Business-to-business e-commerce operators and the service providers that help them manage online sales often struggle to find business analytics, technology and customer experience professionals, according to a Forrester Research Inc. report.

The finding is based on more than 100 survey responses collected online in April and May from commerce service providers and interviews with such commerce service providers as hybris Software, Razorfish and Elastic Path Software. Forrester describes commerce service providers as vendors involved in some aspect of designing and building e-commerce sites, and integrating them with back-end business software for managing pricing, sales records, inventory stocks and other operations.

The Forrester report, “Commerce Service Providers Market Overview: Changing Marketing Dynamics Drive New Strategies and Alignments,” says the e-commerce service providers “tasked with executing on digital strategies for both [business-to-consumer] and B2B companies are finding that the lack of e-commerce talent is a significant barrier to growing e-business organizations and strategies for their client companies.”

That said, what Forrester calls “ready access to public cloud platforms through Amazon Web Services” and other providers of web-hosted services and technologies “has made it possible for companies to avail themselves of sophisticated e-commerce software without having to build, host or manage it.” That move toward the cloud also means the commerce service firms operating those offerings now perform such newer roles as “automated site testing, offering performance management services and conducting extensive security testing.”

Those service providers also face a new challenge as more brand manufacturers sell directly to consumers via the web and learn to manage that channel. Service providers “in their capacity of trusted advisors [have been forced] to develop expertise in both channel optimization and business growth strategy.” That has led service providers to deepen their knowledge about such areas as product pricing and inventory management, Forrester says.

The report was written by lead author Andy Hoar, a Forrester analyst who focuses on B2B e-commerce strategies, with contributions from several other Forrester analysts.

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