B2B Companies Need to Take Advantage of Digital Commerce Opportunities

B2B companies often feel squeezed between rising customer expectations and the cost of the technologies they need to meet those expectations, Deloitte Digital notes in a new report.

However, the most successful B2B companies meet challenges through the following three primary strategies, according to the research firm:

• expanding commerce channels to meet customers where they are;
• gaining more from enterprise resource planning upgrades through front-office operational integration; and
• identifying and activating artificial intelligence, especially agentic AI, in use cases that advance business goals.

Expanding channels is important, Deloitte Digital explains, because buyers have become more particular about where they prefer to do business, with 65 percent saying they select purchasing channels based on ease of use.

Though some suppliers have expanded channels, many have not, potentially losing existing customers or failing to win new ones, perhaps sooner than they realize, according to Delotte Digital.

The research also showed that 92 percent of B2B buyers currently using electronic data interchanges plan to shift partially or completely to other channels like e-commerce or procurement commerce.

There is still room for improvement, especially since suppliers and buyers have a very different view of the seamlessness of B2B commerce. While 72 percent of suppliers said they successfully stream B2B commerce, buyers put that figure at 47 percent.

That and any other disconnects make a significant difference in revenue and profits, according to Deloitte Digital. Suppliers estimated that 13 percent of sales bids are lost due to negative buyer experiences, while positive experiences yield a 36 percent increase in revenue. Buyers estimated they spend 29 percent more with suppliers that provide positive purchasing experiences.

B2B suppliers’ ERP upgrades have typically been part of larger back-office digital upgrades, according to the report. However, the ERP upgrades tend to integrate front-office operations.

“When marketers are unaware of current priorities in their product life cycle management, they can wind up promoting the wrong offerings while missing opportunities to seize market share elsewhere,” the firm says in its report. When sales teams lack visibility into supply chains, they might make promises they later can’t keep.

“The list goes on, but so does the list of opportunities that suppliers can activate when front- and back-office teams, processes, and data are connected as part of the ERP modernization. Our client experience shows the value that can accrue as a result.”

One Deloitte Digital client that included front-office integration as part of its ERP upgrade saw 24 percent higher additional investments. Still, though there was more cost, the investment provided an additional 57 percent additional value.

It’s important that sales, commerce, service, and back-office teams can immediately access the same data and tools as finance and supply chain teams, Deloitte Digital notes.

Budgets are tight, the report also says. However, the B2B suppliers that have the most effective digitized, automated, and connected sales processes across back- and front-office systems most often provide positive experiences for buyers.

As for AI agents, they currently show more potential than actual adoption, according to the research. Forty-five percent of all B2B suppliers use AI, and 24 percent use agentic AI, with most that have adopted agentic AI reporting gains in productivity and profitability.

Deloitte Digital recommends that executives ask themselves the following questions when determining whether to expand their investments in B2B sales technology:

• Does the business have an accurate understanding of the sales challenges and friction points customers face and how omnichannel commerce can help?
• Does the business understand the value case for speeding up digital B2B commerce transformation and how to better communicate the case to business stakeholders?
• What will help the organization better meet the expectations of customers in their preferred channels?
• What front-office improvements and channel capabilities can be enabled as part of an ERP upgrade?
• Where and how should they deploy agentic AI in the company’s sales processes?

And though not mentioned in the Deloiite Digital Report, another opportunity for B2B sellers is online retailers’ major tentpole sales events, like Amazon’s Prime Day.

In fact, according to a recent retail promotions shopper study by XCCommerce, one in four shoppers consistently plan purchases around these major sales events, and more than 80 percent engage with them in some way.

Given the importance of these sales events for retailers, those that win don’t just have a plan but a foundation in place long before the day comes.

“Major retail tentpole events like Prime Day have trained shoppers to expect seamless, compelling deals, and many now plan their spending around them months in advance. The retailers that succeed during these moments aren’t the ones scrambling to assemble promotions the week before. They’re the ones that have already built the operational and technology foundations to create, manage, validate, and execute offers consistently across every channel. When traffic spikes and shoppers expect personalized savings, retailers that can’t deliver smoothly risk losing customers to competitors that can, and they may not get those shoppers back,” says Dan Surtees, vice president of strategy and business development at XCCommerce.