different common use cases for B2B client portals from the manufacturing, and healthcare industries.

B2B Customer Portal for Manufacturing

In the manufacturing industry, B2B client portals offer several key benefits that streamline operations and enhance collaboration:

• Improved Data Exchange: Facilitates the secure and efficient sharing of design files, product specifications, and supply chain updates.
• Supply Chain Visibility: Provides real-time visibility into the supply chain, enabling better planning and inventory management.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Streamlines communication between manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors, improving coordination and reducing delays.
• Project Management Efficiency: Integrates tools for project tracking and management, helping to keep manufacturing projects on schedule.
• Quality Control Documentation: Allows for easy exchange and tracking of quality control documents and compliance certificates.
• Customizable Access and Security: Offers tailored access controls to safeguard sensitive manufacturing data and intellectual property.
• Streamlined Order Processing: Automates and simplifies order processing, from initial order placement to final delivery.

These features help to optimize manufacturing processes, ensuring more efficient and secure operations within the industry.

B2B Customer Portal for Healthcare

In the healthcare industry, B2B client portals bring a multitude of benefits, enhancing the way healthcare entities interact and share sensitive information. Some key advantages include:

• Enhanced Data Security: With end-to-end encryption, patient records and research data are protected against unauthorized access.
• Regulatory Compliance: These portals are designed to align with healthcare regulations like HIPAA, ensuring legal compliance in data management.
• Real-Time Information Sharing: Facilitates immediate access and updating of patient records and research data, crucial for timely decision-making.
• Streamlined Collaboration: Simplifies interactions between hospitals, insurers, and research entities, enhancing coordination and efficiency.
• Customizable Access Controls: Allows setting varied access levels for different users, ensuring information is only available to authorized personnel.
• Efficient Record Keeping and Auditing: Aids in maintaining comprehensive records and simplifies auditing processes, crucial for regulatory compliance.
• Integrated Communication Tools: Includes built-in messaging and notifications for direct, secure communication within the platform.

B2B client portals make any business who interacts with the healthcare industry more efficient, secure, and compliant with regulations (like HIPAA).

How to Create a B2B Customer Portal

Foyer is a B2B client portal that has all the essential features your business needs to interact with clients from any industry. You'll get a client portal for: secure file sharing, encrypted messaging, an integration with DocuSign for e-signatures, secure email, and more in just minutes. All data is encrypted end-to-end, so you can be confident your business and your customer's data is safe.

To set up your B2B client portal visit the onboarding wizard, and enter your name, email, and business name. Your client portal will be created within just 1 minute (there's no commitment necessary).

You can access your client portal as a "subdomain" of Foyer like "example.usefoyer.com". During the onboarding process, you'll be able to choose which subdomain you want. If you need to setup Foyer as a subdomain of your own domain (e.g. "portal.yourbusiness.com"), we can set that up for you too just contact our Support team.

After the onboarding process completed, you'll be redirected to your B2B customer portal's home page. On the left, you'll see a drawer where you can access and configure all the features of your portal (e.g. secure file sharing, custom forms, knowledge bases, etc...).

For now we are just going to cover how to share files, but later in the guide we will touch on some of the most essential features you have.

A common B2B use case is simply sharing files with a business client. You can do this in two different ways with Foyer.

You can invite clients directly to Spaces (this will require you to know the client's email address).

Or you can send a link to your "SafeDrop" page, so your business clients can send you files without signing in.

I'll show you how to share files both ways! I'll start by showing you how to invite your clients directly to a Space.

First, let's cover what exactly a "Space" is.

Spaces are secure places where you can share files and send secure messages with clients and your staff. All the files and messages within one Space are only visible by the members of the Space (just like a group chat in Teams, Slack, iMessage, etc...).

You can making a space by visiting the Spaces page (click on "Spaces" on the left drawer), then by clicking the "+" icon on the left.

When adding a new space, you'll see a dialog like the one below. You can set the name of the Space, and choose which members have access to any files or messages that will be shared. 

You can also share spaces with "groups". Groups are a great way to organize your business contacts, so you can assign access to an entire external business all at once. We will cover that in the next step!

If you need to invite a new client, you can just click the "Invite a new Client" button.

All you need to invite a new client is their email. Other information like name, phone number, and profile picture are all optional (they are free to fill in those details themselves too)!

Before you save the client, there are two options you might want to check out that are great for B2B use cases.

First, is tags. With tags, you can organize your clients via labels. You could use this to organize your B2B clients by which industry they are in (e.g. "Law Firm", or "Healthcare").

Second, is groups. With groups, you can organize your business clients into what businesses they belong to. Using groups makes it easy to assign access to resources (e.g. Spaces, Pages) to entire businesses all at once, instead of needing to remember which client belongs to which business.

Any new clients you add will automatically be added to the "Members" list, and they will have access to any files you make in your new Space.

To add a group, just start typing the name of a group, and click on the result. Groups are added to this list just like clients.

When you've added all the users and groups you need, click "Save", and you'll be directed to your new Space.

You can share files with everyone in the Space, by just dragging and dropping a file, or use the "Options" button. You can upload any files of any size, and any type. You can even upload entire folders!

To add or remove users or groups from the Space, visit the "Settings" tab, and edit the members list.

That covers the first option of sharing files with your B2B client portal using "Spaces". Now let's talk about the second option, which is to allow business clients to send you files without needing to login.

In your Foyer B2B client portal, this workflow is called SafeDrop.

Every organization has a SafeDrop portal included. You can find you link on the "Home" tab, or by visiting "example.usefoyer.com/upload" (replacing "example" with your org's subdomain name).

You can send your Foyer SafeDrop link to any client, and they can easily send you files from any device. They just have to enter their name, email, an optional message, and then any number of files.

Any files uploaded this way will show up on your Spaces page, and have a name like "SafeDrop from ...". Just like normal Spaces, you and the client will receive a notification for any files that are uploaded.

Anyone who has used your SafeDrop portal will show up as a "guest" client on your Clients page. To help manage your business contacts, you can click on any entry on the Clients page, and assign them to their relevant tag or groups.

How to Integrate a B2B Client Portal With Your Business

The most common use for a B2B client portal is to exchange files with your business clients, but there's a lot more to it than just that!

Let's go over some of the features that you'll get with your B2B client portal that will enhance and secure your customer's experience.

White-Labeling Your B2B Client Portal

With any B2B customer portal, it is critical that you can white-label the portal to match your own brand. White-labelling helps your business clients recognize your brand, and build trust that your customer portal is legitimate. There are plenty more reasons why white-labeling is beneficial too.

Foyer's B2B customer portal lets you customize colors, logos, emails, your domain name, and more.

On the "Org" page you can update:

• Your Logo
• • Shown on the login/sign up pages, all pages when logged in, on all forms, and on your SafeDrop page.

• Name
• • Shown in the header, and on login/sign up pages

• Color
• • Used in the header, on all buttons for every page

If you scroll down on the Org page you'll also find Foyer's email templater that allows you to customize all your client and staff invitation emails.

How to Create Knowledge Bases In Your B2B Client Portal

With your Foyer B2B client portal, facilitating knowledge exchange among your team and clients is seamless.

To create knowledge base pages, navigate to the "Pages" section and click the "+" icon in the left drawer. Name your page and incorporate content using the rich-text editor. You can: embed videos, images, format text, and more.

Under the edit icon (beside the page title), you can designate which users and groups have access to the page. Shared pages will appear under the recipients' "Pages" tab, enabling knowledge base collaboration among your staff, while clients retain read-only access.

Moreover, you can assign a knowledge base page as the home page, ensuring that clients or staff are welcomed with specific content upon login. This proves invaluable for onboarding and seamlessly linking back to resources, enhancing your B2B customer portal's utility.

Some business opt to use a dedicated service for knowledge bases, like Notion, but it is nice to have your knowledge base integrated right into your B2B customer portal with Foyer.

How to Make Custom Forms For Your B2B Client Portal

When you're interacting with other businesses, you'll often want to collect custom data (whether it be for feedback gathering or collecting onboarding information).

Foyer provides a solution just for this called Forms. Forms enable you to collect the exact information you need by letting you choose and a wide array of fields (e.g. text, files, multiple choice).

All data collected by your forms go straight into your B2B customer portal where it can be easily shared internally in your organization. You can even collect files of any type and size (including large files). All you do is add a field, and choose the "file" field, and save the form.

You'll get an email to all your staff whenever a form is submitted so you never miss any updates from your clients. Anyone can opt-out of these notifications by visiting their notification preferences.

To get started, visit the "Forms" tab, click "Form Definitions", and "Add Form".

Each form is comprised of "steps", and each step has any number of fields. Fields can be textboxes, file inputs, or multiple choice check boxes.

You can choose the style of your form between the two built-in settings: "stepper" and "row". Stepper will treat each step as a different page (perfect for mobile), while "row" will show the whole form as a single page (ideal for desktop).

You'll often see B2B business create forms using a service like Jotform, but having your forms built-in to your own B2B customer portal is a great convenience.

How to Keep Your B2B Customer Portal Secure Using Audit Trails

B2B client portals are not only about productivity, but also security. That's why Foyer has complete audit trails built-in, so you can track every security event that occurs within your organization to keep your clients and your business as a whole safe.

Each audit log is stamped with when it occurred, who did it, and what exactly happened. For security, these logs cannot be deleted. So you'll always have a way to go back in time to replay what happened. Here are a few example audit log actions:

• Deleting files
• Previewing files
• Disabling or enabling Two Factor Authentication (2FA)
• • Important to know if someone is subverting security measures
• Unsuccessful Login Attempts
• • Tells you if someone may be attempting to access your account

There are over 50 different audit log actions, so you'll have the full picture of what's going on in your B2B client portal.

Also, if any of your B2B customer are in the healthcare industry, audit trails is essential if you are storing HIPAA data or any other personally identifiable information (PII).

In addition, Foyer provides searching, filtering, and sorting through all audit logs to make auditing easy.

Collect File Signatures From Business Clients With DocuSign

Foyer has partnered with the industry leading e-signature solution, DocuSign, to simplify collecting file signatures from your clients.

You can select any file within Foyer, and request file signatures from your clients or staff. You're receive updates directly in your client portal on the status of each file signature, and the final signed copy of the file will be securely uploaded into your client portal.

Using a client portal integration with DocuSign helps keep your business secure by avoiding transferring files over email, which is an inherently unsecure means of sharing files. You certainly wouldn't want a signed copy of any file to be leaked!

For more information, check out our comprehensive guide on how to how to send file signature requests.

If you use another service for eSignatures, or don't want to use DocuSign, that's fine too! Check out this list of e-signature services and decided which is best for your business.

How to Secure Your Email Using Foyer's Secure Email Outlook Add-in

Foyer's Secure Email Outlook Add-in facilitates secure email communication, which is ideal for B2B use cases where you're exchanging contracts, forms, and other sensitive data. It is particularly effective for:

1. Sending end-to-end encrypted files and messages via email.
2. Transmitting large files of any size and type through email.

Given the inherent risks associated with standard email for file transmission, adopting a secure email service is paramount for many businesses. Foyer's Secure Email Outlook Add-in addresses this concern by encrypting all file attachments and email contents, ensuring robust protection against data leaks.

Additionally, the add-in simplifies the process of sending large files, surpassing the typical 20MB attachment size limit imposed by traditional email providers. You can seamlessly drag and drop any file, regardless of its size, for secure email transmission.

For detailed instructions, please refer to comprehensive guide on how to send secure email.

If you're using another email provider than Outlook, check out this list of secure email providers. Whether you use Foyer secure email or not, you should really be encrypting all your email.

How Will You Use Your B2B Customer Portal?

I hope this guide has helped you understand the uses for a B2B customer portal, and made it clear how to use features like secure file sharing, custom forms, knowledge bases, and secure email to boost your business's productivity and security.

If you're wondering where to get started first, I suggest just setting up a secure file sharing portal first (using "Spaces" or "SafeDrop" as covered above).

That way you'll have a secure way of exchanging files with your business clients, then you can work on integrating custom forms (for feedback or onboarding forms), or signatures with DocuSign after.

If you have any existing data that you need to migrate into your B2B customer portal, let our Support team know, and we can discuss a solution for you.

Thanks for reading. If you have any feedback, please send a comment below!