There’s much to be excited about these days in deploying B2B ecommerce technology, but even with the cloud, ubiquitous APIs, and AI, it’s still crucial to first understand what B2B customers want and need.

That was a core piece of advice from four industry experts — Price Shoemaker, vice president of digital at diesel engine parts distributor M&D Distributors, Stu Tisdale, senior vice president of global electrical products distributor ADI Global Distribution, Jon Kee, account executive of ecommerce technology firm Optimizely, and Jason Bowman, executive director of user experience at digital agency OX – Office of Experience — who all shared an ecommerce technology panel at the recent EnvisionB2B event in Chicago.

The panel’s moderator, Brian Warmoth, editorial director at the event’s host and organizer, Digital Commerce 360, engaged the panelists in a discussion about the critical steps to take — or to avoid — when launching or overhauling a B2B ecommerce platform.

A conference screen shows the speakers for the EnvisionB2B technology panel, “Do This and Not That.”

Following are some of the topics and comments, which have been edited for brevity and clarity:

How can you best decide among commercially available and in-house technology platforms?

Stu Tisdale, ADI: This is a decision that’s made very frequently in our business, with bespoke business problems often handled by our internal team, but the tradeoffs are velocity and you don’t get the innovation happening in the broader ecommerce industry. When you’re trying to build something that you can push across ecommerce — for example, search or pricing —  I would tend to look at a third party. Then you can scale it up very quickly.

Jason Bowman, OX: We often come across someone who has home-built their platform, but it can be a lot harder to scale past the specific features they put in there. If you’re going to build it yourself, you need to support it and really dig into it, otherwise it gets dated and falls behind quickly.

How crucial is it to conduct technology integration planning ahead of time?

Jon Kee, Optimizely: As Stu Tisdale said, it often comes down to speed and velocity. And it’s important to keep in mind your customers when making these data integration decisions. Companies want to build a lot of things, they have a lot of ideas, but that’s not going to pay much value if it’s not relevant to your customers’ needs are and start from there.

Jason Bowman, OX: It’s massively important. So many people have a tool that they know works, but they don’t know everything that it touches, they don’t know where it’s pulling data from, and they don’t know what they need it to touch. And then all you start to see the cascade effect when you’re deep in the project, when it’s like so where is that data coming from? How are we going to set that up?

How are cloud, AI and API integration changing companies’ approaches to ecommerce technology makeovers?

Price Shoemaker, M&D: I don’t know if you guys are familiar with AI (audience laughs), but I think the biggest conversation around AI is: How does it make you do things better, more efficiently or more effective? With our experimentation platform, we have recommendations built in so that if a customer says, I’m trying to increase average order value, what type of experiment should I run? The AI, based on all our data will say, “You should do this” with a recommendation. Use cases like that are really impactful and helpful.

Is it easier or harder today to keep up with competitors with effective ecommerce technology for customers who may want highly personalized experience?

Stu Tisdale, ADI: Well, let me separate omnichannel from personalization. Omnichannel is aways an internal change management initiative. So, in that case, in my business, which is a wholesale tutor business, it is a long road map. But back to personalization I think the technology curve is improving for personalization.

Jason Bowman, OX: With personalization, the trick is always customer expectations. So, logging into account and getting your past orders or your invoices We sometimes get a little romanticized about what personalized web experience could be, but sometimes it can also be a hindrance to a customer’s experience. So, in personalization, a key is making sure it’s actually the right information — and how to apply it for business goals. Are we driving customers to the right purchase choice?

How are manufacturers distributors collaborating with digital technology?

Price Shoemaker, M&D: Product data is a huge challenge. From a distributor’s perspective, we understand our lead times that are on hand, but to be really an extension of our manufacturing partners, it would be helpful getting insight into their supply chains. Where’s their product located? There’s a real opportunity to get deeper connections with our supply chains.

Jon Kee, Optimizely: I’m thinking more about customer data. This story is a little dated, but Electrolux, the big provider of appliances, used to sell products exclusively through Sears but started selling water filters online   to have direct connections with customers and market to them. And we saw a trend a couple years ago where manufacturers were thinking of strategies like that, where they can get access to end customer data and began building more sticky and more reliable relationships with customers. Now, because of the value of the accessibility of data, it’s less of a challenge creating less channel conflict potentially, because now that data can be shared between and manufacturer and its distributors and wholesalers so all entities can benefit.

What do you find exciting about ecommerce technology?

Stu Tisdale, ADI: It’s a great time to be in the ecommerce industry and I’m excited about a lot of applications — specifically, site search.

Jon Kee, Optimizely: The technology vendors and technology products are bringing integration to the forefront. It’s a lot easier to integrate products now than it was in the past.

Jason Bowman, OX: You’re able to build interesting experiences more so today for B2B than previously. It used to be consumers got the cool things. Now, post-pandemic, you can create elegant solutions that serve the business and the customer.

Price Shoemaker, M&D: It’s no longer good enough to say we have the catalog on the website people can order from. With this next generation that has grown up on Amazon, how are you going to get them to buy from you instead of just going to Amazon Business and buying from whoever? It’s going to be really interesting to see.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].

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