Blog post
Analytics
🕒 20 min
The One Where Everybody Finds Out the Future Of B2B Commerce
Navigating the white water of B2B sales, bright and breezy
Woulda, coulda, shoulda—the quaint phrase is pretty much an informal mood of every second insider of the B2B commerce market, year in and year out. Because keeping a business afloat or even taking the lead here is quite a trip.
Risks, seemingly low-hanging opportunities, dog-eat-dog competition—all of it is over the top in this clime. And you’re to waltz through the swirling chaos, wearing your best-strained smile, with your head high, in the knowledge that there’s teeny-tiny room for mistake.
Okay, the emotional roller-coaster aside, as the year’s coming to a close, this is the time to stop and look around. Where do we go? What’s the surefire path to tread next year, with an eye to long-run B2B sales strategies?
On our LinkedIn, we’ve already started figuring out the prospects within the B2B commerce landscape. For the second course, we’ve crunched through the DHL research on eCommerce trends and presented our takeaways in a quick digestible manner within the previous post.
Yet, we kept doing more thinking and browsing, and now that we can’t look at another report, we’re anxious to load the exhaustive takeaways onto you. Sorry not sorry.
Getting down to the business then. Now, what’s in the technology department?
#1. Digital aims through the roof
To understand the current state of things in the B2B market at its fullest, we made an analytical breakdown of several respected sources, from McKinsey to Deloitte to Gartner, to which we’ll respectfully give credit for the findings along the way.
First to the scene, an obvious trend we cannot see past. This is the B2B sales’ digital transformation we’re talking about. You might have read that Gartner forecasted 80% of B2B sales to happen via digital channels by 2025. Today, we’re at a point where digital finally starts bringing businesses their money’s worth.
Statista discovered that in the US, the share of B2B companies' revenue from digital channels has grown from 34% in 2021 to 45% in 2023. Given that further rise is anticipated, by 2025 the digital revenue share is to rise to 56%.
Share of B2B revenue from digital channels in the US. Source: Statista
But wait, there’s more. In pursuit of lower sales friction and better growth, B2B businesses see their major tech investment priority in an eCommerce platform for online sales. Which is particularly amazing news for us, as building those is our specialty.
So, if you’ve just started wrapping your mind around getting online, the only question is—what took you so long? Beats us. With prebuilt B2B-specialized frontend-as-a-service solutions out there on the market, the travel to digital presence is likely to take no longer than a day.
#2. Cloud becomes a natural habitat for the back-office ERPs
Okay, let’s embrace it. Looks like the bulky ERP is fleeting, while the cloud is forever. Deloitte discovered that B2B businesses increasingly come to terms with the need to revamp and scale their back-office, especially ERPs, moving them to the cloud.
And they are serious about the feat: 50% of respondents have upgraded the ERPs or at least planned to do this in 2023, with 35% seeking to get it done in 2024.
So, again, cloud nativity, as one of the key MACH architecture principles (MACH stands for microservices, API, composable, and headless), should better underlie every new B2B commerce infrastructure by default. We at Amitech Group, for one, exploit this rule of thumb to great advantage.
Speaking of MACH adoption, the alliance’s recent research has found that for 54% of respondents, the key driver behind their businesses’ transition to a MACH infrastructure in 2024 was the ability to improve customer experience.
All the more so, a year earlier, 62% of respondents also noted their companies opted for MACH to quickly respond to changes in the market.
You got the gist—jump on the bandwagon, practice the MACH approach, and boost the survival rate, with style.
#3. Costly tech stacks fail the reality checks
Shelled out a gazillion on subscribing to an all-the-rage tech solution, yet the salespeople barely touch it? Typical. Luckily, the McKinsey report states that leading B2B sales businesses seem to have begun to confront this eternal puzzle.
A common sunk-cost fallacy used to make many enterprises stick to their exorbitantly overpriced stacks, for years and years. The tools were supposed to vanish all the reps’ troubles at a click, enabling performance to hit the ceiling.
Today, companies shake the delusion and get more uptight about the outcomes, outright. Since the fancy tools tend to burn holes in their budgets, businesses are adopting minimalistic approaches to tech stacks.
That is, investing in quality rather than quantity. Utilizing fewer tools that are prudently integrated, they expect banking on times better outcomes in the long run.
To tell you more, the misgiving about the right and wrong tech platforms is massively up in the air. The RetailX and Marketplacer global eCommerce report, for one, weighs in on why the perfect stack doesn’t exist.
In a nutshell, while many still see enterprise-scale software as a silver bullet for their troubles, they counter-intuitively ignore their own need for flexibility to adapt to market changes. This is why, the research emphasizes the timeliness of the idea of composable commerce.
The excessive buzz aside, the philosophy behind the approach centers exactly around adaptability and targeted troubleshooting. Namely, obtaining the very tools you need to get particular jobs done and access more opportunities, fast.
That’s what we at Amitech Group love most about composability as a key principle underpinning our projects.
#4. The self-service shopping journey is never overrated
When you know, you know. This is what we happen to feel while onboarding a new online sales channel. Meaning, a mere minute of struggle or puzzle—and the chances the cart is abandoned skyrocket.
Or the other way round, consistently positive purchasing journeys make customers spend an average of 62% more, Deloitte says.
Fancy that: those who’re already happily digital, risk losing as much as 13% of total sales due to poor customer experience. That is, to be a front-runner within your niche, you have to move at the pace of your client's expectations.
To that end, how fast are you? Are you a sprinter, stayer, or jumper? Because in today’s B2B sales, a buyer-centric digital model is an essential springboard for growth. Customers aren’t willing to push beyond comfort, while businesses, on their side, don’t seem to be preoccupied much with the matter.
You be the judge. Just 17% of B2B companies, according to Deloitte, describe their own online shopping journey as “very easy." They better watch out, as this may turn out to be a tragic watershed moment.
The bottom line: stagnation within the UX department throws you way back in both competition and revenue, and the self-service journey instead drives you to higher leagues, elegantly turning every marketer into a seller.
#5. Data drives personalized B2B go-to-market strategies
In B2B commerce eCommerce marketing, strategic decision-making is an intricate blur of data harvest, customer behavior analytics, and a pinch of spying on the competition, which is all about data anyways. It is king in any equation, while the rest is a trendy sideshow.
But the real conundrum behind it is how you put to use the wealth of data in your possession. When rationalized properly, your multichannel eCommerce data feed helps engage clients proactively, personalizing marketing and GTM strategies, end to end.
In this regard, McKinsey research on the future of B2B sales emphasizes granular usage of unexpected customer data sources. For instance, one may read rich signals from leading B2B businesses by analyzing their hiring patterns.
Given a company tends to actively recruit data scientists, the associated tech infrastructure may well come in handy. Meaning, if you build those, by any chance, go for targeting them, now.
This happens to be our case, by the way—the team has recently crafted a power-added ETL commerce tool translating multisource eCommerce and operational data into actionable insights.
Also, among the futureproof strategies advocated by the McKinsey squad, we’d bring up shifting from predictive to prescriptive decision-making.
This seems a fair point, as a prediction on its own isn’t a strategy without data-powered suggestions on efficient engagement channels and product combinations. Even more, you are to find the right language that touches the client’s heartstrings the best, if you will. Hello, customer persona research and customization, again!
#6. The new B2B era brings up new sales talents
Yep, aren’t expecting to raise any eyebrows at the fact that the job of a rep who just sells products is about to phase out soon. Armed with digital interactions as an indomitable growth channel, sales reps are now on a mission to build a yellow-brick road to a cohesive, balanced customer journey.
Take, say, today’s wholesale businesses. Their reps have been selling since the dawn of time, yet these days they also can’t do without professional strategic, analytical, and, majorly, technology skills, as the back-office operations get increasingly tech-intensive.
Namely, McKinsey emphasizes the reps are to:
- Convert data into insights
- Anticipate the customer objectives
- Strategize on the fly
- Come up with the best options in terms of business profit
To say nothing of emotionally compartmentalizing their feelings while juggling the jobs, for good measure. What a full-blown wandering circus should one become, huh?
Concerning the incentives department, that same research also notes some signs of a tectonic shift. Or at least a restructure. Now, beyond financial perks and career opportunities, younger reps’ imperatives are mentorship and flexibility, alongside a culture of diversity and free mind.
"To nurture an ownership mindset, companies opt to encourage long-term incentives like multiyear quotas and promote measured autonomy. Within smaller teams, unconstrained by bureaucracy, employees tend to hande workflows faster." (McKinsey & Company, Future of B2B Sales: The Big Reframe)
#7. Endnote. Back to Darwin, adapt and pass the survival test
Zooming out on the macroeconomic picture, the gloomy RetailX and Marketplacer eCommerce report goes that global growth is slowing down. Whereas between 2000 and 2019 it averaged 3.8%, it is now firmly descending. From 3.5% in 2022 to 3% in 2023, all the way to 2.9% in 2024.
With the demographic winter crawling into the European mainstream discourse, this is a wee bit depressing setting for a business, right?
Global population projections by region (in billions). Source: Population Matters, based on UN data
On a brighter note, the researchers put the knowledge of who’s your customer front and center as a monumental advantage for top retailers. Let’s pretend we’re lightened up at this point.
As we flag up the need to brim with customer-centricity, we also share the experts’ feeling that marketplace businesses may not exactly jump at the chance to be nobly serving the customer, for better or worse, for richer or poorer. We’re sensing, they’d instead keep ministering to favored brands.
Indeed, with war and politics broadly shaking the global economy to its core nearly quarterly, there’s also much more unnecessary drama down here within the commerce industry.
Reputational risks grow into a monstrous jumpscare, and brands increasingly fear treading on an illicit platform or getting stuck in a shady partnership. Not that it helps drive the market greatly,—all argument and no action.
To strike the negative-positive balance and somehow scotch-tape our dream commerce environment back together, let’s at least celebrate the shiny prospects ahead of omnichannel B2B commerce.
Once the love-hate dust around the 15-minute city concept settles, we all have the divine job of making things right under the hood, across every touch point, from customer portal to procurement to delivery.
Now, this is it. Time that we hugged you goodbye.
P.S. Keep off scrolling X, this may be traumatizing these days.
P.P.S. As a strategy for here and now, just remember to sustain a healthy 360-degree lookout for your domestic industry-specific regulations, and have the nerve to sport honest competition.
Last updated: December 2, 2024
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Democratizes those royally sophisticated tech phenomena by means of concise copy and occasional wit.
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