0.1 SOLUTION
ERP dealer portals dealers actually use
An ERP-connected dealer portal is the primary channel between you and your dealer network: real-time order status, invoices, shipments, and ordering, pulled straight from your ERP. Northwerk designs and builds them.
WHAT_IT_IS
More than a login screen over your ERP.
A dealer portal is where your dealers check orders, pull invoices, track shipments, manage their own team, and place new orders without calling in. An ERP-connected portal means all of that reads from and writes to your system of record in real time, so what a dealer sees is what is actually true.
Done right, it stops being a website nobody visits and becomes the channel your network runs on. Done wrong, it becomes the thing everybody works around by picking up the phone.
THE_PAIN
Most dealer portals quietly fail.
- Minute-long load times. A portal that takes one to two minutes to open is a portal dealers stop opening.
- Swivel-chair reentry. Data that already exists in the ERP gets retyped by hand, or emailed to a shared inbox, because the portal cannot reach it.
- No ERP truth. Orders shown at a uselessly high level, shipment alerts with no tracking number even though one exists, invoices you can see but not actually work with.
- A vendor bottleneck. The firm that built it is the only one who can change it, it is undocumented, and you are still paying for something your dealers abandoned.
WHAT_MODERN_LOOKS_LIKE
What a portal should do instead.
Real-time ERP data
Order status, pricing, invoices, and shipment tracking read live from the system of record, not a nightly copy that is already stale by the time a dealer looks at it.
Self-service ordering
Dealers place and reorder through structured workflows that still run your validation and scheduling rules, instead of email threads and phone calls into a shared inbox.
Documents that are actually there
Invoices, order confirmations, and shipment paperwork where dealers can find them, with carrier tracking that links through instead of a notification that says only that something shipped.
Accounts dealers run themselves
Each dealer organization manages its own users and permissions, so nobody on your team has to complete a manual step just to get a dealer logged in.
HOW_I_BUILD_THEM
Built by someone doing exactly this at enterprise scale.
This is not a hypothetical. I am replacing exactly this kind of portal right now: a mid-market manufacturer whose vendor-built portal took one to two minutes to load and told dealers almost nothing useful. New stack, real ERP data, and the Azure infrastructure and CI/CD pipeline built from the ground up, with organization-level data isolation so each dealer only sees its own.
The build is phased on purpose. Core portal first, so dealers get real value early, then ordering and quoting on top of a foundation that does not need reworking. A Next.js and TypeScript front end, a .NET API for the ERP integration, and a clean seam between the two so the portal is never fragilely coupled to the ERP.
Read the full case studyTHE_PRODUCTIZED_PATH
Or start from the Northwerk Platform.
A custom build is not the only route. The Northwerk Platform is the productized version of this work: a modular, ERP-connected operations platform with portals, operational visibility, and workflows already built, then tailored to how you run. You can see it running today. The paired demo walks a quote from the sales floor through to the back office on real infrastructure.
FAQ
Questions that come up first.
Straight answers on how these projects actually run. If yours is not here, ask directly.
Should we build a custom dealer portal or buy an off-the-shelf one?
It depends on how much of your value lives in your ERP and your process. Off-the-shelf portals are fine when your needs are generic. The moment dealers need real, real-time data out of your ERP, organization-level account management, and workflows that match how you actually sell, a generic product tends to fall short and the vendor becomes the bottleneck for every change. Northwerk builds custom when custom pays for itself, and says so when it does not.
How long does a dealer portal take to build?
There is no honest one-size number, but the shape is predictable. I build in phases: a core portal first (order tracking, invoices, shipments, account management) so dealers get real value early, then ordering and quoting on that foundation. You see working software in the first phase instead of waiting for a big-bang launch, and you get a real timeline after a short discovery, not a number pulled from the air before it.
Which ERPs can it connect to?
The approach is ERP-agnostic. If your ERP exposes an API, a database, or even structured exports, a portal can be built on top of it. I have worked against SQL Server backed systems with a dedicated .NET integration layer, and that pattern, a clean API between the portal and the ERP, is exactly what keeps the portal from being tightly and fragilely coupled to the ERP the way many vendor portals are.
Is our data secure, and can it run on-prem?
Yes to both. Dealer portals carry real business data, so access is scoped per dealer organization with proper data isolation, and each dealer manages its own users. Deployment can be cloud, on-prem, or hybrid depending on your constraints. Security and isolation are part of the design from the start, not bolted on at the end.
Do we have to replace the whole portal at once?
No. The phased approach exists precisely so you do not. The first phase stands up a portal dealers actually want to use, and later phases add ordering and configuration without reworking the foundation. It is designed so each phase builds on the last instead of forcing a rewrite.
Have a dealer portal problem?
Whether you are replacing a portal that failed or building your first, the first step is a straight conversation about what your dealers need and what your ERP can give them.