The Hard Truth About B2B eCommerce: Recent Episodes
Isaiah Bollinger
This podcast is all about B2B eCommerce. B2B is a different breed of eCommerce and it needs a different breed of Podcast. We get into the nitty-gritty of integrations, adoption, platforms, data and so much more regarding what makes B2B difficult to make successful for eCommerce! This podcast is hosted by Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson of https://trellis.co who can help you with all things B2B eCommerce.
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In Episode 164 of "The Hard Truth About B2B E-commerce," hosts Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson dive into a thought-provoking conversation with Ken Novak, the innovative founder of Hatch Quantified. Discover how Ken is revolutionizing the B2B landscape by bridging the gap between traditional manufacturing and digital transformation. Learn about Hatch's unique approach to unlocking digital value for manufacturers and distributors, and explore the challenges and opportunities in the evolving world of B2B commerce. Whether you're a seasoned industry professional or new to the field, this episode offers valuable insights into the future of B2B e-commerce.
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In this episode of "The Hard Truth About B2B eCommerce," host Isaiah Bollinger sits down with Hans Leong, a Senior e-Procurement Implementation Specialist at Carrier Enterprise. They delve into the intricacies of e-procurement, discussing the evolution of distribution and manufacturing in the digital age. Hans shares insights on the importance of automation, the future of ERP systems, and the role of AI in streamlining business processes. The conversation also touches on the challenges and opportunities within the B2B sector, emphasizing the need for companies to adapt to technological advancements to stay competitive. Tune in to explore how e-procurement is reshaping the landscape of B2B commerce.
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In this episode of "The Hard Truth about B2B e-commerce," hosts Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson sit down with Matt Weis, Co-Founder of Circuit, to explore the evolving landscape of B2B commerce. From the challenges of selling to government monopsonies to the intricacies of AI in manufacturing, Matt shares insights from his journey in the tech and defense sectors. Discover how Circuit is revolutionizing the way manufacturers operate and the future of AI-driven solutions in the industry. Tune in for a deep dive into the world of B2B innovation and the exciting potential of AI.
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In this episode of "The Hard Truth about B2B eCommerce," hosts Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson are joined by Brent Peterson, a seasoned B2B eCommerce consultant. They dive into the evolution of eCommerce platforms, the role of AI in content creation, and the importance of unique content in today's digital landscape. Brent shares insights from his journey, including the challenges and opportunities in the B2B space, and the future of commerce platforms. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the intersection of technology and commerce.
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In Episode 160 of "The Hard Truth About B2B e-commerce," hosts Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson welcome Stephen Metts, Vice President of Innovation at Zaelab. Stephen shares insights from his 18-year journey in B2B commerce, discussing the evolution of CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) solutions and the importance of innovation in bridging the gap between technology and user needs. The conversation delves into the challenges of integrating complex systems, the role of empathy in technology adoption, and the future trajectory of ServiceNow and Logic. Tune in for a deep dive into the strategies that drive successful digital transformations in the B2B space.
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In Episode 159 of "The Hard Truth About B2B eCommerce," hosts Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson sit down with Rudy Abitbol, a seasoned leader in B2B eCommerce and digital growth. Rudy shares his journey from programming enthusiast to a strategic leader in the B2B space, offering insights into the evolution of eCommerce platforms and the challenges of digital transformation. Tune in to explore the future of distribution, the role of AI in business, and how companies can stay competitive in a rapidly changing landscape. Don't miss this engaging conversation filled with practical advice and industry wisdom.
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In this episode, we explore the pivotal role of AI and machine learning in revolutionizing B2B marketing strategies. Learn how these technologies are not only optimizing campaigns but also personalizing customer experiences and driving measurable results. Tune in for expert insights and practical examples that showcase the future of marketing in the digital age.
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In Episode 157 of "The Hard Truth About B2B E-commerce," hosts Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson welcome Matthew Asher, Senior Program Manager of CPQ at ServiceNow. Dive into the evolution of Configure Price Quote (CPQ) systems and their impact on B2B commerce. Matthew shares insights from his journey in the software implementation space, discusses the integration of AI in CPQ, and explores the future of self-service in B2B sales. Whether you're a seasoned expert or new to the field, this episode offers valuable perspectives on navigating the complexities of modern e-commerce. Tune in to discover how companies can leverage CPQ to enhance their sales processes and customer experiences.
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In Episode 156 of "The Hard Truth About B2B E-commerce," hosts Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson welcome back Lance Owide, General Manager of B2B at BigCommerce. Lance shares insights into the evolving landscape of B2B e-commerce, emphasizing the importance of agility and incremental growth for businesses transitioning online. The discussion covers BigCommerce's innovative strategies, including AI-driven sales tools and immersive buyer experiences, aimed at enhancing operational efficiency and driving revenue growth. Tune in to explore the future of B2B e-commerce and learn how to stay ahead in a rapidly changing digital world.
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Michael Netto is the general manager of K-Commerce, a B2B eCommerce focused software platform. We discuss many challenges in B2B such as excel's unstructured data creating data problems, manufacturers vs distributors, the tech gap vision and many others. We discuss how customer needs drives product innovation and why the ERP is the foundational system in B2B. The omnichannel expectation in B2B eCommerce is not a simple switch for manufacturers and distributors to adapt to.
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Chris Gee is the CTO of the B2B eCommerce Association and is ensuring that the technology of the organization helps facilitate the community. We discuss the B2B eCommerce revolution and B2B vs B2C: a generational shift in eCommerce. There are many unseen struggles in B2B vs Retail such as credit & invoice differences. We discuss why you should start at the end of the customer journey and work backwards.
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Timothy Peterson & Isaiah Bollinger do their first solo episode in a while without guest to discuss customer adoption & AI. Customer adoption is a hugely underrated challenge in which simply building the tech isn't enough. It requires many different departments working together to bring alignment and customer growth across multiple friction points. AI is coming on fast, and if you don't have a plan to make it useful, you will get left behind. We discuss low hanging fruit areas of using AI.
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Kerry Siggins is the CEO of Stoneage, the world’s leading provider of industrial cleaning tools, automated equipment, technology, and resources. Kerry Siggins is in the early stages of creating completely digitized orders online but started the digital transformation journey years ago with a new website, ERP, and other foundational elements. We discuss the journey to become more digitally advanced in manufacturing and how it doesn't necessarily start with taking orders online.
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Val DuVernet is a B2B eCommerce Veteran that spent a large portion of her career building the McKesson B2B program. Now, as an independent consultant, Val is helping a larger spectrum of B2B companies enable and adopt more sophisticated B2B eCommerce programs. We discuss many topics such as how important CRM and data is in the process as well as balancing, culture, technology, and sales.
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Denis Dyli is the founder of Uncap and has been in eCommerce for over a decade. Like many of us in the eCommerce world, he started with Magento and eventually found his way to Shopify as the market changed over the years. We discuss his specialization of Shopify B2B and how the rise of Shopify is now coming to the b2b world for distributors and manufacturers.
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Carlos Camacho started out growing through the ranks in B2C eCommerce that eventually evolved into B2B eCommerce leadership. Currently, he leads eCommerce at Bausch & Lomb, a leading global eye health company operating in both direct to consumer and B2B markets. We discuss what it takes to create change in large B2B organizations that need to see incremental results but also have massive multi year digital transformation projects looming over them.
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Greg Gesswein is a fourth generation distributor owner operator that has digitally transformed a 100 plus year old company. Gesswein is on their third generation of B2B eCommerce and has also modernized their ERP system to Acumatica. With a mix of modern SaaS platforms, Shopify and Acumatica, Gesswein is able to accelerate digital adoption and best in class features. We discuss the challenges of modernizing a legacy business and what it took to get to new SaaS platforms.
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Mark Brohan, Senior Vice President, B2B and Market Research at Digital Commerce 360, is our first threepeat guest! He is arguably the first and only real historian of B2B eCommerce and saw its come up years ago. We discuss the history of how we got here and what we are seeing in 2025. With looming Tariffs and economic uncertainty, the digital leaders seem to always be the ones that come out on top.
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Ljubitza Frkovich Mallqui, leads digital transformation at Promelsa, a Peruvian distributor of construction and electrical equipment. Ljubitza has helped Promelsa shift from an entirely offline business to a multichannel digitally enabled business. We discuss the journey of getting eCommerce started, integrated with their ERP, and the more advanced needs as they continue to grow around CRM, AI, and other technologies.
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Sarah Falcon got her start in tradition B2C eCommerce that led to B2B eCommerce in the early days of building a customer portal. That led her to Justin King and B2X partners which has no transformed into The B2B eCommerce association. Sarah is leading the charge bringing industry leading information to manufacturers and distributors around the world. We discuss the challenges our industry faces as we are still in the early stages of modernization.
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Scott Detar has been in the trenches of distribution for over 18 years at EB Bradley. EB Bradley is a building materials distributor in the west coast that has evolved their B2B eCommerce experience over the last ten years. We discuss the challenges of this evolution and what they have done to improve adoption as it becomes more and more important to their business.
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Marc Vasquez has a mix of a technical, business and sales background, which led to a perfect transition into B2B eCommerce. He know leads eCommerce at Ideal Clamp Products, a holding manufacturer of 7 brands with a global presence. We discuss the challenges of a B2B eCommerce for a mid market enterprise with multi-website requirements and multiple ERPs due to acquisitions. We discuss both the technical and cultural challenges of enabling B2B eCommerce for distributors but also direct selling as a manufacturer.
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Denis Clifford cut his teeth in B2B eCommerce by playing a pivotal role in rolling out the first B2B eCommerce systems and processes for global beverage company Heineken. Realizing the complexity of a global B2B eCommerce setup, Denis saw value in composable architecture and moved over to his new role at Virto Commerce. We discuss that people and processes are still the larger hurdle for B2B eCommerce ahead of technical challenges.
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Jack Freeman is a repeat guest and partner at PeakSpan Capital who makes series A, B, and C investments in eCommerce related software companies. PeakSpan recently invested into PDQ (delivery logistics for Shopify), Sales Layer (PIM software), and ShipHawk (Logistics). We discuss that growing trend of manufactures and distributors realizing the value of new and innovative software solutions that enhance end to end digital transformation from customer acquisition to last mile delivery.
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Kyler Nixon has run marketing and sales for a mid market distributor, Gemplers, where he learned the ins and outs of B2B eCommerce. Now, as an independent consultant, Kyler is helping mid market distributors to grow via modern eCommerce and marketing strategies. We discuss the common mistakes and solutions manufacturers & distributors face when scaling B2B eCommerce, specifically around acquiring new customers.
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Jennelle McGrath is the CEO of Market Veep, a full service marketing agency. We discuss the importance of marketing in manufacturing & distribution, and how tools like Hubspot can play a critical role. Hubspot allows companies to unify their CRM, marketing, and operations. We discuss the challenges of keeping sales, marketing, and operations working in unison to progress eCommerce forward in a positive direction.
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Co-host Isaiah Bollinger, and Timothy Peterson host our first 2025 Solocast where we cover they key trends we are seeing in B2B eCommerce. We make our top 5 predictions such as how AI will impact B2B eCommerce and much more. Predictions are always and don't always come trust but one thing we know for certain is that being setup to be flexible and pivot as the market changes is key to winning in manufacturing & distribution.
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Colin Boothe has spent his entire career in the Netsuite ecosystem. In fact his experience goes back a previous generation to his father who also started early on in the Netsuite world. Colin Boothe companies, Esonus, builds Suiteapps and helps companies leverage Netsuite which often involved integrating with eCommerce platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce. We discuss how ERP and eCommerce are becoming more and more closely aligned and why its so important to think about both together and not in a silo.
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Justin King's mission is to educate and train the B2B eCommerce industry. There is so much to learn to level up the manufacturing and distribution industry to become more self sufficient with digital strategies. B2B eCommerce is a central place that manufacturers and distributors need to invest in, but without the proper knowledge they will not succeed. Justin is assembly the best content and training in the industry with the B2B eCommerce association and their first certifications are now available!
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Znode is an eCommerce platform entirely focused on B2B eCommerce. Rupesh Agrawal talks about how there are so many complex scenarios regarding B2B that its not possible for any one platform to tackle all of them. Znode makes tackling such challenges easier and easier with their pure focus being to help manufacturers and distributors sell more online.
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Boris Lokschin started Spryker out of Germany to assist companies with complex commerce needs. B2B is often much more complicated than B2C and naturally the mission of Spryker to democratize complex commerce led Spryker to became more and more focused on B2B. We discuss different scenarios involving complex commerce and how they apply to manufacturers or distributors.
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Matt Eichner is the Executive Chairman & President at Emporix, a modern B2B eCommerce platform built for complex processes. Matt Eichner helped build Endeca as an SVP and was a Director at Google for 12 years. He recently joined Emporix in 2024 to disrupt commerce with a process driven platform designed to handle and adapt to complex business processes. We discuss how B2B eCommerce is often held back by complex processes that cannot be achieved without heavy customizations and how to solve such a problem.
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Alex Witcpalek spent his entire career in the B2B space such as SaaS companies like Conexiom that automate B2B ordering processes. Alex started Continuum to solve B2B returns which are often the most expensive order for distributors and manufacturers. By creating a holistic digital solution for B2B returns, Alex is able to get manufacturers and distributors massive ROI in a short period of time. We go beyond returns and discuss the future of distribution and how to stay relevant in 2025 and beyond.
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Dwayne Doshier has multiple decades of experience working in eCommerce on both the agency and platform side. He has seen the evolution of eCommerce platforms such as Insite (now Optimizely), Magento, SAP Hybris, and many others. He is now leading enterprise B2B eCommerce growth at Shopify to bring the simplicity of Shopify to complex enterprise B2B organizations. Shopify has evolved tremendously to support complex and high scale organizations such as industrial manufacturers and distributors.
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Evan Klein, CEO of Zaelab, joins us to discuss best-in-class Commerce and what the future holds in B2B eCommerce. Zaelab & Trellis merged on November 1st To build a best-in-class digital consultancy for manufacturers and distributors. Zaelab + Trellis are pushing the limits on what a top B2B eCommerce experience should be as the space is still not matured. We discuss some of the many pitfalls and areas of innovation that are leading to success in the space.
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Dave Malda is the director of partnerships at Jitterbit, an iPaaS platform with multiple facets beyond your typical use case. Jitterbit can help with integrations, low-code development of additional software, EDI, and more. We discuss how integrations and combining multiple complex enterprise software solutions are key to B2B eCommerce success. Without integrations, it will be nearly impossible to succeed in today's world.
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Lee Ramponi & Lee Riesterer, CEO & CRO of Viax.io join us to discuss the complexities of B2B commerce and why they started the company. Viax was built because there is a gap in the market where all the complexity builds up. ERP in the backend and eCommerce on the frontend leave complex unique business challenges in the middle. Hence, Viax.io, a middle office solution to solve these challenges! We talk about all things process and how we can help B2B get more efficient.
Chris Peer is the CEO of Sync Show, a B2B marketing agency focused on manufacturing, transportation and logistics, distribution, and professional services. He follows their successful model, which includes 8 pillars of B2B marketing. We discuss each pillar and how it can be used to improve your eCommerce and B2B business with modern digital marketing.
Chris Baltusnik is bringing forward Owens Corning, an enterprise manufacturer with B2B eCommerce that has historically been handling commerce with one-to-one sales reps. He has experience in an eCommerce agency and on both the B2C and B2B manufacturer sides. After building a best-in-class eCommerce program at Good Year, Chris has taken his talents to B2B eCommerce and is helping educate the market. We talk all things B2B eCommerce and what it takes to build a best-in-class B2B eCommerce team.
Jay Schneider has spent over a decade in B2B eCommerce on the operating side, software provider side, and agency business side. Jay is now the founder of B2B Squared, which is focused on helping B2B companies gain traction on their B2B eCommerce stores via email marketing and other marketing tactics. Most B2B companies struggle to gain eCommerce adoption, and its just not just a technical problem. We discuss all the problems leading to lack of digital adoption for B2B companies.
We speak with Beth Segovia and Kevin Kazenmayer of Trade Centric on the topic of B2B Connected Commerce. What is Connected Commerce? It means connecting all your commerce channels so that your customers, supplies, and everyone in the supply chain are fully integrated. We discuss how companies that have a strong B2B eCommerce presence and procurement integrations are growing significantly faster than nonconnected companies.
Ben Marks is a legend in the eCommerce space, having been in the space for roughly 20 years. Ben started with the early platforms that you no longer hear about but joined Blue Acorn in the early days of Magento's rise with Blue Acorn. We discussed the evolution of B2B eCommerce from his early days to now, working at a challenger company, Shopware, competing increasingly in the B2B space. We look at what we think will be relevant in the future in B2B eCommerce, and why taking the easy road, may not lead to the best results in the long term.
Lucas Robinson, is the driving force behind WebLife Stores and BudgetMailboxes.com. With over a decade of eCommerce experience, Lucas has transformed WebLife Stores into a thriving hub of creativity and expertise, serving prestigious clients like NBC, MLB, Harvard University, and JP Morgan. From humble beginnings selling a single mailbox in 2005, Lucas has propelled BudgetMailboxes.com to become the leading retailer for large commercial mailboxes in the US. We talk about how they started as a digital-first B2B eCommerce business that is now adding traditional sales methods like account executives to augment eCommerce.
Mark Fitzgerald has been in eCommerce for over two decades. As he progressed in eCommerce he found more and more opportunities in B2B eCommerce. He joined the founder of Pos Supply to help with just that and brought them to 50% plus sales in eCommerce as a business. They now use SuiteCommerce to power eCommerce along with Netsuite on the backend. We discuss all the challenges of getting better adoption for B2B eCommerce.
Diego Terra has been in eCommerce since the early days of Netsuite. He ended up building the best Commerce platform for Netsuite, what is now called SuiteCommerce. His firm SuiteCommerce got acquired by Netsuite and went on to continue building on Netsuite for eCommerce. He has since moved on to starting Hairball, which helps companies leverage tools like Shopify & BigCommerce with an integration to Netsuite. Diego has an immense background in B2B eCommerce, and we discuss all the learnings along the way.
Matt Harris has been working on web projects for nearly three decades. In the early days, eCommerce was the wild west, and there were fewer high-quality platforms from which to choose. Now there are many great platforms, and Matt has focused on B2B eCommerce around Magento, which has been a leading B2B eCommerce platform for over a decade now. We discuss all the challenges that are both technical and cultural in B2B eCommerce.
Alex Back is an e-commerce veteran who co-founded the well-known DTC furniture brand, Apt2B, before a successful exit last year. He is currently building out an exciting new platform called Couch.com that will change the future of AI in the furniture industry and e-commerce in general. We discuss the complexity of furniture eCommerce and how learning to deal with this complexity in eCommerce can lead to better B2B eCommerce results.
Timothy and Isaiah have been doing eCommerce projects for over 30 years combined. After 4 years of running the podcast, we have a pretty good idea of whats coming next for B2B eCommerce. Hear our predictions and ideas about what we believe the future of B2B eCommerce will be like.
Tom Pierce is a highly experienced problem solver with a diverse background that includes military service, pastoral ministry, and application software. Tom has a deep background in ERP implementation and has worked on some of the most sophisticated defense industry manufacturing problems. We discuss the complexity of enterprise software and how it can apply to today's world of B2B eCommerce.
Vladimir Diakonov & Brandon Briggs implement B2B eCommerce solutions across Magento and Shopware at IT Delight. We discuss the many challenges of B2B eCommerce such as scaling product data to large data sets, integrations, and marketing. We also discuss the internal politics that often hinder B2B organizations.
Jason Nyhus spent over 20 years building one of the most successful eCommerce companies in the world, Digital River. He recently joined Shopware as the president of Shopware to expand its presence in the United States. Shopware is gaining traction in B2B eCommerce and has a very strong focus on B2B eCommerce, especially the midmarket. We discuss how technology is advancing and can be used to level up any company in B2B today.
Derek Sewell is the Director of Strategic Accounts and partnerships at dataX.ai, an Enterprise AI / Deep Learning algorithm for solving the most complex data challenges. dataX.ai does some of the most robust product data transformations for large enterprises in the world. They are now a strategic partner of affiliated distributors. We discuss how to optimize and improve product data for better B2B eCommerce and overall growth of B2B businesses.
John Hill is a technology and operations executive with more than 30 years of multi-industry experience spanning retail, distribution, insurance, automotive, pharmaceuticals/biotechnology, software as a service, high technology, and the public sector. At MSC Industrial Supply John Hill is tasked with improving B2B eCommerce for a multi-billion digital operation. MSC Industrial Supply has far more digital adoption than your average B2B business. We dive into whats made them so adept at driving digital Commerce through their own infrastructure.
Paul Vragel has worked in manufacturing his entire career. He founded 4aBetterBusiness 25+ years ago, to assist management teams and employees of manufacturing companies to radically improve their efficiency. By allowing the employees and experts on the ground floor to improve processes, teams can rapidly solve problems. We cover four key elements Paul uses to collaboratively resolve these & other issues: 1) Eliminate fear. 2) Acknowledge that employees are the world’s experts at knowing what they do every day. 3) Quickly capture & visually document the actual processes and interactions across the company (often different than what’s documented or expected). 4) As issues emerge, engage employees and implement change immediately, as practical.
Amit Bhaiya is the founder and CEO at DotcomWeavers. They have been Adobe Commerce (Magento) partners for years and developed a deep niche in the Epicor ERP integration space. Epicor is a difficult ERP to integrate with. However, they have figured out how to make mid-market B2B companies successful with Magento integrated into Epicor and specialize in that space. We talk all things B2B eCommerce and what is causing so many challenges in the industry.
David Bradley has a background in back office software such as ERP and other logistics-related software. He then went on to found Qpilot, which runs the most flexible product subscriptions and repeat delivery programs on the planet. We discuss how recurring deliveries or scheduled deliveries are a massive opportunity for B2B companies to improve their eCommerce experiences.
Jason Somerville is a 20-year eCommerce veteran and Founding Partner at GW Partners. We discuss all the challenges Jason has faced in eCommerce that has evolved from B2C to a more multichannel and B2B eCommerce format. We also discuss the investment landscape for brands and what brands can do to better set themselves up for investment and exit.
Nate Obray has three current roles, President and founder of OBV, CTO of ZAF, and as an advisor at Mobrium. Nate has a technical background but also has ventured into the business side as a founder and operator. Nate has deep experience in logistics, 3PL, and warehouse operations, all of which tie heavily to B2B eCommerce operations. We dive into the complexities of B2B eCommerce operations, especially as they pertain to logistics and technology.
Ryan Lee founded Nautical Commerce to democratize marketplace technology. It turned out that most distribution and B2B businesses really were operating as marketplaces but without modern marketplace technology. Hence, Nautical has focused on enabling B2B companies to automate and modernize their business models with world-class technology. Previously marketplace technology was unnattainable for most B2B organizations, but today that is not the case.
We did a special episode 105 live in Boston at our annual Digital Commerce Today event with guest Bill Mirabito. Bill is a partner at Chameleon Collective, and veteran in the eCommerce industry. We discuss why B2B eCommerce often lags behind B2C eCommerce and how companies can use modern tools like iPaaS and other technologies to catch up faster. Sales reps and technology departments need to come together to bring eCommerce to the forefront of legacy B2B organizations.
Rick Watson is a commerce veteran with more than 20 years experience. He is both a consultant and analyst in the eCommerce industry. We cover many common reasons companies struggle with B2B eCommerce and what they can do to overcome those common themes we see over and over. Rick is an independent consultant and is especially adept at helping private equity-backed B2B companies get eCommerce right.
Ed Kennedy has been in B2B eCommerce for almost two decades. He has seen everything from integration challenges to sales rep enablement and other common B2B eCommerce challenges. We discuss the challenges Manufacturers and distributors face in trying to modernize or adapt to B2B eCommerce. Ed discusses how distributors that aren't doing B2B eCommerce well are already far behind. We also discuss how manufacturers can best handle channel conflict.
Ed Kennedy has been in B2B eCommerce for almost two decades. He has seen everything from integration challenges to sales rep enablement and other common B2B eCommerce challenges. We discuss the challenges Manufacturers and distributors face in trying to modernize or adapt to B2B eCommerce. Ed discusses how distributors that aren't doing B2B eCommerce well are already far behind. We also discuss how manufacturers can best handle channel conflict.
Lance Owide is in charge of ensuring BigCommerce is the best-in-class B2B SaaS eCommerce platform of the future. Lance helped BigCommerce through its Feedonomics acquisition and has transitioned to helping grow their B2B product offering. BigCommerce has always had a B2B eCommerce segment of customers but is now really focused on growing it more deliberately than ever. We discuss the common barriers to B2B eCommerce adoption and what's stopping companies from having more success online.
In this episode, we have the pleasure of meeting with Chris Shipferling, a veteran in the eCommerce and retail space, who is now buying and operating eCommerce businesses at South Col. South Col provides strategic advice and capital to help founders get to the next level in eCommerce. We talk about the latest changes happening in the eCommerce space, and how there is more intersection between traditional DTC eCommerce and B2B eCommerce. As businesses are forced to adapt more omnichannel strategies, B2B eCommerce will become a more and more common strategy for a larger range of businesses.
Paul Do Forno has spent three decades in technology as a developer, consultant, and eCommerce expert. He is now the Managing Director and eCommerce practice leader of Deloitte Digital. We discuss the evolution of B2B eCommerce and why it now requires an omnichannel approach. B2B eCommerce is now driving higher valuations on Wall Street, and as Paul said, where the money goes, everyone will follow. B2B eCommerce will not only become necessary to improve customer experience but also to get stay relevant with investors.
Ram Venkataraman has a 20-plus-year background in innovative technology companies such as Red Hat and now Kibo. Ram began in technology as a product-focused architect and eventually CTO. Now Ram is the CEO of Kibo, driving forward an innovative composable architecture for mid-market and enterprise companies. Kibo boasts clients like Ace Hardware that have complex BOPIS and franchise needs, as well as other large B2B clients. Kibo can power both B2B and B2C eCommerce, order management, and subscription, all in one software. They are the only platform listed in the Gartner top eCommerce and OMS providers. We discuss the challenges of B2B commerce, and why a multi-channel approach through OMS and headless can help separate your business.
In Episode 98, we expand on what it takes to build a successful eCommerce practice for your b2b organization. Selecting the right technology partner is critical, and can easily be derailed by salespeople over-promising. We highly recommend looking into technology that has a large user base, a thriving community of partners, extensions, and other elements that make it easier to get value out of.
Jason Greenwood is the Founder & Lead Consultant of Greenwood Consulting. 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻𝘄𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗕𝟮𝗕 & 𝗗𝗧𝗖 𝗲𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝘆. Jason Greenwood has been in eCommerce for over 20 years, operating merchants, as well as on the agency services side. Jason has seen all facets of B2B eCommerce and helps merchants make the right strategic decisions to move forward correctly with eCommerce.
Timothy Peterson and Isaiah Bollinger are back for a solo episode on how to craft the right team for B2B eCommerce. B2B eCommerce is complex because it requires integration and leveraging multiple pieces of enterprise software, and interdepartmental collaboration. We discuss which people and departments need to be involved to make B2B eCommerce successful.
Mark Brohan is the Senior Vice President of B2B and Market Research at Digital Commerce 360. Mark has compiled the most comprehensive B2B eCommerce research and data on the top eCommerce businesses in B2B. Mark has seen the tide turn in which leadership is now embracing B2B eCommerce. It is now the challenge of implementation and success that is causing organizations to find challenges. With the complexity of multichannel, B2B eCommerce now requires even more capabilities than ever before.
Bhagawat Rawat has founded several startups and is now the VP of Operations and Finance at OneScreen.AI. OneScreen.AI allows companies to hyper-target and track the effectiveness of outdoor marketing. Traditionally, outdoor marketing was considered ineffective to the rising power of digital marketing. However, recently, digital marketing has gotten more expensive and saturated. On the other hand, with tools like OneScreen, outdoor marketing can actually be more effective.
Brian Beck has written the leading book on B2B eCommerce, Billion Dollar B2B eCommerce. He has been in eCommerce for over 20 years and has seen the evolution of B2B eCommerce firsthand. Brian worked on both the agency and merchant side and is now the CEO of his agency Enceiba which focuses on Amazon for B2B. We discuss the challenges of B2B eCommerce, and why channel conflict is a misunderstood problem that most B2B companies don't solve.
Jouke de Vries has worked in many aspects of eCommerce for over 20 years. Having started as an engineer, Jouke worked his way up into product management at a B2B eCommerce platform Sana Commerce. We cover the need for customer segmentation, real time pricing integration / inventory, and other B2B eCommerce challanges in the podcast. Jouke has seen many variations of B2B eCommerce and helped hundreds of companies in the space.
Tim Bucciarelli has spent most of his career on the merchant side in eCommerce. Over the last 3 years he has joined the agency side at Ironplane helping merchants with eCommerce. Ironplane focuses on Magento and BigCommerce which often lead to B2B merchants. We discuss the challenges agencies face when trying to help merchants with B2B eCommerce such as discovery, architecture, and overall B2B eCommerce adoption.
Carlos Camacho is a commerce leader at Boston scientific with more than 20 years eCommerce experience. He has experience leading projects to create best-in-class online shopping experiences in highly competitive B2B and B2C industries. We talk about the hurdles larger organizations have in getting their B2B channels to be effective via eCommerce.
Justin King started his career 20 years ago doing ERP-based eCommerce projects for B2B and B2C organizations. Eventually, he realized there was this massive knowledge gap in B2B, so he started his own B2B eCommerce website to educate the industry. Over time his knowledge and expertise took off and he became a top consultant for major B2B companies to adapt to eCommerce and is currently the VP of B2B at Salsify.
Peter Jaap Blaakmeer founded Elgentos about 12 years ago. He has focused on Magento in the Netherlands region which has evolved to become a primarily B2B focused commerce platform. He has dealt with everything from complex ERP integration to change management. Peter works with mid-market manufacturers and distributors to help them scale B2B eCommerce and increase their market share.
Sam Gupta has implemented some of the largest ERP projects in the world. He has worked with many different back office systems, and understand enterprise software architecture as well as anyone in the industry. He ventured out on his own to be an independent voice in the ERP and back office space so that he can help clients select the right software for their business. We discuss all the various challenges that come with scaling B2B software architecture and how the various software play together.
Diego Barrera is the head of professional services for Zonos, a SaaS platform that allows businesses to go international with their existing eCommerce store. Traditionally, international eCommerce was very hard to do well because you needed so many complex compliance pieces in place. Today, with Zonos, you can install their apps on your eCommerce store and be selling in new countries in a matter of days or weeks. We talk all things international eCommerce, and what to do or not to do when going international.
Chase Clymer is the CEO and founder of Electric Eye, a Shopify-focused agency. Historically, Shopify was not viewed as a viable b2b eCommerce platform, and most companies would look at other options. Fast forward to 2023, Shopify now has better native b2b features and options for B2B businesses. Whether you want to build a separate b2b site or have it within the same b2c website, there are many ways to use Shopify for b2b, and the options are only improving. We talk about this and also what were seeing in the B2B industry.
Arno Ham has been at Sana Commerce for over 17 years and has seen the evolution of B2B eCommerce firsthand. Sana Commerce has developed into a robust B2B eCommerce provider for distributors, brands, and manufacturers looking to sell online that use Microsoft Dynamics or SAP. They have an ERP-first approach that allows them to use all the ERP data in real-time on the frontend of the eCommerce store, which is critical for B2B eCommerce.
Isaiah Fritz is the CEO of a unique Amazon reseller company that focuses on actually buying the product from their partners instead of just charging them for services.
Mark Simon is the VP of Strategy at Celigo, and has extensive experience at other companies scaling their business. At Celigo, they are building the future of automation and constantly working with B2B companies to modernize their infrastructure. Most B2B companies are way behind when it comes to automation and eCommerce, and they lack the expertise to implement an iPaaS solution like Celigo. Mark believes simply focusing on the key best practices like order entry is the place to start with automation.
Jack Freeman is a partner at PeakSpan capital, a venture and PE firm focused on technology that impacts B2B businesses through SaaS, fintech, and more. He his actively investing and helping companies grow that are evolving the B2B ecommerce space such as Shiphawk, Sales Layer, and more. The B2B eCommerce market is still so new that there is a lot to accomplish in order to help modernize the market, and Jack is solely focused on investing in this. He brings expertise on both the vendor and client sides.
Jason Hein is the Principal B2B Visionary at Bloomreach, and has extensive experience in B2B eCommerce. Jason B2B experience goes back to McMaster-Carr, where he eventually landed at Amazon, to develop their B2B offering. Having helped develop what is now the largest B2B eCommerce site in the world, Amazon, Jason went on to do consulting for distributors. He has extensive experience helping distributors with B2B eCommerce and helping them overcome the challenges they face.
Harry Drajpuch is the CEO at Amware Fulfillment, a national 3PL fulfillment provider that specializes in scalable solutions for companies that are beyond the start-up phase and in need of professional advice and execution for high-volume fulfillment operations. With distribution centers located across the U.S., Amware enables 1-2 day delivery to 95% of the U.S. The company is equally adept at operating B2C and B2B fulfillment environments, providing one logistics partner for all sales channels.
Tim Swindle is the CEO of Paddle Smash, a new CPG company. He previously exited a software company another CPG company he founded. Tim has extensive experience leveraging retail and using B2B sales to grow a business. We discuss the mix that retail plays in business and how to properly mix retail, eCommerce, and other channels. We believe a mix of channels is best and using eCommerce to facilitate those channels can be extremely effective and a huge competitive advantage.
Hymie Zebede has been selling on Amazon for well over a decade now. At first, he used to do it himself and source products but quickly realized his skill was on the Amazon platform itself, and not sourcing products. He now partners with clients to help them sell better on Amazon. What he learned is that it's far more effective to narrow in on a handful of top products and get those listings to high volume, than to try and list thousands of products that barely get any sales. He can show you how to optimize your listing and make Amazon a massive channel versus just a small little piece of your business.
Brian Lombardo, SVP Channels and Partners at Unilog, has been in B2B distribution for nearly three decades now. First at a major distributor, then at Infor, a leading distribution ERP, and now at Unilog, a B2B eCommerce platform. We talk about the challenges of getting distribution onto eCommerce and how to overcome them with product data, erp integrations, and unifying culture with salespeople. Brian and Unilog have worked with both small and larger distributors and continue to innovate in B2B eCommerce with their platform Unilog which can provide product data, PIM, and eCommerce.
Kristina Harrington is the President of Gen Alpha, a B2B eCommerce platform that specializes in OEMs, specialty vehicles & aftermarket organizations. They have interactive parts manuals and allow you to sell parts with the entire suite of products to allow customers to return what they need if necessary. Parts can get very complex for large vehicles and equipment and you need a robust system to handle all the use cases that might come up when selling parts to service them. Kristina talks about all the things they have seen to help manufacturers over the course of a decade. Previously to Gen Alpha, Kristina worked in manufacturing and has a deep understanding of the needs of such businesses.
Fiona Norton is the head of product marketing for B2B eCommerce at BigCommerce. BigCommerce is massively accelerating their B2B roadmap due to so much demand for their product and acquired two companies, BundleB2B and QuoteNinja, B2B apps on their marketplace to speed up the process. Fiona has done market research showing that the number one problem facing B2B is actually onboarding their customers to use eCommerce. Building it is simply not enough. Sales teams and customer services teams need to work hand in hand with the organization to get the customer comfortable using the website.
TJ Gamble started his digital agency, Jamerson, over two decades ago, to help businesses with eCommerce. Jamerson specializes in software development for Magento and BigCommerce. In the early days, B2B eCommerce was not a major focus of platforms like Magento and BigCommerce, but over the past few years has become a central focus of both Jamerson and most major eCommerce platforms. TJ has helped companies scale B2B eCommerce by ensuring their technical infrastructure is ready to scale to new heights. He has developed many popular Youtube videos showcasing his knowledge of the popular eCommerce platforms on the channel eCommerceaholics.
Gil Bar Lev eCommerce career goes back to the early days of Toy's R Us and Amazon! Fast forward 20+ years and he is now growing a B2B marketplace called HomeRoots that is tackling the complexity of the furniture industry. Furniture is highly complex and is currently difficult for businesses to get into their hands at reasonable B2B prices. HomeRoots solves this by taking international companies and directly bringing their products to US-based businesses. We talk about how to solve the complexity of B2B at scale and what it takes to grow a marketplace.
Tal Rotman is the VP of alliances at Namogoo, a company founded on its ability to eliminate customer hijacking on the Internet. A significant base of customers gets hijacked by bad actors and businesses lose conversions due to false advertising. Namogoo solves this problem, and in doing so has developed an incredible AI engine that can do much more. With their engine, they can predict customer intent and even automate and optimize pricing for margin so that you get the higher price when customers are ready to buy or a lower price when they are likely to abandon.
Alex Lugosch is CEO of Rumbleship, which is an eCommerce platform plugin that lets you easily offer terms to your wholesale buyers and get paid when you want, without fear of invoice delinquency. Alex has seen every type of B2B eCommerce business, from small to large, and finds that there is a massive gap in how most approach eCommerce. The most sophisticated eCommerce businesses in B2B are constantly innovating and adding new features, while the majority are stuck in their ways as legacy providers.
Ben Sharir has been in eCommerce for decades and helped many companies scale to incredible sizes in eCommerce. He is currently the director of B2B eCommerce for Estee Lauder, one of the largest CPG firms in the world. Ben Sharir believes that agile is critical to the growth of B2B eCommerce because it can actually de-risk projects by either failing fast or figuring out key problems early on. This can lead to much better outcomes versus the analysis paralysis that often comes with waterfall-based projects.
Paul do Forno is one of the leading B2B eCommerce experts in the world and is the Commerce practice lead for Deloitte Digital, the world's largest eCommerce agency. He is a repeat guest in which we go deep into how eCommerce for B2B is so much more than simply bringing people to eCommerce and is really about assisting sales reps and helping companies become more omnichannel. There are so many ways to sell digitally that B2B eCommerce really needs to be about opening up flexibility to sell in many different ways.
Our latest guest, Troy Lynch, CEO of PunchOut2Go, soon to be TradeCentric has seen thousands of B2B integrations. Their customers range on every major B2B eCommerce platform and do everything from Punch-Out to integrating with clients' ERP and e-procurement systems. Troy talks about the difference between companies that strategically develop these integrations versus doing them as a last resort because clients require them.
We brought on Daniel Esrig, Co-Founder and CTO of LevAR.io, a new AR / VR company that allows for an affordable modern experience for eCommerce businesses. LevAR allows any company to use 3d models with seamless AR / VR capabilities on their website with the simple installation of an app and very little onboarding to get started. It's very clear that as experiences improve, customers in B2B will expect more robust product pages and products experiences to better understand how products work and behave in real life.
Jordan Knapp has worked at Oracle Commerce, Adobe Commerce, and Shopify. He has intimate knowledge of many eCommerce platforms beyond the big three he worked at and has seen the evolution of eCommerce platforms over the last two years. We talk about where we are in the cycle and which platforms he thinks are winning the B2B eCommerce world in 2022 and beyond.
Mark Brohan is the leading researcher on B2B eCommerce and Vice President at Digital Commerce 360 who reports on all things eCommerce. B2B eCommerce is now accounting for a significant portion of all B2B sales and is driving innovation in many B2B organizations. Mark believes that B2B eCommerce is in a similar state to when B2C eCommerce was becoming a critical part of retail in the 2010s. This means its that critical for B2B organizations to get it right or become what the legacy retailers became who did not adapt to eCommerce fast enough.
Our latest guest, Kenneth Gray, is the owner of Grayt Media LLC, a Digital Marketing agency with the mission to scale revenues, boost brand awareness, and enhance the user experience for their customers. We discuss how modern B2B marketing requires so many touch points and channels to be effective such as Linkedin, Google ads, SEO, email marketing, and even in-person events and direct outreach. Kenneth talks about the best ways to deploy a multi-channel strategy to address many channels at once.
We have the luxury of speaking with Mark Donnigan about the changes in B2B marketing and how the industry has completely changed over the last decade. Especially with covid, in person, and one on one marketing techniques such as covid are less and less effective. Today's B2B businesses need to be building brand and content in the digital world where buyers are researching via social, SEO, and many other articles that might lead them to your business.
Mike King is the Director of Global B2C Commerce at Slalom, specializing in implementing highly robust and complex Salesforce solutions. In this episode, we discuss how to lay the groundwork to leverage eCommerce technology to empower power instead of letting people get in the way of what technology can do. Mike King has worked on multiple enterprise Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementations with a variety of agencies, implementing large eCommerce solutions, and has been at the intersection of technology and people for over a decade.
Reed McGinley-Stempel spent a long time at payment startup Plaid and realized there was not a great solution to the challenges of passwords and the security risks they posed. He developed a new company Stytch that allows any company to use their technology to use other tools instead of passwords such as Magic links and tokens to reduce security implications of stolen passwords and massively increase conversions. It's a must-see technology you should consider for eCommerce!
As we approach 2022 a lot has changed since Covid. Clearly, the buying process has moved more online for both B2C and B2B customers. Businesses need to develop a strong digital strategy to sell to other businesses online, especially in the distribution space or it might become too late. More and more experts on our podcast are making this clear to us. We talk about what to expect and how to think about moving into 2022 with B2B eCommerce.
Andrew Johnson is a supply chain innovator and the CEO of Shelf Aware a modern fulfillment SaaS company to help distributors improve operations. Andrew Johnson has grown up in B2B his whole life with his family company. He sincerely believes that the time for eCommerce is now for B2B or it will become too late for many companies, especially smaller ones, to adapt to it in the future. His company Shelf Aware is an innovative new tool that can automate that buying process for in-person B2B sales, that can help companies find new angles into markets.
Steven Javor is the Global eCommerce Director, North America, Energy Managment of Schneider Electric. He is currently focused on helping the 400 main distributors in North America improve their eCommerce to better sell Schneider Electric products. This can range from large sophisticated eCommerce companies to ones with almost no presence online. Steven talks about how it's so important distributors get better at eCommerce or they may become obsolete to their manufacturing partners.
Sean Donovan is the Digital Channel Manager of Americas at MSA - The Safety Company. He is currently tasked with figuring out how to optimize eCommerce across their own website, marketplaces like Amazon and eBay as well as other channels like EDI and distribution. The balance of optimizing on all the new digital channels while also keeping legacy channels alive is a challenge Sean knows at a global level and can help other B2B companies learn from.
Garrett Eastham is a veteran data scientist and executive at high tech companies such as Bazaar Voice that have pioneered aspects of eCommerce over the last two decades. Garrett Eastham discusses how data and data science have such a massive influence over eCommerce and how B2B companies should be using data to make better decisions. We discuss everything from reviews to ERP data and how to make the most of your data as a B2B organization in today's modern world.
In episode 54, we have the pleasure of interviewing David Ledgerwood a veteran sales leader for tech-enabled B2B services firms. David has gone from a programmer to a leader in sales showing his depth of understanding of many aspects of a business. David believes strongly in modernizing sales and how B2B organizations can become digitally enabled via eCommerce and other modern digital tools.
We have the luxury of bringing on Bar Geron, CEO of Balance, a new breed of payment technology designed specifically for B2B eCommerce. Balance can do it all, including accepting checks, wires, net terms, factoring on invoices, credit cards, and other types of unique B2B payments. Bar talks about how critical it is for B2B companies to move faster into eCommerce because there are major VC and private equity investments in B2B eCommerce that are going to make legacy B2B companies obsolete in the coming years.
Ian Leslie has been in marketing for nearly two decades and the past seven years of his career, have been in eCommerce. As CMO of Industry West, Ian helped turn a startup into a leading eCommerce provider of furniture to both B2C and B2B markets online. In this episode, we talk about all the things that lead to their success online on the Magento platform and how they evolved with the market. Ian is now a brand ambassador at Bolt, helping merchants get best-in-class payment technology with Bolt's new checkout operating system.
Joe Kovacs has found a niche in which many unwarranted sellers are destroying brand loyalty and brand reputations on marketplaces. He founded, Brand Guarde, which has dedicated the last 3 years to helping companies of all sizes successfully regain control of their distribution and presence on marketplaces like Amazon. We talk about how brands can take control of their distribution, pricing, and processes to reduce bad actors that may harm their pricing models and brand reputation.
In our very special 50th episode, CEO of Corevist, Sam Bayer, joins us to discuss his journey in B2B around SAP. Sam has been working in software most of his career, and has over 20 years of experience with SAP. SAP has the strongest ERP offering and touches most of the major companies in the world. That is why he developed an ERP first B2B eCommerce offering, Corevist, that is tightly integrated with SAP's S4/HANA. We discuss why an ERP 1st approach to eCommerce is so important and why you need deep integration with ERP to be successful.
In this episode, we get the please of speaking with Jordan Huck who has taken on the difficult task of trying to modernize the restaurant and food industry. In this multi-trillion-dollar industry, most things are done manually and even chefs are up late at night trying to prepare for their food needs in the coming days and weeks. Jordan Huck has developed a B2B eCommerce platform, Notch, that helps restaurants and food industry companies automate many of these things. They can integrate directly into your POS to automatically place orders and replenish inventory with a quick manual review to ensure everything is right versus the time-consuming manual order processes of the past.
Tim Reintgen has seen a large variety of clients using Plytix across many channels such as marketplaces, selling to distributors, retailers, and direct-to-consumer eCommerce. Plytix is an SMB focused PIM (Product Information Management) solution that allows for anyone, even very small companies to get started with modern data management best practices. Tim helps us navigate the complexity of channel management and where B2B companies should be investing their time to grow new channels without cannibalizing or hurting existing channels.
Chris Bidleman has been building integrations for B2B eCommerce for over a decade and has seen everything from legacy technology like EDI that is still widely adopted today to newer GraphQL based integrations. Integrations are a key backbone and issue that often stops B2B companies from moving forward with eCommerce. We discuss how to get over those hurdles and leverage modern technologies to move forward in a positive direction that may include both EDI and other more modern approaches.
Josh Penfold has been in eCommerce and B2B for 20 years. He has worked on both the brand side and built his own eCommerce website. In doing so he realized how many challenges come up in B2B eCommerce and that there isn't really a great solution for the customer B2B needs to buy online. That is where he came up with Goose, a B2B focused marketplace that takes away the complexity and hassle of buying or finding B2B goods online.
Dan Renda has an impressive eCommerce background. He started out on the agency side managing eCommerce projects and then transitioned into B2B eCommerce at Siemens Healthcare. Dan Renda has helped scale Siemens to billions of dollars in eCommerce via a combination of EDI, digitizing payments, invoices, and of course through eCommerce via multiple platforms like SAP, Bigcommerce, and more!
Many companies struggle with the idea that their data and analytics hold the key to growing their business. Nick Amabile can unlock business growth with that key. Between unifying and organizing all key data in one place or analyzing the path to purchase, Nick and Das42 have been able to help many businesses leverage data to grow their business. Often times the simple drop-off of sales from the homepage, category page, product page, or other parts of the website are the key reasons eCommerce is failing.
In episode 43 we break down what Bill Mirabito has been seeing in the eCommerce industry over the past two decades. His experience has led him to work with some of the largest and most successful eCommerce businesses in the world and he continues to help major enterprise companies grow eCommerce. What was most interesting about his experience was that the single biggest issue he found was that the culture in companies not succeeding with eCommerce was often the biggest issue. A losing culture allowed companies to maintain and not grow and thus under-invest and underappreciate the growing channel of eCommerce.
Sean De Clercq started his eCommerce business years ago and went from a small profitable startup to a struggling scaling business because it was simply too hard to fund larger inventory purchases. Thus, he started Kickfurther which can help businesses fund inventory without massive interest or loan costs. Scaling inventory funding is critical when your business grows in B2B and requires fulfilling larger purchase orders for larger business buyers. We discuss how to scale your inventory to become a bigger B2B organization.
Daniel Reilly joins us to discuss his growth as a B2B leader at Staples and how he has seen the industry evolve from a focus on direct-to-consumer eCommerce to B2B eCommerce. We discuss the complexities of selling to small businesses, medium-size businesses, and large enterprises and how their buying habits may differ. Daniel helps us break down the areas to focus to capture online sales from a wide variety of types of B2B buyers.
Mark Brohan from Digital Commerce 360 is the ultimate B2B eCommerce researcher. He has done more research to quantify the industry than anyone else in the world. We are lucky to have him back on the podcast to discuss his latest finding on the industry and all that has changed after one year of Coronavirus.
Nessim Btesh is our first second appearance guest and impressed us with his incredible transformation of his family B2B business to 100% digital sales during the height of covid. Since then, Nessim has added many features to their Headless B2B eCommerce website and is also seeing a better balance between in-person and online sales with Covid ramping down.
Nessim is one of the most innovative technology leaders in the B2B eCommerce space and is constantly pushing the limits of what can be done.
Paul do Forno is considered a top 100 eCommerce influence in the world and has worked on some of the largest B2B eCommerce projects out there. Paul is a Managing Director at Deloitte Digital, the Gartner leader in the Commerce and Content space. He brings more than 25 years of experience in strategy, digital experience, consulting, technology, and digital. We talk about how to break down enterprise projects into smaller more effective projects that can be done in phases and how to leverage the right platforms to do so.
In, season 2, episode 18, we bring on sales experts Sean Doyle Co-Founder of Fitzmartin, and their Director of Revenue Operations, Will Riley. FitzMartin is a specialized marketing and sales communications firm that helps clients solve complex sales and marketing problems. What we have uncovered is that building a more unified CRM process that aligns with B2B eCommerce and empowers sales reps to actually sell versus spending too much time processing orders or doing mundane CRM tasks can vastly improve performance. B2B eCommerce is really an extension of sales capabilities and should align with the sales reps needs.
Kathleen Booth has been in B2B for two decades now and has been in both the agency and SaaS world for many years. Recently she has been specializing in coupons and the problems with pricing, coupon cannibalization, and other issues around pricing at Clean.io. We discuss the complexity of pricing, coupons, and how to implement best practices with things like coupons for B2B eCommerce.
Adam Goldschmiedt has transformed and rebuilt the Pixafy eCommerce practice to focus on ERP first eCommerce in the B2B space. Their parent company Net@Work had a very strong Sage and ERP practice and offered a unique value to their customers in eCommerce. Adam formed a unique integration product called ErpCommerce that connects SageX3 and Magento so that you can use a modern eCommerce platform like Magento with all the data and functionality you need from your ERP. We discuss the importance of unifying your operations through a strategy like ErpCommerce and how to get more out of your eCommerce business.
Guy Bauer is the Founder and Creative Director of Umault, an agency that makes wildly creative B2B video marketing campaigns people actually want to watch. Guy has been making commercial videos for over 20 years and is the author of Death to the Corporate Video: A Modern Approach that Works. In this episode, we discuss how B2B companies need to simplify and improve the communication of their brand to stand out. Many companies simply look the same in the B2B space and fail to communicate their unique selling proposition through video, their website copy, or their brand.
Brett Sinclair has been in B2B eCommerce for a lot of his career and has developed a wide range of understanding of the industry. In doing so he realized education was the key missing link companies needed to get better at eCommerce in the B2B space. He started The B2B eCommerce Association of Australia and has seen tremendous success with companies growing through education and networking with other B2B specialized vendors and experts. We talk all things B2B and how to get over the education hump into important next steps like ensuring your solution is adopted by customers.
Ofer Yourvexel is an Israeli entrepreneur with decades of technology experience. He founded a company that eventually turned into Pepperi, a B2B eCommerce platform that can also help you with sales reps mobile ordering, and other B2B functions. Ofer found that the B2B eCommerce market lacked a unifying solution that allowed businesses to provide their sales reps a native mobile app solution for taking in-person orders, customer service to take over the phone orders, and a B2B eCommerce platform all tied together via one system. Pepperi is one of the only unified platforms that can do all of these functions with one platform and one unified business logic.
Ray Grady is a B2B eCommerce veteran with multiple decades working in services and software supporting B2B companies. He has found that automation is key to making B2B companies successful so they can free up their vital employees from mundane order taking tasks and focus on upselling and value-added tasks. Ray has some incredible insight in this podcast on how to optimize and automate orders via three methods, EDI, Conexiom, and B2B eCommerce. This is a must-listen episode if you want to get to the next level!
In Episode 30 we discuss the future of B2B eCommerce. What does this mean for businesses going into this new year and a new decade? We discuss the transformational shift from 2020 to 2030 -- just as we saw for retail from 2010 to 2020, but now for B2B going online. B2B is lagging retail in eCommerce capabilities because it is more complex and difficult to effectively implement but that excuse will not hold up much longer. How you are going to transform your operations to digital via digitizing your business practices so that customers can buy online or via EDI and other digital means? Tune in, we'll let you know!
Francois Jaffres joins us from Noviland, a new technology company focused on helping businesses source products seamlessly from around the world. Currently, they have over 400 manufacturers in south east Asia and are quickly expanding to other countries. Noviland uses their platform as B2B eCommerce system to enhance the sales process and make it easier for their customers to get products from these manufacturers. We discuss the challenges of B2B versus B2C and why companies are hesitant to adopt technologies to aid their sales teams via eCommerce.
In episode 28 we have the honor of talking to our guest Mike Jortberg who leads the B2B eCommerce at Slalom, a modern consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Seattle, Slalom has organically grown to over 8,000 employees. Mike has a deep background in Salesforce and CRM technologies and now works with Cloudcraze / Salesforce B2B eCommerce to bring eCommerce to the Salesforce ecosystem. We talk all things B2B and why he has been successful with Salesforce B2B eCommerce as an offering in the space.
John Cymerman is the CTO and technical leader of Trellis. He has worked on many large B2B projects and has pioneered the integration strategy for Trellis. We discuss in-depth 5 different integration techniques and strategies you can deploy depending on your situation. The five are the traditional batch file / ftp approach, SOAP APIs, Rest APIs, GraphQL, and an iPaaS technology such as Celigo or Dell Boomi. There are many ways to approach an integration and that's why its so critical to architect the right approach before beginning an integration project.
In Episode 26 we get the pleasure of speaking with Amir Hessabi, Senior Enterprise Solutions Engineer at BigCommerce. We discuss the value of a true SaaS eCommerce solution, BigCommerce, and how that can dramatically lower the cost of ownership for a B2B business. Traditionally B2B companies are used to legacy on-premise solutions and have often not yet adopted a SaaS application like BigCommerce for eCommerce. With SaaS you no longer need to pay for expensive upgrades or worry about software failing because all of that is managed for you in one affordable monthly fee. Having recently gone public, BigCommerce is a serious option that B2B companies should be considering.
In Episode 25 we have the pleasure of talking with David Stillson who has over 15 years of experience in Manufacturing, eCommerce, and business systems. David is currently the technical architect and manager of eCommerce Developers in LCI's digital experience team, a multi billion dollar public company. David has experience working with both small and very large B2B eCommerce businesses. We discuss the complexity of B2B from integrations to scaling sales and marketing as well as changing the culture within an organization. David gives great advice for people both new to the journey but also more experienced in the B2B journey looking to scale their online business.
In episode 24, Tim and Isaiah go through our five-step process towards improving your B2B eCommerce presence. The first thing you should do before getting to step 1 is to make sure you have an internal person qualified to run the project and a platform to build upon such as Magento, BigCommerce, Insite, or Salesforce, etc. Step 1 is to develop robust product data, step 2 is to integrate with internal systems, step 3 is to invest in user experience, step 4 is to have flexible payment and shipping options, and step 5 is to have external integrations with vendors or customers. We go through these steps in-depth to help you grow your B2B eCommerce business.
Our latest guest, Colleen Romero, has helped several massive companies scale their B2B operation online, such as leading brands like Napa auto parts. We discuss what B2B companies need to do to build and implement a successful B2B eCommerce strategy. We also cover topics such as why do companies struggle with marketing in B2B and how B2B eCommerce marketing is different from B2C. We discuss leading B2B eCommerce platforms and how to working with agencies. We also discuss what Colleen thinks it takes to find good agencies and make agency relationship successful.
Jessica Wetzel is an accomplished eCommerce Manager with 16 years of extensive experience providing strategy and growth in the areas of B2B sales, marketing, and eCommerce. In this podcast, we dive deep into how she helped a distributor go from offline to online with a robust eCommerce site that has evolved over the years. She wrote some impressive requirements documents to take the company to the next level and managed many agencies so she knows how to nail down requirements to get the most of your development team. Jessica is a true leader in B2B eCommerce and is now at PunchOut2Go where she can help you integrate with internal customer systems as a B2B business.
Adobe's Magento was recently named a leader in the B2B eCommerce Forester report. In episode 21 we discuss why Magento is a leader in the space and how they are working with B2B companies across the spectrum of sophistication. We discuss how change management is the leading problem that companies need to overcome to implement a best in class system like Magento for their B2B business.
In the first episode of season 2 co hosts, Isaiah Bollinger, and Timothy Peterson discuss our take on B2B eCommerce marketing. We discuss everything from acquisition to conversions to integrating with your sales team. We believe there is so much opportunity in B2B eCommerce to separate from your competition by being innovative in channels other players might not be spending time on. We discuss how social media is not something to ignore in B2B and can be a viable marketing channel for B2B eCommerce.
Michael Noble has spent the last 8 years building a leading B2B payments company Apruve. They can instantly turn your invoices into cash so you don't have to spend countless overhead on accounts receivable. Michael has a fascinating insight into the world of B2B eCommerce payments and has seen both small and large companies succeed in B2B eCommerce. We discuss everything from payments to simply what makes a company succeed or fail in B2B eCommerce.
Beckie and Tyler have worked at Wolf Automation to build up a strong eCommerce backbone for their company to process new customer orders and existing customer B2B orders. They have spent over a decade as a company building an eCommerce infrastructure that is a thriving part of their company culture. They engage in Google ads, SEO, and other modern digital marketing tactics to drive new business and then use their sales team to drive increase engagement with existing customers that buy online. Hear from a distributor making the most out of eCommerce as a distributor using modern systems and marketing tactics.
In episode 17, we talk about why distributors and manufacturers need to invest more in eCommerce to stay competitive. Often times going with the cheaper solution or under-investing in eCommerce can cost much more in terms of lost opportunity and growth potential. As manufacturers go direct to consumers there is even more need for distributors to come up with an eCommerce strategy that will make them competitive as the playing field becomes wide open. Ben has worked with distributors and manufacturers for decades in B2B eCommerce and has worked with many platforms like Infor Storefront, Magento, Insite, Unilog, and other B2B focused eCommerce platforms. Ben is also a search expert and has extensive experience helping B2B companies generate more revenue via better onsite search.
In this episode, we speak with Richard Keller about how real-time delivery and real-time information such as pricing and availability in B2b eCommerce is critical to growing your business. Richard Keller has been in the technology space for over two decades building many different applications in the B2B industry. He has spent many years in the ERP business and worked with all sorts of B2B companies such as manufacturers and distributors. His most recent venture is an eCommerce marketplace technology he is using to build marketplaces like 1800 Battery where you can get real-time delivery and logistics of any battery from many providers.
In episode 15, we discuss why you need a mindset of constant improvement and agile project management to scale your B2B eCommerce business. Our guest, Lori Mcdonald, has been running Brilliance Business Solutions for over 20 years helping both manufacturers and distributors with eCommerce. In the beginning they focused on custom solutions but since focused on Episerver, Insite, and BigCommerce. In this episode we discuss why you need the right platform to scale and grow and how you can go about choosing that platform.
In episode 14, we talk with Justin Finnegan about why B2B eCommerce is now a critical requirement to be competitive and that relationships with customers are no longer enough. Justin Finnegan has built three leading digital agencies including most recently, Gorilla Group, one of the largest B2B eCommerce providers in the world. Justin Finnegan has been in B2B eCommerce since its inception in the late 90s and early 2000s and is now at a product company helping automate offline B2B orders, Conexiom. In this episode, we discuss many topics such as the evolution of B2B eCommerce, why companies struggle with it, why it's so important, and what agencies can do better to support b2b companies with eCommerce.
In Episode 13, Timothy and Isaiah talk with guest Mark Sutherland who has decades of experience in digital and eCommerce on both the client and agency side. He has been in both B2C and B2B eCommerce for small and large companies that have scaled internationally. We hear first hand how he brought a B2B eCommerce business to 8 figures that were previously struggling before he joined. He knows what it takes to scale internationally and how to scale a B2B eCommerce into the tens of millions of dollars.
Nessim Btesh is based of Panama and transformed their family B2B business to 100% digital sales in one year! Based out of South America they now went from a showroom to complete digital transformation online taking all orders online due to Coronavirus and ramping their business up during a time when many are struggling. Nessim has some amazing insight into why they developed a custom eCommerce solution integrating their many back office systems like their ERP to create a seamless commerce experience. They even have automated shipping capabilities and are working to further automate their pricing algorithm and much more. He truly developed a world class B2B system in a fraction of the time most companies have even achieved just a small percentage of this kind of success online.
Brian Beck and co host Isaiah Bollinger dive into the nitty gritty of B2B eCommerce and why we feel there is so much left on the table. The opportunity is literally billions of dollars, hence the book Brian wrote, Billion Dollar B2B eCommerce. We discuss eCommerce platforms, integrations, and what it takes to scale B2B eCommerce. Brian Beck is a true thought leader in the space that has been in the trenches himself as well as advised many companies so he knows what it takes to grow a B2B eCommerce business. If you don't know Brian Beck and your into B2B eCommerce its about time to learn from one of the best.
You may think B2B eCommerce is all about the website, but you couldn't be further from the truth. Steve Engelbrecht, CEO of Sitation, a process and operations company for B2B brands, discusses why you need to have great operations and processes to succeed with eCommerce. Co Host Timothy Peterson and Steve dive into why many processes are broken in B2B and how that stops companies from successfully growing with eCommerce. We discuss everything from PIM, ERP, and simply day to day B2B operations and how that impacts eCommerce.
In Episode 9 we invite guests David Crouch, CEO of Slatwall Commerce and Brad Gustavesen, CMO of Slatwall Commerce to discuss B2B eCommerce. Slatwall is a modern eCommerce platform that combines enterprise features with headless commerce flexibility. Timothy Peterson and Isaiah Bollinger discuss what David and Brad are seeing in the B2B eCommerce space and why they have developed unique features like subscription built into their core platform to separate themselves from other major providers.
Mark Brohan is a master of research and is the leading researcher in B2B eCommerce. If you want to know whats going on in B2B eCommerce you need to know Mark Brohan and his research at Digital Commerce 360. We discuss all the latest trends going on in B2B eCommerce, where the market is heading, and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve. Mark believes we are at a similar point in B2B as retail was a decade plus ago when eCommerce was first starting to disrupt retail.
In episode 7 we bring in Loan Laux CEO and Founder of Outgrow to discuss his work in B2B eCommerce. Loan has been working in eCommerce in the United Arab Emirates and is our first international guest. We discuss the challenges of working as an agency in B2B eCommerce and what companies can do to be more successful with their agency. We also discuss the interesting challenges of international B2B eCommerce and why Loan has chosen a unique platform Reaction Commerce to work in B2B eCommerce.
Integrations are the backbone of B2B eCommerce for most use cases. We discuss iPaaS (integration platform as a service) and why this is so hard for companies to overcome with Jeremy Rudolph from Celigo. Jeremy has Over 10 years of sales experience, including 5+ years focused on building and selling a disruptive SaaS & PaaS solution to startups, SMB’s and enterprise businesses. We discuss logistics, fulfillment, back office systems and why these systems all need to be talking to other systems in some way or another to make the customer experience unified and successful for B2B eCommerce.
In episode 5, we talk with Nick Seagers, Director of Operations at Stran. Stran is a top 40 promotional products distributor that continues to grow and lead the charge in distribution. Stran and Trellis worked together to build a massive multisite B2B eCommerce infrastructure that has been very successful for the growing distributor. We discuss the challenges of getting a technical infrastructure in place and what it takes to be successful in B2B eCommerce from someone in the trenches building a program from the ground up. Nick is an expert in operations, eCommerce, and has a great understanding of how to manage an internal organization thats naturally not technical to leverage new technology.
In episode 4, Co-Hosts, Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson of Trellis bring on Michael Powers who is implementing B2B eCommerce for Alaska Rubber Group. Michael Powers is a B2B eCommerce strategist with over 15 years of digital marketing and eCommerce experience including re-platforming of a legacy B2B eCommerce platform and implementing customer adoption & acquisition strategies. Michael Powers had built out a B2B eCommerce program for a distributor and brought their revenue from next to nothing to 30% of all sales. He is now back at it again with a new organization to transform their sales from offline to online.
In Episode three, Co-hosts, Isaiah Bollinger and Timothy Peterson of Trellis speak with Aaron Sheehan from Weidenhammer. We discuss the technical challenges we face with certain project budgets in B2B eCommerce and why it can be so difficult to get non technical organizations over the eCommerce hump. Aaron has been in the e-commerce ecosystem advising merchants and architecting solutions since 2015. He's launched BigCommerce and Magento stores, performed multiple systems integrations, and managed teams around the world to deliver results for his clients. He is a Magento Certified Solutions Specialist (M1 & M2) and has completed several BigCommerce certifications.
Co hosts, Isaiah Bollinger, CEO of Trellis and Timothy Peterson, client advocate of Trellis speak with Brady Behrman, the CEO and founding partner of PunchOut2Go. As an entrepreneur with experience and proven track record in building technology businesses that focus on client success innovation, Brady and his team help organizations of all sizes around the globe adapt to the ever-evolving, complex B2B Commerce & eProcurement technologies. We talk about what were seeing in the B2B eCommerce landscape and what Brady has done to help companies be more successful by using their integration technology.
In this episode (Episode recorded April 2020) our co-hosts Isaiah Bollinger, CEO of Trellis, and Timothy Peterson, Client Advocate of Trellis, we discuss why we started this podcast and what businesses can do to become more successful with B2B eCommerce. We discuss many of the challenges such as platforms & technology, culture, sales, and more. We discuss current B2B eCommerce trends and who is really doing well in B2B eCommerce. We also discuss whats stopping companies from succeeding in eCommerce.