Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit™ spotlight: The evolution of B2B digital commerce

In her keynote, “What’s Coming in the World of Digital Commerce” at Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit™, Heather Hershey, Research Director at IDC, listed B2B as one of the top five trends of 2024. She noted that the IDC Future Enterprise and Resilience (FERS) Wave 2 Study (not yet released) found that 41.3% of B2Bs say they are only “somewhat of a digital business” which she feels presents a huge opportunity for software vendors such as commercetools. 

commercetools saw a surge of interest from B2B firms seeking to expand into eCommerce during the pandemic and has continued to experience growth in the space. This prompted us to debut commercetools B2B Commerce as a standalone product last year. It’s also why we featured a dedicated B2B breakout track at the event. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from our customers from all B2B categories — manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors — along with multiple industry experts. Here, we offer highlights from four key sessions.

Session 1: Crafting customer experiences: What B2Bs have learned from B2Bs and what B2Cs can learn from B2Bs

The discussion revolved around the differences and similarities between B2B and B2C businesses, with a focus on digital transformation and customer experience. All the speakers agreed that both B2B and B2C businesses need to be customer-centric and provide a seamless, intuitive and fast experience. 

Regardless of whom you are selling to, understanding your customer's needs and delivering on promises is critical. The consensus was that often this requires building competencies within your organization to handle change — and that commercetools is a great solution for companies that need flexibility to serve multiple business models and target audiences.

Jeff Amash, Chief Marketing Officer at Tekton explained that the company began to look for a new solution when it discovered its customer's needs were no longer being met by its monolith platform. He shared a story about a B2B customer who sent an email explaining why he would no longer buy from Tekton, and many of the reasons were because of the limitations of the platform. Once the company migrated to commercetools, a representative reached out to that customer to share what they had done to address the problems. “He immediately emailed back — and was kind of surprised that we'd actually done it. We listened to him and then we did the things.” 

Some unexpected insights from the discussion included:

• Having a vendor ecosystem supporting your digital journey will make your challenges easier to solve.
• There’s an added benefit of implementing composable commerce: happier developers. 
• Just get started. You don’t need to have a three-year roadmap — just get going. It’s the fastest way to address your customer needs.

Session 2: The B2B manufacturing revolution

The discussion focused on the challenges and opportunities of manufacturers selling directly to consumers or through channel partners. The panelists agreed that while direct selling can provide a more personalized customer experience and valuable data, it can also create channel conflicts. They also highlighted the importance of partnerships and the potential role of AI in future sales strategies.

Matt Swan, Technical Product Manager at ACE SOUTHERN kicked off the conversation by explaining why the company isn’t currently comfortable using distribution channels. He pointed out that a lot of its products are specialized for oral surgeons and require in-depth knowledge of the space. The ability to interact directly with its customers provides a tight feedback loop that is crucial to helping the company continually refine its products, which supports business growth. 

Khalid Saleem, Vice President of IT Digital Platforms at Beacon Building Products, agreed that with certain products it makes more sense for the manufacturer to handle sales, especially those in which targeting the customer is easy and supplying the product is simple. However, for Beacon, which specializes in roofing products, the customer base is incredibly diversified and the distribution process is complex. He pointed out, “You can't just put a roof worth of stuff in a truck and assume that it will be taken care of. You have to have specialized equipment in vehicles that can not only carry it from one place to another place but also, sometimes, put it on top of the roof.”

Another compelling reason to work with distribution partners is to better serve your customers. According to Martin Schneider, CEO at MArt Strategic Consulting, who is currently working as a program manager at Mitsubishi Chemical Group, keeping distributors in the loop is a key strategy for the company. “We started an initiative to join forces instead of going against the distributors. We say, 'Look, we have challenges in the market; let's develop a proposition to go together to the market.'”

Khalid supported Martin’s point, arguing that while people say speed isn’t important in B2B, he thinks in today's world it is more important than anything else because you make a promise to your customers that a product will be available.

A few key insights from the conversation:

• Choose partners that can scale.
• Make sure partner agreements facilitate the collection of data. As Matt stressed, “Data is the most important currency there is.”
• Build good relationships by being straightforward i.e. transparent communication with your partners.
• If your website passes off fulfillment to external partners, make the process as seamless as possible for customers. 

Session 3: Voices from the B2B field fireside chat: Headwinds and opportunities

Andy Hoar, co-founder of Master B2B moderated this session which explored the challenges B2Bs face in embracing digital transformation, many of which are due to a lack of understanding or resistance to change. The panelists, all of whom support industry growth by providing guidance to B2Bs, shared insights and advice on how leaders can break the barriers holding them back from business growth.

Here, is a roundup of key insights from the discussion:

#1 Choosing the best platform to move your business forward requires due diligence.

#2 Strong leadership is critical to successful digital transformation.

#3 Involve your entire organization in your digital transformation journey

#4  Technology doesn’t gain buy-in, solutions to business problems do

#5 There’s never been a better time to be a marketer or merchandiser

Session 4: Breaking Through Channels: Mastering Commerce in the Digital Age for Distributors and Wholesalers

Julia Rabkin, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at commercetools, moderated this session, setting the stage for the topic of discussion. “When we think about the traditional supply chain, distributors were the channel. It's how manufacturers got their goods out to market, to end users and to business customers. But, now with digital commerce, all of these lines are blurring, so manufacturers can go direct-to-consumer depending on the products they sell.”

She said these changes are causing B2B leaders to rethink what omnichannel means, posing the question to panelists, “When you think about B2B and about distribution and wholesale, what does omnichannel mean to you and your businesses?”

Chris Baltusnik, E-Commerce Transformation and Operations Leader, Owens Corning

“So when I think about omnichannel, I think of a cohesive customer experience through multiple selling channels. Before you really build your omnichannel, you got to take a step back and get a holistic view of your audience, understand your customer, their buying, their motivations and develop your strategy based on that.”

He stressed, “It's not just about being present where your customers are, it's also about adapting to customer preferences. People in this room have eCommerce platforms as well as traditional brick-and-mortar. How are those connected? They need to be a part of that holistic, comprehensive approach. How are you catering to that consumer who chooses to research online, buy in-store and vice versa? 

For Beacon Building Products, the concept of omnichannel is also a little bigger than just meeting customers where they are (by enabling them to shop on any channel) —  it’s about meeting the customer's demands where they are. Khalid Saleem, Vice President of IT Digital Platforms at Beacon Building Products, said this is particularly evident in the roofing industry. Not only are there a lot of specific instructions that come with each delivery, typically based on the requirements of the location, but also often when the shipment arrives, someone on-site (a foreman or contractor) will realize they forgot something or don’t have enough of something, and it can’t wait until tomorrow.

Justin King, co-founder of the B2B eCommerce Association, said that he feels omnichannel means different things to manufacturers and distributors. “If you're a manufacturer, often your eCommerce strategy is a sell-through strategy. It's about enabling your channel partners to sell your product on behalf of you to your customer. If you're a distributor, omnichannel is just about consistency — and that’s hard.”

At Zoro.com, a pure-play digital distributor of tools and business supplies, omnichannel isn’t part of the strategy. Andy Goodfellow, Chief Technology Officer, explained that Grainger, its parent company, created Zoro.com to serve a specific type of customer who wants to shop online for their business products in a certain way. “It's more of a single channel, but one of the things we always want to do is own the customer. And that's why we want to make sure we get them the right product at the right price in the right way —  and do it all the same across all of our 13 million SKUs. That's an impossible task, but that's our goal. 

Key insights: 

• Like it or not, you have to acknowledge that Amazon is a competitor.
• You have to break down the silos within your organization to deliver omnichannel experiences. 
• Connecting both your sales teams and your digital teams can strengthen your partnerships.  
• Collaborate on content with your partners — you can give the customer more information and a better experience if you work together.
• Don’t underestimate the value of a loyalty program — collaborating with your partners can benefit everyone.

To learn more about how the world of B2B is evolving and gain insights on how modern technology enables you to consistently meet changing customer expectations, download our white paper, Pivotal Trends and Predictions in B2B Commerce in 2024.