In 2024, eCommerce overtook in-person sales as the leading revenue channel for B2B organizations that offer digital purchasing options. This compelling McKinsey statistic led to commercetools announcing 2025 as a year of bold innovation in its recently released white paper, Pivotal Trends and Predictions in B2B Digital Commerce in 2025. For B2B business leaders charting a course for future success, our annual event, Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit™, scheduled for May 20-22, 2025, is a great place to start.
In recent years, composable commerce has emerged as the best technology choice for businesses seeking to compete in today’s digitally-driven commerce landscape. The beauty of commercetools Composable Commerce for B2B is that it doesn’t care if you're a manufacturer, distributor or wholesaler, or whether you sell bakery goods, building materials, dental equipment or drilling machinery — its capabilities are industry-agnostic and business-model agnostic. Our best-in-class solution has enabled a multitude of B2B organizations including Dawn Foods, Normet and Cepheid to successfully launch eCommerce operations faster than they thought possible. Elevate is your opportunity to connect with these and many other B2B practitioners to hear their stories and learn from their experiences.
The benefit of this event is hearing from all of those leaders from different regions and their journeys — what to do, what not to do and lessons learned. It’s gotten us thinking out of the well.
Tech lead, B2B ECommerce, Medline Industries
While we’re still recruiting speakers and developing the agenda, we’ve confirmed Justin Thomas, Head of Digital Experience at Kraft Heinz, Caroline Fortlin, Director of Customer Experience at Lallemand, and Matthew Maddox, Vice President of Digital Commerce at Mirion. Each one agreed to present at Elevate because they know the obstacles B2B organizations face and want to help others move forward in their journey. They've firsthand experience with everything involved in transitioning to composable, from gaining leadership buy-in to accelerating time to value — and can tell you how composability is changing the way they run their business for the better.
Many of the B2B organizations and business leaders I speak to list ‘improving the customer experience’ as one of their top three strategic priorities, understanding it is critical to sustained competitiveness. And yet, they are still questioning how to actually do it. By bringing together the digital leaders and shapers in the B2B industry at Elevate, we’re able to have those conversations on how to create, and continually deliver, exceptional experiences for B2B buyers.
Senior B2B Product Expert, commercetools
In addition to many B2B-focused breakout sessions and a B2B customer keynote (to be announced), the event will feature keynotes from two prominent commerce experts. Anders Sörman-Nilsson, a futurist and the founder of Thinque, a think tank dedicated to providing data-driven insights for global brands, plans to focus on AI and the future of commerce. Heather Hershey, the Research Director for IDC Worldwide Digital Commerce practice, who spoke at Elevate 2024, has hinted that she will share new research on commerce trends.
Our vision for Elevate is to deliver an unforgettable, empowering experience that will elevate your thinking, elevate your skills and elevate your digital business. We provide multiple opportunities for you to have meaningful conversations with your peers as well as commercetools leaders and our extensive partner network.
In the Expo area, you can connect with select SIs and ISVs from around the globe with extensive experience in both B2B and commercetools implementations. You can expect to find experts from vendors including EPAM, Deloitte Digital, IBMiX, ChangeCX and Orium ready to discuss your challenges, walk you through live demos and answer questions.
Our welcome reception on May 20 and the closing celebration on May 22 are also perfect networking opportunities. You’ll discover that it's incredibly easy to make connections, start conversations and get a dialogue going.
Julia believes that Elevate’s mix of expert insights, personal perspectives and forward-thinking ideas along with an intimate environment and collaborative spirit are particularly well suited to inspire B2B businesses to make the next move in their digital future. “Someone once said to me, that it doesn’t matter whether you move potato chips or microchips, the eCommerce problems are the same. I believe attending Elevate can give you the knowledge you need to start solving them.”
To explore everything Elevate has to offer and take advantage of our early bird pricing, visit https://elevate.commercetools.com today.
Anita J. Temple is the Corporate Journalist at commercetools. She was a fashion editor at Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and W Magazine before launching a career as a freelance writer and creative producer. She has written content and worked on a wide range of marketing projects for companies including Dreamworks, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Verizon, and Adidas.