Accelerating B2B Commerce Progress on the Digital Maturity Curve

B2B commerce has made major strides toward digital transformation in the past few years, but the accelerating pace of transformation means vendors have to do more and adapt faster to keep up with customer expectations. Digital channels will host 80% of B2B buyer-vendor interactions in 2025, and 95% of B2B buyers plan to use GenAI as part of their research and buying processes in the year ahead.

Companies that have spent the last few years investing in transformation may not have the resources or the appetite to make a comprehensive AI investment right now. And some suppliers still fully rely on offline purchasing channels like phone calls and faxes. Adobe’s B2B Commerce and soon-to-be-released Commerce Optimizer can help B2B companies begin or fast-track their transformations to stay competitive, regardless of where they are now on the digital maturity curve.

Key Takeaways

• B2B buyers now expect digital discovery and purchasing experiences that offer hyper-relevant content and self-service journeys, and they are adopting the use of AI to help them make buying decisions.

• B2B sellers are aiming to use GenAI to reduce the operational cost and time required to create more relevant, more personalized customer experiences.

• Some vendors who have already embraced the digital transformation may struggle to implement updates at speed.

• Adobe’s B2B Commerce and upcoming Commerce Optimizer products can help businesses accelerate their transformation, drive growth, and avoid complex and costly replatforming.

Digitizing Offline B2B Commerce

Vendors whose sales processes are entirely offline are at the far left of the digital maturity curve. They have the most ground to make up, and they often need to change a traditional culture to do so. Taking orders via fax and manually entering data in ERPs may work internally for these organizations, but buyers now expect online catalogs and digital self-service.

Giving customers the experience they expect, with Adobe B2B Commerce or another platform, can deliver multiple benefits to the organization, including:

• Reducing customer service costs

• Accelerating the journey from lead to paying customer

• Increasing revenue from self-service sales

• Expanding into new channels to create more revenue opportunities

• Freeing up sales staff to work on customer acquisition and relationship-building.

Because companies like this are starting from scratch, they can leapfrog along the maturity curve to position themselves ahead of competitors with offline B2B sales processes and competitors with older online B2B sales experiences that don’t meet current customer expectations.

Modernizing Legacy B2B E-Commerce Systems

Companies with purpose-built B2B e-commerce tech stacks are farther to the right on the digital maturity arc, but they may find themselves stuck at their current stage. In some cases, these companies were early adopters who built proprietary systems to win tech-savvy customers before there were many commerce platforms on the market. Now, though, the systems that once gave them an advantage with customers can be expensive and difficult to maintain and update. They can also be a challenge to modernize to meet current CX standards.

A modern commerce platform, like Adobe B2B Commerce, with an ecosystem of resources can give companies at this stage a way to modernize their B2B commerce experience, update more easily as commerce technology changes, and reduce the total cost of ownership. Modernizing also allows these companies to reallocate their engineering resources from legacy platform maintenance to innovation, which can further extend the benefits of their move along the digital maturity curve.

Optimizing Existing B2B Commerce Platforms

Soon, companies that don’t want to fully replatform their B2B commerce systems will have a new option in Adobe Commerce Optimizer. This product will layer on top of existing B2B architecture. That makes it a compelling option for companies that have invested heavily on proprietary B2B commerce stacks as well as companies whose B2B operations are deeply intertwined with other modern commerce cloud systems such as Oracle, SAP Commerce, or Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Adobe Commerce Optimizer lets businesses leverage the Adobe Experience Suite for a faster, more author-friendly storefront and merchandising capabilities while retaining the existing back-office system for commerce functionality. Built-in GenAI makes creating, editing, and delivering assets easier, for faster storefront updates, better personalization, and easier campaign creation. The AI functionality also supports A/B testing without needing to bring in the dev team, so CX optimization can happen faster.

Move your B2B commerce along the digital maturity curve

Improving your B2B commerce customer experience and operational efficiency starts with evaluating your company’s position on the digital maturity scale and then identifying the modern commerce solutions you need to progress.

Rightpoint’s experienced Adobe B2B Commerce consultants can perform a technical audit and platform-fit assessment to help you select and implement the technology you need to remain competitive now and in the future. We can also provide expert guidance on platform implementation, experience design, digital strategy, and managed services to support and accelerate your B2B commerce modernization. Contact us or schedule a meeting to get started on the next stage of your digital transformation.