Welcome master b to b where we take on the key issues for manufacturers and distributors in digital transformation. And we have a doozy today. We're looking into our crystal ball and predicting twenty twenty three what's gonna happen in b to b e commerce. So stay tuned for that folks. My name is Brian Beck. I'm thrilled to be joined again today on this series with, with by Andy Horr. Andy, for those of you who don't know him. He's a long time three veteran. He, seven years spent seven years with Forrester Research running the B2B e commerce practice. He's the founder of Paradigm B2B, on speed dial with CEOs all over the planet. Andy, I'm I'm excited about this topic today. Good to be here with you. Yeah. This is gonna be great. By the way, my prediction twenty twenty three is I'm gonna be wearing my glasses a lot more. So it happens too. On that one. But, yeah, so there's no Brian. Brian is the managing partner of Inceva, which is an agency that helps companies optimize their presence on Amazon. He's also the author of a book of billion dollar B2B commerce, and he's a practitioner with what? Twenty years of operating experience. So, Brian, great to be hosting this one. And this is a different format. So this is gonna be interesting. This can be a lot of fun folks. You know, we're we're incorporating a lot of the elements of our un webinar series here. But this this is a webcast. And we we still want to, hear from you. So please insert your comments. Feel free to disagree with our predictions. Put that right in the q and a. We actually have live commentary and live reactions from practitioners and industry experts all through this today. So we have a bunch of folks who are gonna be bringing on through the show this this afternoon. And talking to them about what they think about our predictions. And and as the audience, we have six predictions coming. At the end of each prediction, you are gonna have a chance to vote on whether you agree with us or disagree. And finally, we're gonna hold ourselves accountable, Andy, to these. Right? So at the end of the year, or or early next year, a year from now. We're gonna look back and say, hey, were we right or were we wrong and hold ourselves accountable to to our predictions? So, again, this is a this is a webcast format. So, again, we wanna hear from you. We're gonna reveal the answers to the poll questions at the end of our session today. So, you know, stick around. We also did a LinkedIn poll for each of these. So stick around for that. Now, Andy, this is a hot one. We posted this on LinkedIn as we always do. We asked the industry what they thought. And we asked without revealing what we think, what they thought, you know, through polls. We did six polls over the last two weeks. And and I counted it up. We got over forty thousand likes who use boats, shares, comments. I mean, this, again, these are hot hot industry topics that we pull we we hit some hot buttons here And we also have a lot of great folks joining our our, on, on, well, I almost said on webinar, webcast today. And, Andy, who you who you seen come in? I'm just looking at a few names of Mike Westerman from HD Supply. We've got Sarah Galo from Dow, chemicals, Andy Goodfellow. Sweet g from Zuro. And, Terry Elkin from, from ResTech. So and I think this is one of the most heavily populated ones we've ever done. So it's just gonna be really interesting. We're expecting hundreds of people that I already see a lot of these folks come in here. I'm seeing dart container, Adam Coupex from Sloney. Adam, how you doing, root Rudy, you're here from AMG. Good to see you, Sonapar, GE Crescent Electric. Even Amazon is here. So so there's maybe they maybe they know we're gonna talk about them a little bit interesting. Alright. I I think it's about that time. We gotta get right into this because we've got a lot to share on this session folks let's go ahead and get into it. Alright. Let's reveal Oh, my goodness. Doctor Thomas is cracking me up, Andy. Alright. Our prediction number one. Ready folks? Is that in twenty twenty three, distributors will get squeezed by vertical marketplaces and by manufacturers going direct And we have some data around this, Andy, why don't you why don't you tell us what this one's all about? Why do we think this? Yeah. You know, sometimes a simple story is quite a fine. So, assuming maybe you'd seen this a couple weeks ago of CH Briggs, which is a distributor of, specialty building materials in Pennsylvania. I announced that at the end of March, they're going to cease operations. Well, there are many reasons why this company is is going to go out of business But at its core, the reason why is because they're getting squeezed by the single largest supplier who, by the way, has decided to look elsewhere both online and offline for distribution. And is a theme that we're continuing to see. We've seen in the past. We think it's going to accelerate, going forward. And there's some interesting stats around this. We think one of the reasons wise because of vertical market places. And, you know, McKinsey said that seventy nine percent of suppliers have built or planning to build or considering building, a marketplace. It's already estimated to be about a three point six trillion dollar marketplace by the end of next year. And, people are are seeing that vertical marketplaces and market places overall are growing seven times the rate of b to b commerce itself, which is growing pretty rapidly as well. So, you know, the data's there. Plus, you know, for those of you who maybe don't marinate in this like we do, I mean, look at some of these companies that are already vertical marketplace. To be honest, when I compiled this data, some of these companies I'd never heard of before, you know, but we have companies do billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, They're starting to carve up pieces of the b to b e commerce landscape. So and, of course, we can't forget about know, the perennial favorite here, I need to turn loosely, you know, where you come from. Amazon business on the horizontal side. I mean, just a reminder, Apparently, the end of last year, people predicted to do a little over forty billion dollars in GMV. And within the next two years, that's gonna suffer double to eighty three billion dollars. So, again, not only the horizontal guys carving things up, but we've got Amazon carving things up as well. So is pretty clear on this one. The B2B distributors are gaining squeeze. The question is, how do they fight back? Yeah. It's it's it's interesting, Andy. I I think we're gonna see the number distributors, particularly in the mid market decline this year. This is a call to action for distribution to differentiate too many distributors are leaving the door open to vertical marketplaces. I mean, there's Andy, this vertical marketplace is like infra dot market, for example, several hundred million dollars in GMV, not even on that chart. I mean, this is happening all over the place. And for distributors, they have to figure out how to differentiate you know, other than just price and and and and and broad assortments. So we're gonna get some industry feedback on this. So joining us today for some quick industry action to our to our prediction is Ryan Lee. Ryan is the man when it comes to marketplaces. He's the CEO and founder of Nautical Commerce, Ryan, you guys power these marketplaces. Right? You for both traditional companies and for new entrants, And and so Ryan's been in the industry for a long time. Excited to hear his point of view. So, Andy, Andy, I'm excited to get his his thoughts. And Ryan, great for you to be here with today. Thank you. So, Ryan, the question is will distributors get squeezed by vertical marketplaces and manufacturers going direct this year in twenty twenty three. What say you, sir? Well, thank you, gents. Appreciate the, having me on, but, yes. I believe the answer is yes. But, I also, disagree to an extent. I I think the, the manufacturer's piece, is a bit premature. You know, I I I I do believe that distributors add a lot of value and, you know, are really the experts that help the end buyer kind of, navigate, you know, what products fit for their projects. So I do believe that vertical marketplaces are gonna squeeze, distributors, It it's happening. It's happening slowly. You know, it's in a stealth kind of way because these organizations are not advertising that they're doing these digital transformations. And the tools and the path to digital transformation or at least digitization of the distributor transaction, is is you know, becoming easier. Mhmm. Should it should a distributor sell on a vertical marketplace? What do you think? I believe they should, you know, because, you know, marketplaces are becoming the new venue for, you know, in my mind advertising and awareness. Right? You know, you wanna you wanna get out there. You wanna get in front of the the the buyer's eyeballs in my mind. You know, and and so the more places that you can be, you know, the better, that you're gonna get that recognition. But Ryan, aren't they just hastening their own demise if they do that? Not necessarily. I mean, you know, there's there's, ways for them to learn from that participation in those networks so that they can, reinforce their own digital strategy. Again, I don't believe in this, boil the ocean approach. You know, you absolutely should do a crawl walk run. You know, it doesn't have to be intimidating. You know, it starts with just digitizing the order. You know, I believe, fundamentally, every distributor is a marketplace. Whether it's partially digitized or not, it doesn't matter. You know? And so, you know, now with the tools, available, you know, I think it's it's easier to to to explore this digitization now. So, so should so distributors become part of the squeeze themselves and watch marketplaces? They do. And and I believe the digital Ford, execs, and the ones that that kinda lean in are are gonna win. Okay. So they win. So they're taking share from other distributors then. So the traditional distributor launches take share. Right? Absolutely. Alright. Absolutely. Alright. We got thirty seconds left here, Ryan, for your for your additional commentary. Anything you would leave the, our listeners with today, we've got a lot of them on the line. Regarding this. You know, the the manufacturer piece, you know, I still think it's a bit premature. You know, B2B is all about relationships. You're not destroying that by introducing a marketplace. You're really reinforcing that. And what you're doing is you're deciding to digitize the low value I cost transactional aspect of that. So that's where I'll stop with. Thank you, gents. Thank you so much, Ryan, for your commentary. Love the quick hit. Thank you much. Andy, let's go to the poll. Alright. Well, so, Robert, let's launch that poll. So in twenty twenty three, what we see distributors get squeezed by vertical marketplace is my manufacturer's going direct. That's the question on the table. It's only gonna be up for about a minute. So it blew quickly. So, you know, Brian, I thought you know, what Ryan said is is accurate. I I actually am a little stronger on the marketplace for for manufacturers because I actually think the manufacturers should all be doing marketplaces. I think many of them are gonna wake up to the fact that they're missing this opportunity. I do worry about distributors, so I think you have to get big really fast. And or they have to get really deep. Either way, but they have to become almost like a catalog juggernaut. They have to have more stuff, and they have to be able to monetize their domain expertise. If they're not doing that stuff, it's gonna be a rough year. Yeah. For me, there's no there's no question manufacturer needs to take advantage of third party marketplaces, the the the verticals, Amazon, etcetera. Look, you differentiate on product. You gotta be there. It has bigger implications for the distributor. Distributor, you gotta make sure you're delivering a great digital experience and e commerce experience to your customer. There's no patience for it. Y'all are leaving the door open for these marketplaces to come in and take share. So we think and we'll see how we do next year, you know, that that there's the squeeze ongoing. Alright. It's time For prediction, number two. Alright. So this one is all about people. And, raging debate of twenty twenty three. Actually, twenty twenty two is all about returning into the office. And so here's our prediction. In twenty twenty three, we believe Power is going to shift back from employees to employers. And, you know, there's some interesting data around this one. Brian, what what are you seeing out there? Well, to me, it's it's, you know, it's it's a story of of really what, you know, what Elon Musk said. Right? It's it's, you know, go pretend to work for someone else. Look, layoffs are happening all over the place. We see this with Google, with with Amazon, with all these all these tech companies, and is not just isolated to tech either. It's happening all over the place. So what does that mean? It means the age of entitlement is Coveo. We believe that the bout of the boss is gonna be the boss again and and rule in twenty twenty three. So this is all over the press. Look at this article from Wall Street Journal Workers. Get ready for the rate, great rebalancing. And I I I, you know, I I believe that and the data is showing it. So let's look at this. This is Castle which tracks the number of swipes people use to get into their offices. And if you look at the left hand side of this chart, twenty twenty. Hundred percent of the people were in the office. Right? They and then you see right there, as soon as the pandemic hit March twenty twenty off of cliff down almost zero. Right? And then as we move over to the right, over time, we see and this is through the end of last year, that trend is clicking up. So people are returning to the office. We think that's a primary indication that, I guess what, boss is the boss again, and Elon Musk is right. Moving up to the right there. We got almost fifty percent, but this isn't just Andy about the employees. It's a our employers. It's about the employees too. Look at this data from Forrester from last year. Ask the question, I would prefer to continue working from home, percentage of of info workers who who said know, they would work. They they prefer to work from home, fifty two percent in twenty twenty one, down to forty one percent in twenty twenty two. So Yes. The boss is more in control, but also the employee is realizing they need actually human interaction with this as well. So it's a, you know, this is a this we believe that this power will continue to shift and entitlement age is over Andy. Alright. Well, Brian, thanks for that setup. I don't know if the entitlement age is Coveo, but certainly, the power seems to have shifted a bit here. Maybe it's uneven. We'll find out. And I think one group in particular, working mothers may have something to say about this. And to that point, we have a working mother joining us tonight. So it's Brooke whites out Logan, so it lights out because she's been a contender of ours before on various panels. So Brooke is the director of e commerce for sixteen billion dollar automotive automotive distributor genuine auto parts. So Brooke, Here's the big question. In twenty twenty three, do you believe that power will fundamentally shift back? To employers from employees. What say you? You know, I think I'm gonna shock you both a little bit and say, I I actually do a agree with Brian to some extent today. I I I don't think that's ever happened before. That's never happened. It's never happened. But I do think it's it's really hard to argue. I mean, at least in the greater ecosystem out there, right, the pendulum really is starting to swing back. Now I think the thing that we all need to consider and and that we might see a little bit differently in b to b e commerce specifically is that the war for a talent is still just that. It still is a war for top talent. Right? So I think we may start to shed some unproductive employees and and change some things around a little bit. But qualified a players, especially in this industry, are really, really hard to find, and I think that will continue. And employees will start to, you know, still retain some leverage because of that. No. Interesting. It's it's definitely swinging. Yeah. You know, interesting article in the Wall Street journal just today, about how companies, have overreacted. They overreacted by overhiring and they're overacted by letting people go. I mean, some of these companies spent years and billions of dollars hiring these really talented people that they just jettison on a whim mostly because their competitors and other companies in the space are doing. I'm not sure that was so smart, but, you know, what do you think about that? Yeah. I I think that's a really good point, Andy. And I think it's something that everyone needs to consider. Right? Is this really is kind of like a pendulum. Right? And things are gonna continue to swing back and forth a little bit. So a really big word of caution if you are an employer out there, because if you do jettison any employee, right, mean, we've seen that with Google employees. Hey, Google, you're not who we thought you were. Right? So you really do run the risk of overreacting here and ruining your reputation. For the talent that you really do need to retain. Certainly. But by virtue, the fact that we've used the word twice now, jettison, It is clear the employers are back in charge to what extent we'll see. And, again, there might be some groups that feel differently. But, yeah, Brian, there's the debate. No. That's absolutely right. You know, we talked about this. We had an on on webinar live last year about this, Brooke, and you were one of our contenders on that. And, you know, we think that, you know, ultimately back to the office doesn't mean fully back to the office, but could mean hybrid as well. Would any thoughts on that? Yeah. I I think that's absolutely the case. Right? I mean, I think the expectation is shifting from, hey, I wanna be completely on my own work from home one hundred percent of the time to hybrid. Hey, we are going to be together somewhere, sometimes. Right? Does that always mean in the office, or does that mean out in the field together? I think it could be combination of those things. Flexibility is really key here. Right? That's what people gained, by being at home, and that's what they really want to attain. Where are you sitting? I am in the office. Well, there we go. So so so do you think that, do you think it varies by role, though, Brooke? In other words, does does the does the back to the office thing happen in certain types of functional areas more than others? Yeah. Absolutely. I think it does. And and I think that's where we all need to be really smart. Right? And and what I don't think is changing is people don't wanna come back to the office for no reason. Don't wanna come back in the office to sit on a a Zoom call. Right? So being really smart about how and when people come back in, and being really flexible to accommodate their schedules and the working parents and all the people that you wanna retain, that's gonna be the key here. Alright. Brian, let's in the interest of time, we could talk for with book for hours. But, Brooke, thank you so much for joining. Brian, let's get to the poll. Let's do that. Let's go ahead and get to the poll. Go ahead and bring that up, Robert. Thank you, Brooke. This is power shifting back from b to b employers to b to b employ employee hers in twenty twenty three, let us know what you think. You know, Andy, I I I wanna read a quote here from James Gorman, the CEO of Morgan Stanley. He was just in the press interview with Bloomberg a couple of days ago, at Davos, and he said they don't get to choose their compensation. Referring to employees. They don't get to choose their promotion. They don't get to choose to stay home from work five days a week. So that's an interesting perspective. And he's I mean, he's in the financial services business, a completely different business. You know, he he said I want them with their other employees at least three to four days So that's the argument for hybrid. You know, but he also made the argument as Brooke was just saying, you know, that the decision has a lot to do with the type of role He said there are different kinds of jobs, five days in the office for everybody is not gonna happen again, five days a week. So I think we've got that level of color too, and it's happening not just in tech. Any thoughts? Yeah. Sounds like most people are talking on both sides of their mouths. I mean, our question, our prediction was, is the power shifting? I think that's indisputable. I mean, we'll see what polls have to say. And we have we've got polls from beforehand, and they're kind of interesting. Yep. Yep. Yep. The question is, even if the power shifts, is it shifting for everybody? And as Brooke said a town is still a town. They're gonna dictate terms, but, Alright. So we gotta go. So stick around to see which argument, the audience thought was and we'll reveal that at the end, folks. Alright. Now it's time for prediction number three. Is that you saying that, Andy? I don't know. With nostradamus there. Again, he's great. Alright, Andy. What is prediction number three all about? Yeah. So this one is all about it's about people again, but it's about something we've talked about for the longest time, which is, is the c suite finally gonna transform into the d suite? Now we did a whole unwebinar about this, but we thought this was so important that we wanted to revisit it We actually do believe this will be the year that the C suite does transform into the D suite. Some, interesting observations, and we're gonna go back to what we shared a couple of months ago. Look at a couple of companies, Fastenol, MSC and Granger. The degree to which they have digital talent or digitally experienced folks in the C suite is a high correlation between that and what percentage of their sales are digital. So fastenal is about, I think, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen percent, something like that digital. Just crashed the billing dollar mark, which is a huge, accomplishment. But a lot of people argue they need to be higher than that. For just pure digital online selling because when you look at some of their peers, their competitors, you look at the grangers of the world. And, again, if you just we just highlighted the people who have the extensive digital background. In this case, it's a third of the d suite. Has extensive digital background versus, again, fast and all. We're not picking on them, but we looked through. We couldn't find anybody who has extensive digital background. Any surprise grangers at seventy percent, selling online. And then, lastly, MSC. Mhmm. And I know Steve Barrick recently step down, he's actually working with us at Master B2B. But, you know, he's been replaced by somebody who has similar capability. So, you know, MSC is above sixty, sixty five percent, digital and no surprise that, like, a third, including the CEO is extensive digital experience. So It is starting to happen. It's gotta be the case that the MSCs and the grains of the world are leading the way on this one. And the stats are pretty clear on this. This is a very interesting that I was even familiar with that we found in the research. It was published in the MIT sloan management review, two years ago now. Large enterprises with digitally savvy executive teams outperform comparable companies without such teams by more than forty eight percent based on revenue growth and valuation That is not a coincidence. So this one's pretty clear. That's why we felt confident about the prediction. Yeah. I think we're gonna see it across the board any both mid market and enterprise. Just more digital presence in the c suite. And again, we'll measure ourselves on how we did there at the end of the year, and and folks be thinking about how you wanna, whether you agree with us or not, So we have a, we joining us today, we have a a fantastic executive who's gonna who's gonna comment on this. This is Kurt Gary. Kirk welcome to the welcome to the showed today. He is the GM of e commerce at Arrow Electronics, and you guys can know Arrow Electronics theory enormous. Thirty seven, I think, billion dollar distributor of electronic components are the world's largest company by revenue headquartered in the state of Colorado, by the way, a little fact for you there. Welcome. Well, welcome, Kurt. We're glad to have you here with us for your for your reaction, to our prediction. So Kurt, what's the answer here? Would you agree with us? Will the C suite really start to become the d suite this year? Well, firstly, this we're having Secondly, I'm feeling confrontational today. So I'm just I'm gonna say it's not gonna happen in twenty twenty paper. Alright. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go disagree. And, and here's why. I mean, you have great examples on the forefront here with Ranger MSC. I think it's really about you know, the company is putting the money behind digital and and getting more customers to use their sites, if you will. So I think it's really coming down to customer demand and then the industry as well. And then you'll start seeing some of the c suites switching out with more digitally savvy individuals as they kinda move up and and put the money behind digital within their respective organizations. But is it gonna happen in twenty twenty three? Not that soon? Hopefully Coveo time, you know, with, like, with any, you know, c suite Coveo, though, they always take time and and different skill sets. But I I think what we're still seeing is that the c suite is sales focused and supplier focused. Right? And so the digital savviness, won't happen until there's just more sales happening digitally, more interactions digital within those organizations. Or they lose all their sales to to, you know, vertical marketplaces and and Amazon. Right? So as as distributors. Right? So I think, it's interesting. Why why do you what do you think's preventing it, Kirk? What why isn't why don't we have more digital c suites? I think the the skill set is is still fairly new. You know, it, you know, if I look at Granger, they're they're thought leaders. You know, five years ago, when they they put the money behind what they were doing on the digital horizon, and maybe there was some hesitation, I suppose, at that time, in them doing so, it's a bit of a risk, at that time. Now I think it's, more of a calculated risk that people are are willing to invest upon. And and the, then you'll start seeing some of the, the c suite individuals, you know, moving up from the visual organization, visual landscape into those seats at the table. I mean, are are these internal folks? The there's a d suite when it eventually happens. You know, maybe in your view, it doesn't happen this year, but when it does happen, are they internal? Are they coming from outside the organization? I think it can go either way. I think that if they come from successful organizations that have have done the digital transformation, then I think they they've earned that seat at the table within any organization across the board. Mhmm. Interesting. Alright. Any final thoughts, for the for the group here on this on this topic on our prediction? No. I'm just gonna say not this year, but I it it's definitely on the horizon as the, as digital has its own P and L, and it takes more market share. Alrighty. Let's go ahead and go to the pool, Andy? Yeah. Let's speed that poll. So the question is in twenty twenty three, does the c suite transform into the d suite? So Chris's absolutely right, but what's interesting about this is he's completely right about once the sales are there. Well, the sales don't just happen on their own. You have to actually decide to invest in the digital side of this. And so here we are, you know, post pandemic I mean, has anybody really, you know, sort of disputing the fact that you can buy things online? That's what's happening. That's why we chose AM's we chose Granger and MSC. Because they made a conscious decision to do this. They didn't wait to be told, to do that. I mean, in a in a, you know, a negative way necessarily, but you gotta make your own way here. And I think what I've always seen in the ten plus years I've been doing this is the customers are way ahead. Of the companies. And when the companies say things like, well, we have to win out that current would suggest this, but we have to wait to see the digital sales come along. Well, if you don't If you don't actually incentivize that, you'll never get it. And if you do, you get Granger, you get MSC. In this economy, I think that's why that's why I believe this is it's gonna happen, Andy. In this economy, it is an imperative that digital be in the c suite. And I I mean, look, we're seeing it happen. Right? We're seeing mid market and enterprise hiring out of b to c, they're hiring, you know, they're elevating within. And by the way, folks, C suite doesn't mean everybody in the organization is is everyone at the C suite has digital background, but it looks starts to look more like what we showed you with Granger and MSC where there's three or four executives who have digital, coming up, their in their career. Okay. So that's, that's prediction number three. Stick around to see how how y'all voted. Let's go ahead and go on to prediction number four. Well, this was a personal favorite of mine. It's about sales. I've been writing about this since twenty fifteen. So let's go right to the prediction, Robert. Will sales teams get sold on digital as a way to make more commissions. And therefore, more money. In twenty twenty three, again, we've been talking about this for a long time. We've had a pandemic. We've had significant digital maturity happen across multiple industries. But Brian, what does the data say? Yeah. So this this one is a must happen. Right? It's a must happen, and it will happen this year because of a slowing economy because of other things. Look, seventy four percent of millennials and zoomers avoid sales calls and outreach efforts. Right? So if I'm a digital if I'm in on the sales team, I have to get on board with this with using digital tools. I mean, clearly the buyer starts with it starts with the buyer. Sixty six percent of b to b buyers per more human interaction or digital self-service. This is from data from McKinsey from about about a year and a half ago that really, you know, these these things say that the buyer is demanding this. And and, you know, reality is gonna is gonna come across these sales teams this year, and they're gonna have to be forced to use these tools. And what's happening is this again, this is some more McKinsey data. The rise of what we call the hybrid sales rep, what they call the hybrid sales rep, we happen to agree with them. That, you know, in in twenty twenty one, only twenty eight percent of people had or companies had this role of this this this function in their organization. They expect by the end of next year that is gonna be eighty five percent. What is a hybrid sales rep? It's someone who uses the, you know, the e commerce site and capabilities to handle tasks that are that are more routine, that are lower value, but also uses it to inform their overall go to market with their customers when they're sitting there calling them or talking to them over zoom, and and really being fully informed by, by digital, about what that customer needs. So we're gonna see the sales team finally stop fighting, e commerce and start embracing it out of necessity, Andy. I think we're in that we're in that situation, today. And it all starts with, you know, with the buyer. So, I think we have some color commentary coming on here soon, Andy. Go ahead. Let's let's see. Was this an instant reaction from Mark Rosenstock who's the, vice president of marketing, new vice president of marketing at GME supply distributor products and services for tower and steel maintenance across several industries, what a very particular vertical that you're in. So, Mark, You've been around this space for a while. What do you think? Is this the year twenty twenty three when sales reps finally get on board with digital? Thank you, Andy, and Brian. It's great to be here. I hate to tell you guys, but I think this is not a correct prediction. And and the main reason I believe that is I just don't think it's a watershed then. I don't think twenty twenty three is a big step change either. I do believe in the trends that you shared and, in the quotes and the reference to the McKinsey report. I do believe those trends will continue, and I do think it starts just like it said in the McKinsey report. On the two stakeholder groups that are gonna have the biggest impact here. So, of course, the customers are the number one. Like all of the roles that we all find ourselves in. Digital natives are taking Coveo, and they're becoming over the decade they're becoming more and more penetrated into these big roles, and they wanna interact digitally. So that will be the driver over time, but it's not like it happens in one year. It's happening over a longer period of time as b to b buyers and those purchasing become more digit digitally native. The second piece, which I think is really, really critical, gets back to the previous prediction about the d suite. And that is that finance and those design incentive compensation systems at B2B companies have to understand what behavior among their salespeople, they need to incentivize. And so to the extent that they are designing compensation systems that reward the salespeople for digital transactions as opposed to seeing it as a risk of, oh, I'm paying my sales reps for things that are happening digitally anyway. To the extent that they wanna drive that behavior, they have to incentivize it. They have to give credit to the sales organization for sales regardless of what channel they incur. They occur in. And if they really wanna get aggressive at this and they wanna drive a behavior, they can then incentivize and provide bonus for the growth of the digital platforms overall you'll see your salespeople really go to town with it. Well, that was a really thoughtful answer. It was so good that I don't think we're gonna have time for a follow-up, or we need a follow-up. So Brian. Mark, thank you very much. Brian, let's go straight to the poll and see what the audience has to say about this. Alright, Mark. Thank you for that. Yeah. Let's bring that up. Now the question is do sales teams finally get sold on digital as a way to make them more money? Yes or no, go ahead and submit your answers. You know, Andy, you know, time is ticking. I mean, the sale, you know, Mark said watershed moment. Look, A recession is a watershed moment. I think we're in one, and I think the reality is gonna set in with sales teams that they have to use digital because it's the what the customer demand I mean, we saw this in retail. We've seen this other places. Companies will get on board eventually with what the customer wants. You said it yourself, I think this is also tied to the d the d suite. Right? I mean, and I look at digital more as more digital experience comes into the d suite, there's gonna be more recognition that things like station plans need to align. And since we believe that the the d suite, the c suite is becoming the d suite, we I I believe, and you do too, I think, that the, you know, this that's a key part of this, that that the the technology that's necessary to align the sales team, which already there. It just needs to be implemented. And and the and the approaches for compensation and other things, they're already there. And and so Anyway, any any final thoughts before we move to the next round, Andy? I just I I don't disagree with what Mark said. Was there a watershed moment in twenty twenty two, potentially, twenty twenty three? I I do think we had a we had a pandemic. We're about to hit a recession. People could see all the layoffs taking place. Companies are now being dictated to by their buyers. I mean, that's just the reality. And all the data shows that people wanna buy more. We showed some data here, and they wanna buy more remote I think what we're gonna see in twenty twenty three at a minimum is the separation between the leaders and the laggards. We're gonna see the leaders start to pull away from the laggards, and I think that could create this cost bell eye to get some of these laggards to really get on board. I'm seeing that the consulting I'm doing. People are now getting dead serious about this. That's why we felt comfortable with this prediction. Absolutely. Alright. We gotta move on for time to prediction number five. This one is about this debate between search and personalization. We've had this one before. We'll probably have this one again, but you and I feel strongly that companies are getting ahead of themselves year. And that in fact, what they have to focus on is the kind of basics. Get the search stuff right. It takes priority of a personalization, but why don't you share with us why that's the case? Well, the data points to it. Right? I mean, it's it's the big in your buyers job difficult thing. Right? So what makes be by BB buyers go go elsewhere? This is some data from DC three sixty. The number it's actually number two, but it's right up there with number one. Products unavailable or hard to find on a b to b e commerce website. Okay? This feels like table stakes. Why are we still talking about this when we have another prediction after this that, you know, plays into this a bit. But the findability is a top frustration. You know, fifty five point five according to Gardner percent of b to b buyers are frustrated in finding specific information about products. This all talks about find a million product. So we're getting we're getting out of our are we are we getting out of our skis a little bit when we start talking about advanced personalization. When we don't have site search, right? And I think that, you know, if you look at the percentage of people in B2B that use site search, particularly on large distribution sites, it's it can be seventy, eighty percent. Guys, we gotta fix this. So we think that the industry is going to fix this and are going to focus their resources on fixing this, the basic, elements of site search. B2Bs are very willing to consider switching if these must haves are not offered, b to b buyers, percentage of respondents will actively look for other suppliers given the experience not present. Look at these statistics, product availability. So on the eighty one percent, but, you know, consistent experience across channels. I mean, these things all tie Andy to search. So, again, the fundamentals of site search we think is gonna be a focus area this here, it's gonna put personalization on a back burner, and people are gonna get that right first. That's our prediction. I think we have some folks joining us today to I need to wait this out. So why don't you just continue? Why don't you just go ahead and, bring our the mauler back on? No. Alright. We got we got someone who lives this stuff. It's gonna come on every day. Thanks, guys. Mister Mueller. Well, I'll go back, mister mister Mueller from Coveo. Mister Mueller is is, he he's an executive at Coveo, which is a leading search and personalization provider. So, you know, you guys run both sides of this. So what do you what do you think, Brian? Is this are we accurate? Are people gonna refocus in on on-site search or is this personalization gonna stay top of mind? What are what are your thoughts? What's gonna happen this year? I'm gonna go against the grain with some of our other guests and say, I completely agree. And I think you cannot have great personalization unless you have great search. They go hand in hand. You look at it. Search is the only CX technology where the customer explicitly tells you what they're looking for. Are they looking for support? Are they looking for product information? Are they looking to buy? Are they punching in a VIN number looking for an item around that? It's sort of like walking into a distribution center or walking into a showroom at a b to b seller and having someone try to personalize based on where they're walking. It's a lot easier someone tells you what they're looking for, just like talking to a sales rep. So I think that, and our customers say that if you're gonna start really from what we do and and really can truly improve your experience, search as the first place to start. Okay. So what the heck? What's wrong with these people? Have we done this yet? This is, like, seventy percent of people using search on a lot of these sites, sometimes more in the customer screaming at you, what's holding them back? Is it the business case, and what why why haven't we solved this yet? Well, I think a lot of its complexity. The thing is with b to c, b to c, it's evident. Certainly, there's advancement in other items coming in. B to B, you take, for example, It's not just a a an area where you're taking a linear set of products, a linear set of belief. You've actually got a cube. You've got pricing. You've got catalogs. You've got distribution availability. You've got a lot of items that are out there. And then as well, you look at it, you're not dealing with demographics of people you're looking at role. You're looking at some specifics. So there was some tech limitations that are out there, but to your stat about seventy three percent, we've seen with our customers, those that get searched right, It's up to ninety seven percent that that start with search. And literally, the interface can just be a bar. What do you wanna do today? And then navigate from various parts around that. So you're getting it right, it really makes a difference, but it's been complex. That's the reality of it. Got it. So what's the first step? And what do you I mean, if companies doesn't have their search, right, what do they do first? Okay. What we do is first thing is, going in, plug in the data of the catalog, plug in the user analytics, plug in a UI, whether it's headless or into an existing system, and get going. It's a quick fix. That's the beauty of search. It's a quick fix. Mhmm. Yes. But you said something important which ties to our next prediction, which is data. Right? The uh-huh. So what role does data play in search? Gotta have good data. There's no question about that. Pym's gotta be in good shape. You've gotta have good actual analytics data. So modern search is AI driven. You have to go in, you understand the user transaction, you understand your catalog. You understand those components that are out there. So having your data in order, I mean, we can certainly help with rusty data. We deal with a lot of this as well, but you still have to have good data. And there's no question that that's really a fundamental component that's out there to to make it work. Got it. Any final any final points you wanna make, Brian, before we, move on to our poll question here about search. Well, I I'm on with this, I mean, definitely for practitioners, this is low hanging fruit to boost revenue per visit. Boost customer satisfaction, very easy to fix. And, certainly, your prediction, I think it's a part where people are gonna get it. And this is a way that, they can really, really move things very quickly. Alright. Well, let's see if the audience agrees with all three of us, Brian Mueller, McGlyn. Thank you very much for being on. Let's go ahead and go over to the poll. So folks, does search and discovery take priority over personalization in b to b in twenty twenty three way in here, Andy. What did you think of that? You know, I I think we have gotten ahead of ourselves. Personalization's great. There's a whole bunch of issues around personalization too in a B2B organization. What is it when it's a group buying dynamic What exactly is it? You're not personalizing for a group. So there are issues around that, which I can get people hung up on things. Whereas search and discovery. These are things that you you're just nuts and bolts. You gotta do them well. And as the data showed, some people are not doing it well. I find in B2B, they're very efficient buyers. Right? You know this too. They come in, they get what they want, they get out. It's not a navigational experience by and large. And so if you don't do search, right, it's the equivalent of not having the product in stock? There's no question, Andy, with all the percent the high level of search. I mean, at the end of the day, the stat I like to use, I always used it in the consumer side. Search visits should convert five times higher than non search visits because to your point, the buyer knows exactly what they want, You're eliminating friction. You're getting them right to the product. They check out quickly. And companies, if you're not getting stats like that, but practitioners on the line today, gotta take a hard look at whether you need to solve this now rather than getting into all this other cool stuff that that's going on in the industry and do the fundamentals first. Okay. We've gotta go we've gotta go to our last prediction. Here it is. Prediction number six. Six. And you do the honors, please? Yes. So, so Brian, this one is a fascinating one. It's one of our negative predictions, which is that, twenty twenty three, we will still be talking about major data quality issues in twenty twenty four and beyond. We will not solve this one in twenty twenty three. I'm not sure we will ever solve this one. But I don't think, and we don't think we will make major gains on this one. It's too much of a mess. In fact, I may I'll just keep going with the data here. So you know, what we know is that in the same poll, it's like, this was the number one reason that companies go elsewhere. When a buyer gets inaccurate and insufficient information, they leave Well, why are they not getting that? Because the data is wrong. Yep. You know, the the the hip parade continues. There's more stats around this stuff. Garden says forty percent of businesses fail to achieve the objectives due to missing incomplete or inaccurate data. Again, inaccurate data, messy data creates messy customer experiences. This is fascinating. This is from five years ago, but, amazingly, prophetic. That's only three percent of companies meet basic data quality standards. This is an article that's published in the Harvard Business Review, pretty detailed assessment of this time. Three percent. And just when you think this guide is so much better, it hasn't because around the same time, I had never seen this data before. Also in the Harvard Business Review, that bad data, according to HBR and this analysis they had done, cost the US economy three trillion dollars per year. So this is twenty twenty six. Three percent of the people had it right in twenty twenty seven. I bet those numbers haven't moved a whole lot in the year twenty twenty three. This one, pretty clear. Major problem. People have not solved it yet, but it's time to get serious about it. Really serious about it. We wanna thank Matt Christianson at DDS for some of that, some of that data early on. So thank you, Matt, for that. Andy, I think we have a we have a guest to come back and tell us whether they think we're right or wrong. Let's go ahead and introduce them. So we have Jacobi. I'm gonna screw up your last name Jacobi. Go ahead and say it. Zeketsky. Zeketsky. That's a cool name. Zekobi. That's Zekobi. Is is head of strategy at Lumino Slabs. Which is a leading systems integrator, and he's the VP there, and and he works extensively in B2B commerce also hailing from the practitioner side Yeah. You were CIO. Is that right? Or VP of IT at in a major at a major distributor until recently called. Yes. I was. Yeah. Right. So He's got a lot of experience as a practitioner and really, really interested in his in his reaction to this. I'll ask the first question here, Andy, then we dive in. So, you know, will we resolve this major data issue in twenty twenty three? Or or is this or is there no end in sight here? What do you think? First of all, thanks guys for having me here. Second of all, you didn't make this easy. Okay. So I'm gonna go ahead and disagree to an extent. So shots fired. Alright. Alright. Twenty twenty three will be the year because guess what? Nothing besides ourselves is stopping us. We have full control over this. So in a recent study, only seven percent of organizations said they were extremely satisfied with the product data. Seven single digits. That's terrible. So we're still in, like, the proverbial trophic disillusionment here if you wanna call it that. And you know why it's hard is because you can't buy this as a single line item invoice to solve it. And so it involves, you know, a lot of people, a lot of processes. But I'm optimistic why? Because I'm noticing gravitational shift towards the people and process side, and this is former IT leader talking here. You know, it's easy to blame the technology that's where we're manifesting all of our organizational data online, especially with e commerce. And so e commerce sites are kinda like an open door policy to your data, and that scary because if it's messy, there's a lot of discomfort there, right, especially when it comes to inventory, skew data, pricing data, etcetera. So when I see a shift towards people and processes, it slowly becomes really a shared organizational responsibility. And especially when I see product managers and product owner types of functions taking over, I really see that being a key because this is not a waterfall project. To solve this. This is a continuous improvement step by step one bite at a time. So vote yes for good data quality. Twenty twenty three is a call according to that data, we have ninety three percent more upside here. Coveo, are you running for office? Or you actually sounds like a prediction? Data quality twenty twenty three, guys. Yeah. You got my vote. Yeah. I mean, it's it's an ongoing issue, Jacob, as you mentioned. I mean, and we think about, you know, what does it take? And I I've worked with some companies that have addressed it relatively effectively, but to your point, they really are the outliers. And and, you know, I've seen them take really crazy amounts of resources to fix this What what what how do you fix it? I mean, what what resources are needed in your experience? Oh, man. You know, again, if if this was easy, it would have been solved yesterday. So the first step is, you know, let's move on from complaining and acknowledge the problem. Alright? And then create intention behind it. And when I say intention, yes, that probably means investments. Dollar wise. Alright? So when you work on that, identify, but componentize it, you know, we talk about composable commerce, but componentize this problem into bite sized chunks and solve one piece at a time. Cause you just mentioned on the last prediction that you you thought, you know, search and discovery would be solved as a yes. What is search and discovery made up? It's quality data. So if we don't have that, this works in a lineage here. So they have to work together. There cannot just be one piece of it. On its own. Yeah. So And then last thing I'll mention, when you do fix things, celebrate your singles and double wins. That wins games too. Right? So really celebrate the small wins. That will add up. Yep. Alright. Well, that's, that's great commentary, Jacoby. Thank you very much. I think we gotta move on to our poll for time. Thanks again for contributing today. Alright. Let's move to our poll. Will major data quality issues still persist in b to b beyond twenty twenty three? Do you agree with us or not? Andy, what did you think of, Jacobi's comments and and this, on this prediction? I think he's running for office, and he made some really good arguments. No. I mean, look, optimistically, yes. And well, it's like most things will be uneven. But, you know, I actually when I when we did the poll on LinkedIn about this, I likened it to clean water, I clean data is like clean water. And somebody actually replied and said, yeah. And ninety percent of the world doesn't have access to clean water still. And I thought to myself, I wonder which one's gonna be harder to solve. Clean water or clean data. But look, the reality is this is an ongoing project. It is not a destination. It's a journey. And, to Jacobi's point, you gotta celebrate your wins, but you have to cheat data as a strategic asset This is what I don't see companies doing. I I remember years ago, these things data was, like, a problem. Oh, we got too much data. What? You know, and now they think, well, hey, we've got this data, but we're not quite sure what to do with it. That's where we are right now. At some point, we'll get across the chasm here. And people will recognize that the data is the lifeblood. Just like clean water, the lifeblood of your organization. This is such a change management issue. Andy, and it's a and it's an organizational issue more than anything else. I mean, one of the responses we got are LinkedIn. It was hilarious. The guy guy standing a cartoon, guy standing in front of the podium saying, Oh, who wants who wants clean who wants clean good data and and the entire audience raises their hand? And then the second question was, okay, who wants to be responsible for clean the clean data. No one raised their hand. I mean, that that says it more than anything else. And the companies that have seen tackle this successfully have taken a team of people and dedicated them to cleaning data and putting it into normalized states in PIM Systems or whatever other format you use. And that's how that's what it's what it takes. It's just what it takes and somebody has to own it. So I've seen a theme, a theme here, it's through most of our predictions. I didn't recognize. So just now, These things have to be affirmatively done. They don't just happen. They don't just wake up and all of a sudden, the d suite is the d suite. You don't wake up and the data is cleaned wake up and you got digital penetration rates. You know, you don't have things. You have to make these decisions. The good news is the buyers are out there ready to participate. Nobody says, no. Give me dirty data. I want messy data. Right. That's right. Alright, Andy. We gotta move on here. We need to move on to The decision. It's the same music from our own webinars. I love it. Very dramatic. Alright. We're gonna just get to what the audience thinks in just a few minutes. And, you know, one of the we got sort of a little bit bit of a bonus here, Andy, of, you know, kind of what we think of the thing is sort of a seventh prediction, that we think is gonna gonna impact b to b e commerce this year. What is that prediction, Andy? ChatGPT. We could not talk about it. Everybody's time when we started this process before they announced it. That should show you how quickly this has taken hold. Again, There's been a lot of hyperventilation about it. Some of these predictions are over the top, but this will be a watershed moment in human I feel comfortable, comfortable saying this. This is gonna be one of those things ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. They're gonna look back and go, oh, remember that little chat GPT thing. It is already starting to change how people work. Again, it's not perfect. But I don't know who everybody's done this. It's really amazing. I actually throw articles in there and ask it to summarize it for me. Right? It comes back with really good summaries. You can ask it to, you know, do all this thing like product descriptions, etcetera. There are a whole bunch of things that people have even suggested to us that this thing can now do. Again, early days, Remember that robot that Boston dynamics used to have where it would just fall over? Well, I saw you the day it dances now that climbs up hills, it can it can do flips. You know, it people don't calculate how quickly things can change. This is gonna impact things in a big way in B2B. Not in twenty twenty three necessarily, but certainly soon. What do you think? But, Andy, I think we're gonna see some practical applications coming from this. I mean, you said it yourself. Summarizing an article. So I I think at some point, Andy, we need to do an un webinar about a debate about is this the death of a b to b marketer or at least I think about all the marketing copy that can be generated. I was talking to a senior executive this past week who was and we were talking about this And he said to me, and this this fellow ran marketing at a at a ten or fifteen billion dollar distributor, he said gosh, you know, if I had this tool available to me, would have been able to create auto content at scale, SEO content at scale, and at least get a a really good starting point that I could then give to a skilled marketing writer or other things. But it I mean, this has implications, particularly for, you know, the the workers, the folks who are doing work, I think about, you know, even lawyers and things. Right? You know, think about Lawyers are in trouble. Why are you in your contract for this? Right? Why are you being an NDA? Okay. Well, keep in mind too, this is one of those long tail implications of this. Look at a company like Google. Right. You know, people thought Google had a monopoly and search. And they have for many years. If anybody should be concerned about this money, anybody else, it better be Google because Microsoft invested ten billion with a B. In this. And if people go there and ask for answers, who needs to go and and necessarily do the search on Google. So this could shift a lot of things which for b to b companies means you're not buying keywords on Google for it and stuff. You might be buying keywords on chat, GBT, and they might even be keywords. It might be, like, lines of thought or something. Who knows? But this is happening quickly, but we should get to our results because we have quite a few on Yes. We do. Alright. So let's go ahead and and bring those up. Here is the decision. Let's bring up our first prediction. Now our prediction was, did do people agree with us to see distributors getting squeezed. Yes. Interesting. So the audience agrees that distribution channel is going to be squeezed this year, and we'll see that play out. And again, see if you're right and were right. So that's one. We're in a we we we're in agreement there with the industry. And, actually, in on the LinkedIn poll, we did, yeah, where we got, you know, we got a lot of votes on this one. Little closer though. Right? Little closer. Yeah. Yep. So fifty three. Alright. Let's go to prediction two. Does the audience agree with us? Is the power shifting back to employees? Yeah. Yeah. Or employ employers, let's just say, from employees to employers. Right. Sixty six percent said yes. So they agree with us there. What does the LinkedIn polls say, Robert? Oh, bless. No. I don't even know. Interesting. So, yeah, LinkedIn tools. So just a reminder here, we did a LinkedIn poll last week, and we had it sit for several days. And so we wanted to what happened today, the voting, with that voting. And, you know, we have a little disagreement here. So people when they had several days to think about it, but we'll but maybe they were so persuaded by the arguments and Maybe. Yeah. Could be. They think that today, the dynamic has shifted. So what about three, Robert? C suite transformation? No. They've violently disagree with us on this one. Interesting. And what does the poll say? Yes. Okay. LinkedIn, the opposite. So people thought, you know, they had more time to think about it. So it's funny. See, make the arguments and maybe people think about it and maybe the arguments are compelling. They hadn't thought about certain things. That's why we do these debates. Yep. Alright. Production four. Sales team finally gets sold. Yes. Okay. Agree with us there. And what about the LinkedIn poll? Yes. Okay. That was very close. Very similar. Very close. Okay. How about five? What do we got there? Search and discovery? Wow. Ninety percent agree with us. Wow. And then the LinkedIn pull was also highly, towards search Yeah. Getting the basic experience. People were realizing more and more that they gotta stuff right. I mean, it really does. Personalization's great, but you gotta get. It's the crawl walk run approach. Yeah. Absolutely. And six. What do people think on six? One hundred. No. That's not violent agreement. I don't know what is. And We've never had that before. And what did LinkedIn say? Never had that before. Oh, no. Seventy one percent is the same thing. So how many people are are hopeless, optimistic, hopeless, semantics on data. Folks, again, we're gonna hold ourselves accountable to these and come back to them. And we'll see how we did. We're gonna pull this information right back up next year and say, hey, did we did we and you, because you voted with us in most cases, you know, agree and did these things come true? Now a couple couple other things. Those of you who are rich you will get a copy of our our full predictions document. We actually have a write up. It's about a six, seven page document that talks about our predictions. So you'll get a copy. Stay tuned for that. We also have some really cool stuff coming we wanna make you aware of. One of the things we wanna highlight here folks is that we have launched for practitioners, manufacturers, and distributors, a private online forum. It's it's you can go to our website master b d b dot com, click on the little forum tab at the top, and this is a private meeting place for practitioners only, where you can share ideas, you can ask questions, you can network with your peers. We have several hundred people in there. We've just recently launched it. It's growing every day. It's a really exciting place, for you to share. There's no cost to participate in it. You do need to apply to join. And so there's a short form you fill out, but And Brian hasn't gotten in yet. So it's a rigorous club in yet. That's right. This is not a place you're gonna get sold to. This is a place for you to share with your peers to ask questions, see job posts, etcetera. It's a great place to be. So we encourage you all to sign up for that. We also have some events coming, the three categories of events on webinars We have mythbuster sessions, and, of course, our executive roundtables, which are fantastic small groups, again, free to to join and attend all these are for practitioners. And go ahead and and you can go and find out what the topics are upcoming right there. Alright, folks. Well, hey, thanks everyone for joining us today. We appreciate it. There'll be a recording sent out soon of this. And we'll see you on the next, event we have at Master b to b. Thanks for joining.