B2B buyers have made it loud and clear — the majority of their vendors are not delivering the digital experiences they want or need. While 57% of buyers choose a manufacturer’s eCommerce site as their first choice to buy products (outranking Amazon Business, at 43%), 60% of them say their biggest frustration with B2B eCommerce is insufficient or inaccurate product information. Thankfully, B2B firms are committed to stepping up their game in 2024, with 60% reporting they plan to look for a new eCommerce platform in the next 24 months.
One of the best ways for a B2B leader to start charting a course for the future is by gaining insights from commerce leaders who have already navigated the journey to digital transformation. Thankfully, the lineup at Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit™, features speakers from top B2B brands that have adopted composable commerce and are reaping the benefits. Here, we offer an overview of the speakers, the sessions and the additional events you’ll find at Elevate to show why B2B business and tech leaders shouldn’t miss this inaugural commercetools-hosted event.
The beauty of commercetools Composable Commerce for B2B is that it is industry-agnostic. It doesn't matter whether you sell bakery goods or building materials, dental equipment or power drills. Whether you are a manufacturer, distributor or wholesaler, you can leverage the flexibility, scalability and performance of our platform to support and future-proof your business. At Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit™, you’ll get the opportunity to learn from and meet face-to-face with commercetools customers across a vast array of industries, each with their own unique business model.
Our B2B speakers will share their challenges and successes, offer best-practice tips and discuss strategies. They’ve agreed to present at Elevate because they know the obstacles B2Bs face and they want to help you move forward in your journey. They have firsthand experience with everything involved in transitioning to composable, from gaining leadership buy-in to implementing the strangler pattern — and can tell you how composability is changing the way they run their business for the better.
We're already seeing returns on the average order value size 2.5 times what we had previously. And a big part of that is just because we can create a better experience, we can get things out faster. Our team doesn't have to work within the confines of the monolith anymore.
TECHNICAL PRODUCT MANAGER, ACE SOUTHERN
At Elevate, you’ll get to learn from Gireesh Sahukar, Vice President – Digital of Dawn Foods, and Andy Goodfellow, Chief Technology Officer of Zoro.com, who will sit on a panel, Establishing your Baseline: Assessing B2B Digital Maturity. Moderated by Andy Hoar, co-founder of Master B2B, the discussion will focus on how their companies, though vastly different, have evolved their digital maturity while transitioning to composable commerce.
Bakeries have felt the heat – literally – from trying to simplify processes while working long hours in 80+ degree kitchens and focusing on business resiliency during the pandemic. We partnered with experts from commercetools, Contentstack and EPAM to help us develop the solution to make our bakery customers’ lives easier and deliver them rich digital experiences that they’ve come to expect in their daily life.
VICE PRESIDENT - DIGITAL, DAWN FOODS
Andy Hoar, co-founder of Master B2B, will also take the stage at Elevate. He’ll be moderating, The B2B Manufacturing Revolution: Charting the Future of Commerce. He’ll be joined by a panel of experts including Matt Swan, Technical Product Manager of ACE SOUTHERN, and Jeff Amash, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of Tekton. Together, the group will explore the innovative strategies, digital transformations and market dynamics shaping the current manufacturing landscape.
We moved to commercetools and built out our site based on that. And it was a pretty natural extension to realize our B2B customers expect the same kind of experience that a D2C shopper wants. They are used to shopping in really streamlined, easy ways. We realized within the last year that we could upgrade that whole side of our business as well, which drove us to build our site through commercetools for our B2B customers. And it’s been wonderful.
CMO, TEKTON
To ensure we cover all the B2B bases, we’ve also planned a session tailored to distributors and wholesalers. Andy Goodfellow will once again take the stage for Breaking Through Channels: Mastering Commerce in the Digital Age for Distributors and Wholesalers. He, along with Chris Baltusnik, E-Commerce Transformation and Operations Leader at Owens Corning will share insights and experiences with moderator Julia Rabkin.
Our diamond sponsor EPAM will be on stage to present the session, Powering a New Era of Public Health with Composable Commerce. Thomas Celerier will sit down with Amelita Ebuña, Director of eCommerce at Cepheid, to share how EPAM helped the biotech company launch a composable eCommerce platform for its B2B customers in record time that achieved impressive results. The pair will dive deep into the goals Cepheid set for the project, the strategies and processes implemented to drive it forward and the lessons learned.
A few of our sessions are still in the planning stage. However, B2B leaders can expect to gain valuable takeaways from Crafting Customer Experiences: What B2Bs have learned from B2Cs and what B2Cs can learn from B2Bs as well as from Voices from the B2B Field. A fireside chat hosted by Andy Hoar. Justin King, Managing Partner of B2X Partners and Mark Pickett, former Vice President of Digital Growth at MSC Industrial Supply Co. are just two of the experts who will share the opportunities and challenges in the B2B market and offer strategies to leverage emerging trends for sustainable growth.
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. My hope is that by bringing together the digital leaders and shapers in the B2B industry at Elevate, we’ll be able to have those conversations on how to create, and continually deliver, exceptional experiences for B2B buyers.
Senior B2B Product Expert, commercetools
Our vision for Elevate is to deliver an unforgettable, empowering experience that will elevate your thinking, elevate your skills and elevate your digital business — so, in addition to sessions, there are multiple opportunities for you to have more intimate conversations with industry leaders.
You can tour The Expo at any time, where you’ll find representatives from our headlining sponsors EPAM, Deloitte Digital, IBMiX, ChangeCX and Orium ready to discuss your challenges and answer your questions. There will also be a few demos on site so you can see composable commerce in action.
In addition, our Welcome Reception on April 16 offers a perfect opportunity to shake hands with members of our leadership team. If you’re hoping to chat with one of them one-on-one, head over to the Vibe Lounge and you’re sure to find one. We’ve intentionally created an event that makes it easy for attendees to make connections, start conversations and get dialogues going.
Julia believes Elevate is a perfect opportunity for B2B firms to kick-start their 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.”
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.