In 2025, B2B companies face crucial ecommerce technology trends as AI raises the stakes in personalization and customer service, marketplaces continue rapid growth, and data integration challenges increase as buyers demand better omnichannel digital commerce.
Dani Jurado, executive vice president, North America, at ecommerce technology firm VTEX, expounded on these and other trends in a recent interview.
The company describes its ecommerce platform as “composable and complete,” referring to the ability of client companies to use its API-driven architecture to compose a customized, best-of-breed ecommerce presence that can include integrated VTEX technology for such extensions as online marketplaces, fulfillment operations and drop-shipping. Its client base includes such companies as brand manufacturers Stanley Black & Decker and Colgate-Palmolive and distributor U.S. Electrical Services.
VTEX reported growth last year in revenue, customer projects and the gross merchandise volume transacted on its platform. For 2025, Jurado notes that VTEX is building on efforts in AI, data management and other areas to coincide with the global demand it’s seeing from B2B companies for ecommerce systems, often including marketplaces, configured to their needs.
“There are many enterprise companies we work with that are trying to create new business lines through B2B, including marketplaces,” Jurado says. “As an example, a construction company may deal with a lot of suppliers but also with a lot of customers. So now what they’re trying to do is create a new business line, bringing in products together from all those different suppliers and becoming the source of those products for their clients. That’s a very, very interesting trend we’re seeing right now with B2B marketplaces.”
“We’re also seeing a lot of banks that are becoming marketplaces,” she adds, noting that banks are taking advantage of their extensive customer bases to offer them various products online from third-party sellers.”
Getting started with marketplaces
“I think the main challenge is more of a business challenge than a technology challenge,” Jurado says. “You have technology providers for everything today — technology is not an obstacle anymore. For example, with marketplaces, the challenge is more the time that it takes for you to convince third-party sellers to be part of your marketplace.
“We have a couple of clients that are running more than 15 million SKUs in their ecommerce technology with VTEX. That’s not an issue because, in terms of technology, we can support this from a catalog perspective and from a search perspective. It’s more to choose the right pieces that you need in that architecture.”
How VTEX is integrating AI into its ecommerce platform
“We are incorporating AI into the VTEX platform, but we’re not seeing AI as something that comes only on the front end, like personalization and segmentation,” Jurado says. “We do that front-end AI development, but we’re also working on integrating AI from the base of the ecommerce platform — to have AI in all the models of the platform.”
In September, VTEX acquired Brazil-based digital technology firm Weni for its expertise in using artificial intelligence and automation for customer experience strategies, including post-sale customer support. Weni’s technology is now integrated with VTEX in multiple ways to complement AI and other developments.
“We have AI in search and, for example, a new customer service piece in the part of the platform we call Weni by VTEX,” Jurado says. “With Weni driven by AI, we can answer customer service tickets and calls, give the information about an order status, order change, whatever from different channels like WhatsApp, Instagram and so on through AI.”
Focusing on customer service
Jurado adds that, by making customer service operations more efficient, AI is helping B2B companies deal with one of the biggest challenges that accompany expanded online sales through marketplaces and other channels.
“One of the things that B2B companies are really struggling with is figuring the quantity of people that you have in customer service, answering calls, answering tickets,” she says. “AI is coming as one of the ways to minimize this cost and generate more margin.”
Jurado adds that VTEX is applying AI technology throughout its ecommerce platform.
In July, VTEX invested $8.5 million in Synerise, a Krakow, Poland-based software development company specializing in AI-driven behavioral modeling and big data systems. With its U.S. offices in San Francisco, Synerise says it “delivers more than 1 billion AI-driven autonomous decisions daily” and plans to use the funding to “enhance its global reach and innovation capabilities” while also powering the AI functionality of the VTEX technology platform and extended ecosystem. VTEX works with over 1,000 system integrators and independent software vendors, and third-party developers have built over 6,000 software extensions for the VTEX platform.
“We believe Synerise can consolidate the infrastructure layer for companies developing AI solutions,” VTEX CEO Geraldo Thomaz says, adding, “We see Synerise as the core for the AI retail world.”
Providing extra help for online buyers
Jurado notes that VTEX is also offering other technology features connected to its platform to foster commerce and operational efficiency, including:
⦁ The ability of companies to introduce online B2B product sales to their existing B2C ecommerce offerings by modifying their product catalog. “There is a feature that allows you to choose the products that you want to sell in each channel,” Jurado says. “For example, if you have 100 products in B2C, you can say, of those 100, I want to sell 50 in B2B … and set different price table depending on who the customers are.”
⦁ The Personal Shopper concierge commerce app, which lets corporate customers, either individually or in teams, connect with a seller’s sales reps through real-time video chats for product specifications, pricing and live demonstrations with augmented reality options. Either the buyers or reps can place product order in the app’s add-to-cart function.
The app also includes, among other features, the ability to filter sales reps by the brands they handle to ensure each agent is supporting the right customers. It also provides sellers with analytics including the number of sessions and sales per agent.
⦁ Data Pipeline, which lets sellers pull and analyze information related to such areas as website performance and sales conversion rates. For example, Jurado notes that companies can use the Data Pipeline to compile and analyze information on how online customers are using their website’s navigation and responding to online promotions, then make adjustments to increase promotion response and conversion rates.
⦁ AI-powered technology from Revalgo to manage and review orders that still arrive via such modes as fax, email messages and PDFs. Revalgo converts these orders into the VTEX online checkout system, which enables online sellers to use automation and avoid manually reviewing orders for such tasks as ensuring they’re matched with available products. In addition to AI and machine learning, Revalgo’s platform uses such technologies as natural language processing, robotic process automation, and optical character recognition.
Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].
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