For years, B2B commerce meant sales reps, Excel files and long lead times. Orders came in by phone or email. Pricing lived in spreadsheets or was buried in a hundred years of relationships. Clunky and unclear, to say the least.
But buyers have changed.
Today’s procurement teams are digital natives. They order groceries online, they expect real-time stock levels when they shop privately, and they do not lower their expectations just because they walk into the office. That is why B2B e-commerce has gone from “nice to have” to “this is how you do business.”
The question for manufacturers is no longer if you should digitalize your sales, but how. I have worked with several companies that run both B2B and DTC, from manufacturers to consumer brands. And I have seen up close what successful projects tend to have in common and what usually derails the ones that don’t.
So here are the lessons I wish I had known back in 2012 when I did my first platform migration. Not because it would have made the journey easy, but because it would have saved time, money and a year’s worth of headache pills.
The most common mistake is starting at the wrong end. Many companies say “we are going fully digital” before they have even defined the role of e-commerce. Is the goal to replace manual orders entirely? Or to complement sales reps by making ordering smoother? Should buyers manage everything digitally themselves, or should e-commerce support inside sales and trade shows? There is no single right answer. What matters is clarity. If the organization does not know whether e-commerce is meant to replace or support sales, the project will end up messy, drawn out and eventually land in the laps of unwilling owners until it quietly dies.
Another classic mistake is starting with systems. Too many projects begin with the ERP data model and try to build a buyer experience on top of it. That is backwards. Instead, ask: what do your wholesale buyers actually need in their daily work? It is rarely flashy marketing content. It is much simpler things:
The job is to make buyers’ lives easier. If you do that, adoption will follow naturally. Repeat after me: Think buyer first.
Many companies end up with DTC in one platform, wholesale in another and the ERP stuck in the middle. That setup is expensive, slow and fragile. A smarter approach is to keep products, accounts and price lists in a single backend. One place to manage it all. That makes it easier to scale, easier to integrate and cheaper to run.
This one is crucial. ERPs excel at finance, logistics, and inventory, forming the operational backbone of the business. But they were never designed to deliver a modern buyer experience. Still, many manufacturers try to stretch them into that role, leading to clunky user journeys, brittle integrations, and frustrated teams.
Treat the ERP as the system of record, not the system of engagement. Choose a backend that integrates with it, but isn’t limited by it. And make sure your ERP is built to be part of a modern, connected stack, not a lonely island that everything else has to adapt to. Every product you build your future on should adapt to your business, not force your business to adapt to it.
You do not need to launch everything on day one. In fact, you probably should not. Start small. For example, launch a branded wholesale portal for a single market or a selected customer group. Prove that it works: less admin, faster order flows, happier buyers. Once you have shown the value, scale into new segments and markets. Success builds trust and momentum in the team, which is just as important as the tech.
E-commerce is not the finish line. It is the foundation for what comes next. AI will soon play a big role in B2B commerce. Buyers might rely on digital agents to place orders automatically, negotiate pricing and handle replenishment. If your systems cannot talk to AI through APIs or MCP, you will be looking at another expensive replatform in just a few years. That is why it makes sense to think AI ready from the start. Future proof (yes, it is a fluffy word, but I have not found a better one) beats short-term patchwork every time.
B2B e-commerce does not need to be a massive high-risk IT project. If you start simple, focus on the buyer experience and avoid fragmented setups, you will see results faster than you think.
Each step builds momentum. Each pilot creates internal trust. And eventually, digitalization is not “a project” anymore. It is just the way you run your business. One way or another.
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