It’s not that B2B companies don’t want to expand their current e-commerce platform—it’s that many can’t, a new study says.

The ability to quickly adapt e-commerce technology to new market and customer needs is the greatest digital sales challenge business-to-business companies face today, according to a study recently conducted by Internet-based e-commerce technology provider CloudCraze LLC and Salesforce.com Inc., a provider of web-based customer relationship management software.

The “2016 State of Digital Commerce Report” found that cost and the time it takes to deploy technology are two significant barriers companies face when trying to expand their e-commerce platform. Of the 54% of respondents that engage in e-commerce, only 53% say their current e-commerce system helps them be as profitable as possible. But 80% of companies say they would at least partly benefit financially from increasing their level of online engagement with customers.

More than half of respondents say that customer contact and account details, as well as customer service history, placed alongside the transaction and order information in their e-commerce technology systems would help them better interact with customers online.

“Business buyers demand a purchasing experience on par with popular B2C brands, with customized ordering capabilities, personalized product recommendations, rich content, peer reviews and user-friendly sites,” the report says.

CloudCraze based the report on a December 2015 survey of 340 I.T. professionals from companies generating between $100 million and $75 billion in annual revenue. Companies were in such industries as: consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, branded manufacturing, media and communications, financial services, media and technology, healthcare, hospitality and travel. CloudCraze didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about where surveyed companies are geographically based.

Following are percentages of companies citing the challenges they face with their current e-commerce platform:

• Scaling quickly to handle growth in customer activity and sales, 56%;
• Delivering custom pricing and promotions to the individual customer, 39%;
• Quickly updating their commerce platform, based on the organization’s or customer’s changing needs, 39%;
• Getting a holistic view of our customers’ interests, 37%;
• Balancing between a focus on enterprise resource planning, or ERP systems, and customer relationship management technology, 32%. Companies use ERP systems to manage such operations as inventory and financial records;
• Other challenges, 2%.

Following are percentages of companies citing as their biggest operational challenge in 2016:

• New customer acquisition, 21%;
• Customer retention, 18%;
• Centralizing customer data, 15%;
• Revenue growth, 13%;
• Data integrity issues, 10%;
• Digital sales, 8%;
• Product development, 7%;
• Supply chain management, 3%;
• Tying together online and offline sales, 3%;
• Delivery related issues, 1%;
• Other challenges, 1%.

Following are percentages of respondents’ opinions on the information they would like to have alongside their customers’ e-commerce transaction and order information:

• Customer contact and account details, 61%;
• Customer support history, 51%;
• Related marketing campaigns, 42%;
• Customer interests regarding products and services, 41%;
• Online community activity, 14%;

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