Welcome, everyone, to Master b two b. This is a webcast, and today we're talking about the state of b two b ecommerce. My name is Brian Beck. I'm here with Andy Hoare, my partner at Master b two b. For those who don't know what Master b two b is, it is a worldwide community of b two b ecommerce professionals at manufacturers and distributors, and we do quite a bit of thought leadership as well. And the for those of you who don't know Andy, the two or three people out there, Andy is a long time industry veteran, seven years at Forrester Research running their b to b ecommerce practice. He's the CEO of Paradigm b to b where they do some great research about ecommerce platforms and other solutions. And my partner, of course, at Master b two b. Andy, good to be here with you. Yeah. Good to be with you as well. We did this last year, and it was fascinating. We have some new insights to share this where this year as well. So looking forward to it. But for those of you who don't know Brian, so Brian's been, kind of every position you could have on the field when it comes to b to b ecommerce. He's been a consultant. He was a guidance for a while. He's been an author. He wrote a book called Billion Dollar b two b eCommerce. He was a practitioner on the b two b side working for Harper Freight Tools, running the ecommerce group there. He's also at PacSun on the b to c side, so he's been b to c and b to b. Yep. And, again, as Brian mentioned, we're partners on master b two b community. And, Brian, it's great to be here with you again. Yeah. No. This is gonna be a great episode, Andy. Excited. And and by the way, for those who are wondering, I don't have my sign today. I don't have my master b two b sign. I'm sitting in Las Vegas at a conference in the middle of the summer here. It's a nice and toasty warm hundred and eleven degrees outside. So, yes, I'm I'm here in the Venetian. It's a nice hotel. But, you know conference. Is that what you said, Brian? Yeah. So I'm at a call it these days? Well, trade show. Oh, okay. Yeah. A trade show? That's what they call it these days in Vegas when people know that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's all good. It's all good. And, you know, there's some good food here. I won't deny that. So, well, folks, you know, just a couple of housekeeping on this before we get started here. You know, this, this is a webcast. We're gonna be asking a few questions just for research purposes as we go through our webcast today. So as you see those, those questions, pop up, go ahead and answer them. You know, that they'll just kinda float in and out during the course of our session today. And we're gonna be, joined by a lot of folks. And so if you have questions, go ahead and post them into the q and a box. We'll get through as many of those as we can. And finally, this is being recorded. So we will make a a copy of this available to, to folks so you can, you can look at it on demand, share with all your friends and family. So today, we're talking about our second annual state of b two b ecommerce. You know, we previewed this, Andy, a few weeks ago on our Friday fifteen podcast. But what a great, you know, what a great, session this is. We've had some some really great folks, come alongside us. We had some of those folks today on the on the pod, or sorry, podcast webcast, that are sponsoring this for us. So let's go ahead and and get into our slides. So Coveo, Optimizely, and SAP have all partnered with us, and thank you. And we're gonna hear from some of their senior people in just a few minutes as we go through this, this webcast. So, Andy, this is a second time through, and this is a this is no longer about, you know, whether to do ecommerce, but this is really this year, it's about how, specifically, how, you know, to do this competitively, cost effectively, and some really interesting themes emerged in our research this year. And we previewed this, you know, as I mentioned a few weeks ago. But today, we have even more data that we're gonna be sharing. So why don't we talk a little bit about the methodology we used here, Andy? Yeah. That was well said, by the way. It's not about whether to do ecommerce and b two b. It's about how to do it. And within that how, there's a lot of variability. Some companies can do certain things. Some big companies can do other things. That's one of the insights, that we're gonna talk about here a little bit later. But just quickly about the research methodology, the boil boring boilerplate stuff. But we want people to know how we approach this. We didn't just talk to a few people, throw some stats together, and call it a day. This is pretty rigorous research. We pride ourselves in the quality of the work we do here. So we literally did dozens of in-depth interviews. I'm talking thirty to forty five minute interviews with senior people in the community. Mhmm. We also did not one, but two surveys. One on the buy side and one on the sell side. So the sell side are the the folks who are selling, things to their ecommerce sites in b two b. On the buy side is the people who are buying. And we think to really get a state of the industry and to get some insights, you have to understand both groups because they both have different vantage points here. So, over a hundred people on each side, we conducted that research a couple of months ago. We talked to both manufacturers and distributors in both the US and Canada. And then lastly, what we talked about with the buyers is really about their buying behavior, their preferences, how they think about where they're going, where they do research, all phases of the customer journey from the beginning part to even post sale, environment. So and then on the sell side, we're talking to them about where they're seeing their digital investments, what kind of results they're getting, and importantly, what are their plans going forward? So we consider this a pretty comprehensive view of the space. Yeah. No no question. And some really interesting, you know, insights. And a lot of those folks, by the way, I didn't mention it before. You know, we're gonna talk about these eight insights in just a second. A lot of these folks are joining us today, by the way, Andy. I failed to mention it, but, you know, we've got some great folks, on the line, interested in this. I see Samir Shehadeh from, Zurn is here. Sean Omar from a good glove is here. We've got representatives from Keysight and Toyota and Tyson Foods and Constellation Brands. Some of those folks and the companies I just mentioned are some of the people we interviewed for this, but then just, you know, the industry in general is turning out to here. So why don't we walk through some of these insights, Andy? Well, naturally, the insights fall into certain categories, and so we've grouped them into into three kind of key categories. And so, on the next slide, you'll see that, the first three fall into this category of the buyer experience. So we say is the buyer experience drives everything. It seems sort of intuitive just to say that, but sometimes we have to remind people that at the end of the day, this is really about what buyers want, and the experience is what separates them. So what we've seen, not surprisingly, but worth mentioning again is that expectations keep rising. Amazon keeps raising the bar. See number one. Yep. And then, in this category, the last thing is really that customers don't care about channel conflict. We talk about this all the time. Companies care about channel conflict, and I'm not trying to diminish, its presence or in any way say it's unimportant. But at the end of the day, customers don't care about it. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I'm gonna go buy in this channel today. They just don't. They say I'm gonna buy from this company. I'm gonna buy this product, and they have an experience. So, again, when it comes to comparing the two sides of the equation, we often hear the the sell side talk about conflict and channels and selling on Amazon and what we do that, you know, pricing, etcetera. But we never hear any of that from the buyers. None of them ever say, yeah. I was comparing the pricing for this customer across very nobody cares about that. So always worth remembering. So what are the second set of categories, Brian? Yeah. So technology. Right? So it's you know, this again feels like a little bit like motherhood and apple pie, but, you know, technology is critical to an improved experience. You know? I I lived this in, you know, as a VP of ecommerce for seventeen years, Andy. You know? Things like Coveo the core tech needs to support growth. And what does that mean? I mean, that's a that's a, you know, again, a kind of a general statement, but we'll get into what does that mean now. Right? What are the kinds of things that are required from a flexibility standpoint to be responsive to those buyers' needs? And then, you know, this ongoing site search versus or not versus, but, well, kind of versus, Gen AI and where are we? And we're gonna have an industry expert coming in, Shereen, to talk about that. So I'm excited to hear that that topic. And then our third bucket, has has to do with, you know, the the the economic reality. Right? So, Andy, you wanna speak to this? Yeah. I mean, what's old is new. Profitability and customer retention matter. I mean, they've always mattered, but in the digital space, it's become, more pronounced. And we're gonna actually talk about this particular insight with somebody from SAP in a moment. Cross channel metrics matter. Again, they've never stopped mattering, but, you you know, it's one of the things where digital always struggles because, you know, companies, especially the c suite, wants to define every p and l is different. Right? It doesn't work that way. We're gonna talk about how online affects offline and offline affects online, and there's very clear research about this. The one that's interesting is people get that online effects offline. But what they still don't seem to understand, although the research has been very current in this, is that offline actually affects online. When you open up a branch in a locale, what we've seen consistently is that the online sales in that geography actually go up directly attributable to the fact that there's an offline presence. So these do cross modify one another. But when you're looking at everything as a separate channel and you say, well, the offline has its own p and l and the online has own p and l, that's just not the way it works because customers don't work that way. And then lastly lastly here, always a a fan favorite about salespeople. You know, I can't talk about the state of b two b company without talking about salespeople. Right. But my latest take on this is that they never left, but the role has definitely changed. We'll get into that one here in a moment as well. So so not the death of the b two b salesman. Alright, Andy. Mhmm. Your research at Forrester from eight years ago or whatever. Alright. So let's, so let's let's, introduce, just kinda who's gonna be joining us. So Josh Schoonmaker, VP of product at Optimizely. We have Shereen Reid, director of product marketing at Coveo, Chris Beeson, director of digital ecommerce at Bunzl, and then Imran Shahadad. I think I said that right, Imran. Hopefully, I did. Global VP of SAP Commerce Cloud. And so we're gonna have those folks join us as we go through our, discussion today. But let's before let's frame it up a little bit, Andy. Let's talk about some key stats from the, from the report. And, why don't you walk us through these? Yeah. We're gonna choose about five or six here and try to make them as interesting as possible because graphs and charts are not a whole lot of fun, but stick with us and kinda bear with us on the inside. So number one Yeah. Is that eighty three percent of b two b organizations plan to spend more money on digital in twenty twenty four. Maybe not a huge surprise, except the number was pretty high. I must admit, we were surprised that it was this high, especially given the fact that the macroeconomy seems to be a bit in flux right now. We're over sort of what happened, with the pandemic where there was tremendous investment that took place, and sometimes you get a hangover from that. But despite that, I don't we don't see a a slowdown here. We see that it continues to increase our pace. That was from the sell side survey, and the rest of these insights are away from the buy side of the survey because that's really what's driving, B2B e commerce. So the first one, again, a bit of an eye chart here, but what are B2B buyers doing today? And what we wanna do is lift out three interesting insights. One is sixty nine percent they're going so they're gonna buy more online. Right. Again, probably not a huge surprise that people are buying more online, but still seventy percent are buying even more online. So there's again, this is why b to b ecommerce is such a big deal because there's more there's more of it. Right. More using ratings and reviews. I remember, gosh, back in the day, all these b two b companies were reluctant to use reviews. You remember that? Like, oh, we don't want any negative stuff out there. And it's like, well, first of all, it's out there. Second of all, research has shown that when you have a mixture of good and bad, obviously, more good than bad, it actually helps your credibility. The worst thing you can do is have all good. Even if it's true because nobody will believe it. And then, of course, nobody wants all bad. Right. But it's kinda settled into the zeitgeist of of the buyer and b two b, just like it did in b two c that there's good and bad about everything, and they wanna see this voraciously look at eighty percent. And the only thing this is all topped by, and we just feel like we have to bring this up again because the debate persists. It does. That's why I put it in highlight. Eighty six percent of b two b buyers said they wanna research prices online. Let me repeat that. Yeah. You know, we ninety percent of b two b buyers are researching prices online. Why is this controversial? Right. Well, because we still talk to I know I you I do. I'm sure you do as well, Brian. We still talk to b two b companies that don't wanna ship pricing online. Yes. Yeah. So you're not meeting the b two b buyers' needs if you don't have ratings or reviews. You're not showing prices online. You're likely to lose the, you know, lose lose some of those customers. I mean, I talked to my book, Andy, a couple years ago about about the age of transparency that, you know, is really here. I mean, this is this is saying that the buyer wants transparency. They've had it in consumer for a long time now. And and b two b companies just had to pay attention to this. So let's let's keep going. So so what is this this one this one was really interesting, but go ahead. This is about eliminating friction. Well, I mean, this seems kinda stands to reason too, but it's worth noting that in a series of a long list of of, of, possibilities that the number one reason about why, you know, people buy online, and they're shifting their their buying online is because it's a faster process. I mean, I bought things on Amazon in four seconds. I've never bought anything at a store in four seconds. So, say no more. Next slide. Yeah. No. It's it's it's exactly right. And where is research starting? Well, once again, we continue to see this. And I think a lot of the b two b companies don't believe us, especially distributors don't like to hear this. But I've done this research, and now you and I have done this research for years. And it's very consistent that when asked, they prefer to start their research on a brand manufacturer's website. Yep. Second now is Amazon. These are in different order, but you can see nineteen percent said Amazon. And then coming in third is industry distributors. Now I have to have the standard caveat here. It depends on the product, depends on the buyer scenario, depends on who the buyer is. There's a lot of dependencies here. But in general, number one is brand manufacturer. Number two is Amazon. We know why it's number one is brand because there's a halo effect associated with the brand. You presume that they have the best information about the product that they manufacture. Now that's not always the case. Yeah. But, you know, if Sony makes a TV Right. Or three m makes a respirator, you know, you figure they're gonna be the ones who know the most about it. So you probably wanna learn you can learn the most there. And then Amazon, plain and simple. The buyer experience is industry, you know, standard setting. Mhmm. And they have just tremendous selection, and it's a one stop shop. And there's a lot to be said for that. This is where industry distributors struggle because Amazon is basically just a mega distributor. Well, I was really, surprised to see this as the research place for, you know, Amazon. This isn't buying here. This is research. So people going to Amazon and using it as a search engine. And I think this is reflective of, the change in generations, and Gen Z and millennials now being in the buying seat. So, okay. Well, great. So so and why is Amazon beating distribution? Let's go ahead to the next slide. You know, this is another fascinating one, Andy. Just said it literally. Easiest to use mean less least amount of friction. Yep. And the broadest selection. They don't have the best customer support. They don't have the most, information about products. Let's be honest. But speed wins here. Yeah. And for the distributors, speed kills. And so this is really the the discussion they have to be having is how do we remove friction from the process, which is actually one of the things we're gonna talk about today. Yeah. Essential thesis in my book is remove friction from the process and make the buyer's job easier. Right? That's how you win. But we would be remiss, Andy, without going through this data. We have one more piece of data to share here. If we didn't talk about AI, what about AI? Check out this stat. Forty five percent. Right? Andy said, how likely would you be used generative AI answering functionality on a b to b website in order to find information? Very likely. Right? What does this say? What does this tell us? It says times have changed. I mean, I'm pretty sure this would have been close to zero, you know, as recently as it's changed for years ago, and it's moved up the chain. Now the thing is we're now starting to see reality set in. Like we said, as one of our categories, hey. Gen AI isn't all it's cracked up to be in every circumstance. It's an amazing technology, and I think the promise here is off the charts. But, you know, once we start to see things, especially in b to b where, you know, it's kind of like it's it's zero fail mission for a lot of these things. You can't have an amazing video that's just wrong. Whereas in b to c, maybe you can. Right? Because it's an amazing video. So Sure. We're gonna see this one settle in, but I have seen, and I'm sure you have seen this too. B two b companies have definitely gotten on board with Gen AI, perhaps even too much so, but they've gotten on board with it like everybody else has. Well yeah. No. And we're gonna walk so we have all this data, and then what we did was we boiled it down to these insights. So we're gonna talk through one at a time here. And then and the first one we we, is really about the need for profitability. So we wanna bring in, Imran Shah Shaddad, and he's the global vice president SAP Commerce Cloud. Imran, welcome. Hopefully, you're, you're gonna show up on our screen here. There you are. Okay. Got you. Imran, welcome. We wanna talk with you about this first, you know, key point here, which is the need for profitability, shifting focus towards customer retention. Imran, welcome. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Here. And, we wanna pick your brain on this stuff. You've been at SAP and around this industry for quite some time, and excited to have you here as a subject matter expert on this topic. So we'll just fire away with some questions. The first question, you and I had a chat about this a few days ago. You know, we talk about the economy, right, being kind of in in the state of flux in the sense that, you know, there's some conservatism going on amongst them. We saw this emerge in our in our survey as we just, described. In light of that, you know, what what are you seeing? Are your customers doubling down on digital investments like we saw earlier? And if so, what are they focusing on? Well, you can similar observations. So SAP has been observing a significant trend among, its customer stores accelerating digital transformation efforts, especially in response to the economic shifts and disruptions. Mhmm. For SAP customers are indeed doubling down on their artificial investments. This trend especially has been fueled by the need to be agile, efficient, and resilient in current certain economic times. What we have also observed is the focus not only on the top line but the bottom line, growth, consistent customer experience, as well as the digital innovation. And you and I talked about some some of the efficiencies, right, that, you've seen, companies invest in. So it's not as much about sort of the the the front end digital experiment. It's about that clearly. But at the end of the day, investments companies are making are particular around post purchase and other non front end commerce efforts, even tied into you know, I know you guys are one of the world's leading, ERP systems too. Right? So so what what specific things are you seeing invest getting invested in there? What kinds of things on the efficiency side? The way the b two b buyers and the b two b customers of ours are looking at our commerce solution is in a slightly different, context than the traditional commerce platform. Our commerce cloud solution enables our businesses to connect business processes to foster the top line and bottom line growth as I mentioned in the earlier question. Yep. But what's critical in the center of that that it connects the supply chain and the demand signals in the ERP across the value chain, for that particular transaction. And one of the ways beyond the catalog, beyond the order taking and the transaction aspect is the focus on the post transaction activities. So from a any buyer perspective, having an ability to see multiple order types, not just the web orders that we placed, but what about the EDI orders or other channel partners, that that are out there should be visible in in as a self-service portal within the commerce solutions. So use cases like exposing the invoices Mhmm. Have the ability to make payments against those invoices. With a one stop shop approach, leveraging our commerce cloud solution, with a one stop shop approach, leveraging our commerce cloud solutions is what we are seeing in from a customer's perspective. Again, with the key focus on that bottom line growth as well. So we're seeing companies thank you for that. We we're seeing companies, you know, really with all this cross cross channel, unifying the cross channel, you know, experience. Companies looking to use that to deepen their loyalty. Right? So get more out of the customers they have. And as you think about that, you know, how how does that sort of creating a consistent experience across online and offline channels help to create help to create loyalty? What have you seen? Customer experience is is the front and center. It's at the core, of of, the businesses in the current time. So just a maybe quick studies, there are about fifteen percent of b two b buyers that we observed, that don't want to speak to a salesperson from a repurchasing or reorder standpoint. Mhmm. We know more more than one third of the b two b buyers are digital natives. So experience matters. These are the users that are used to the Amazon like experience. They want that consistent experience on the on the, on the front office side of things as well as a consistent experience in the offline mode, in your brick and mortar, in your stores as well. So so to give an example, so we have a customer, Graybar, one of the largest customers in the electrical, manufacturing and distribution of the networking supplies. This company leveraged our commerce solutions to not only provide the online capability to purchase, a product, but also enable functionality like buy online and pick up in store or buy online return in store. But to enable that functionality from a buyer and the end user standpoint, there needs to be consistency not only at the product level, but also at the pricing level, inventory visibility level, and and also the aspects of maximizing the profitability. One quick example related is how the businesses are also looking at it is from different dimensions. So for example, historically, while the focus might have been in customer acquisition, And now the focus is also to making sure the profitability aspect. Mhmm. What are the triggers and levers that can be used in that space? Sourcing and optimizing the sourcing, aspect is also part of that life cycle, from the, from the transaction standpoint. If a company decides that I wanna make sure I maximize the usage of our in house logistics versus leveraging a third party logistics, They should have that capability baked into that overall, capability as well. And from SAP perspective, we offer solutions where we give the power to the businesses to define their business strategy, configure those business strategy, and leveraging those strategies in the sourcing decisions. Is it more profitable to maybe ship it and fulfill the order from the nearby store or from a warehouse, which is fifty miles away from? Right. Right. Makes sense. A lot of really good operational, you know, opportunities there for companies to drive efficiency. So well, thank you, Imran. That was, really insightful. We appreciate, your time in visiting us today. We have to get on to our our next topic, but we will see you soon. So, Andy, yeah, thank you. Any, reactions, Andy, or any any thoughts before we move to our next section? You know, I love just point about the realtor replenishment thing and the win triangle. Everybody it's only inefficiency. Right? So the customers don't wanna talk to a sales rep and who they have to pay a commission to. The company has the capability to do this faster, and the vendor says we can enable this. So it's like a triangle. It's a success triangle. Why not? Yep. It's Amazon Amazon subscribe and save for b two b. Right? Yeah. And I do think this profitability thing is is quite real. It's affecting everybody now because this always happens when there's over investment in a category. Right? Everybody says, wow. Just spend, spend, spend, worry about the numbers later. Well, later has arrived and now people are worried about the numbers. And fortunately, that's one of the things that, digital does pretty well. It can eliminate a lot of inefficiencies. Yeah. For sure. And you can see it with Amazon. We'll get to that later. Okay. Let's move on to section two. We're gonna talk about the core technology capabilities needed to be that need to be augmented to support growth. Our guest on this topic is Josh Schoonmaker, VP of product at Optimizely, another fantastic, subject matter experts we have joining us. Welcome, Josh, to the, to the webcast. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm was gonna say I'm having a great day, but, you know, we can't all be in Vegas at a conference like you are, Brian. So I may just be having an okay day compared to you. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I am you know, I'm just sitting in a hotel room. I I it really is a conference. No. But thank you. Isn't it funny too that Brian's conferences start in the evening? I don't know how that happens. Right. Yeah. My conferences are usually during the day, but I'm sure it's legit. My goodness. Have to really look at that expense report when it comes in for a master b to b on this one. Oh my goodness. So, so, Josh, you know, and and, Andy, you mentioned, you know, jump in on some of this stuff, but this is all about technology spending priorities, right, and what are the capabilities needed. But go ahead, Andy. Yeah. So, Josh, I know when we talked earlier about this, you were saying that, you're starting to see a trend here as well, which is that companies are being asked to do more with the same or more with less. And instead of going out and rip and replacing and completely wholesale changing their entire infrastructure, which is costly, time consuming, bad, bad, bad. You're saying they're trying to find ways to do more with what they already have. Tell us more about that and how you think, you know, you can go shopping in their own closet, so to speak. Yeah. So so I think this comes back to a word that's already come up a number of times on the podcast, the the the focus on profitability. And I'm gonna add another word to that, accountability. So I think part of what's happening here is there was a mad rush to be able to buy technologies. We saw AI suddenly burst in. We had a pandemic which caused everybody to buy all of this e commerce stuff. There was this need to react, to move, to get things. Fair enough. But now some years down the line, we're suddenly saying, wait a second, is the ROI panning out on that? Are we using this the way that we really need to? I think, you called it out in the beginning with what is old is new again, profitability and retention. We're suddenly saying, how are we actually gauging the investments we made against that profitability or that retention, the wallet share or the customer lifetime value that really impacts and makes that business so much more than this. So this mode of, Hey, the MarTech five thousand or ten thousand or twenty five I don't know how far they are on that, that count now, but, just grab some of those things and add it into your stack is really pulling back as people are focusing on, are we getting the most out of what we've already bought? Are we really using the things to, to make sure that they're returning not just, oh, look at how cool this is, but is it actually giving us those returns on it? So I think, I think the mindset has shifted, and really changed how we focus on, on what we're getting with technology. Well, I know you've seen a difference here too in terms of what's driving the decision making and that it's shifted away from, hey. Just buy it because we can, and we're gonna need it to, more of a a focus on KPIs and metrics, deciding what are we gonna invest in, what are we gonna deprecate. It It feels like there's a shift toward metrics. At the same time, there's a shift toward this kind of profitability ROI focus. I I think you're absolutely right on that. And interestingly, that place where we see an increase in the usage of our analytics. We bake analytics into the commerce platform we offer. That's very much something, people are using. But I I I think as we look at that shift away from let's just buy it, I'd like to bring in this idea that in B2B, sexy doesn't have the same kind of fit might in B2C. Right? In B2C, you're always looking for what's that cutting edge? What's most exciting? And I'm not saying that B2B should ignore it. Like we, we recently just integrated an LLM into our B2B search engine. So you can ask it natural language. I won't jump into that. I think Shereen's actually going to get into that topic in a big way, but but we of course need to be on top of those kind of technological evolutions. But I think what's even more important is, you threw a stat out there. Thirty six percent of buyers are buying online because they want that faster process. Boom, there is where we've got to put so much focus. And getting a faster process is not necessarily about getting the latest, greatest, most fun thing. It's about are we decreasing the number of clicks? How are we doing better lists so that people can reorder without having talked to the sales, person? Imran was saying he sees like a third of, of customers wanting to do reorders by talking to a salesperson. They might on that first order, do it to answer questions, but on reorder, they want to touch a button. And so, yeah, here, here at Optimizely, we've really focused a lot. We've got one customer, for instance, in the pet food arena, distributor for, for pet food and, and veterinary supplies. And their focus on cart speed has been amazing. They're literally watching their MPS score change based on the seconds they're cutting out of the cart. Because when you put five hundred or seven hundred items in a cart and it takes a second and a half or two seconds each, that becomes high consequence. And so the ability to really focus on some of this basic block and tackle stuff that we got used to. I mean, one more example, we had a plumbing distributor, and we're, we're talking about, Hey, look at this. Great. We've got a VMI, we've got mobile app. We've, we've got this great search. And they're like, Yeah, but quick order. We're like, Quick order? That place where you're just like looking practically at Excel spreadsheet and typing? They're like, Yeah, that's, that's where we really, really are seeing wins. We're like, Really? They're like, Yeah. Our people have the actual part number or SKU number memorized and they want to type it, press tab, type quantity, press tab, and start on the next one. They're like, get the clicks out of the way. Don't even make them touch their mouse. And that's so counterintuitive. When we do our b to c customers at Optimize that we have such a different conversation about surprise and delight and discovery. And but with B2B, there's so much focus on like, how are we actually delivering this in? And speed is a part of it. I'll finish this with also saying you brought up another stat on why am I going to Amazon? I think it was twenty four percent said it's because it's the easiest to use. And one of the things is it's not always time. There's, there's another element here, which is cognitive load. There's probably a better, fair, fair word for this, but make them have to make less decisions or think less when they're putting in their orders. These are professionals. They're ordering eight hours a day. What they need is to get in and have ease and speed to get there rather than, wow, I felt so good about that that purchase. Like, we want them to feel good, but feel good because they're effective at their job. That's so so well said, Josh. I mean, I Brian and I have talked about this before that B2B buyers are kinda like hunters, not gatherers. You know? They know what they want for the most part, and they they're not there to have an experience like they would, say, shopping for clothes or something they have a passion about. They do it for work, and they wanna get in and out quickly. And so on that note, Josh, we wanna thank you so much for joining us today. That was a fantastic, series of insights that you shared, and, we'll talk to you again soon. Yeah. Thanks, Greg. Yeah. No. I'm excited to hear from Chris next who is actually a customer who focused on distribution could talk about the specifics of this. So thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Josh. You know, Andy, it's, it's I mean, the theme is so clear, and I put this in my book years ago. It's all about efficiency. Make the buyer's job easier. Exactly the, you know, the tabbing and, you know, avoiding the clicks, perfect. You know? Yeah. We tend to get caught up in the latest shiny object, but end of the day, this is really practical. And, you know, Amazon, as as Josh was saying, is, you know, is does this so well, and it's it's easing cognitive dissonance or whatever he said. That was great. There's a lot of effort that goes into this. I mean, if you talk to people at Amazon, they will tell you we spend a lot of time just removing road bumps, roadblocks along the way, and they're not major trends. It's about just removing friction in the process. But one of my favorite aphorisms, and it's so true, is that it is hard to make things easy. Yes. Right. It's they say it's easier to write a long book than a short one. I don't know what that means because my book's pretty long. But That's another webcast. That's another one. Alright. We're gonna talk Amazon because Amazon is such a, you know, a big behemoth now in the b two b sector. Amazon shows that customers prize frictionless buying experience. That's our third section here. Twenty nine percent of our respondents said they had typically make their work purchases on Amazon. That's higher than brand manufacturer websites or distributor websites. So Amazon is leading the way here, and we have a great guest we're bringing in. This is Chris Beason. Welcome, Chris, director of digital and ecommerce at Bunzl. Chris, you and I, you know, have done a lot of work together on your Amazon program through my firm in Ciba, and really excited that you could join us today to talk firsthand about what you're seeing. Welcome, Chris. Thank you for having me. Awesome. So, so, Chris, you know, you and I chatted a bit, you know, ahead of this. Just a couple questions. We'd love to get your input on. You know, first, you know, how have you you know, how is the increased prominence of Amazon, you know, an Amazon business now with forty billion dollars in revenue a year? You know, how has that changed the strategy your go to market strategy at Bunzl? Yeah. I mean, the rise of Amazon and Amazon business has certainly impacted, our go to market strategy. No doubt Amazon continues to raise the bar in terms of customer expectations. Yep. So as Bunzl looks ahead and and, works to keep pace with the ever changing, ever evolving customer expectations, we've made some significant investments in our capabilities, starting with with our ecommerce platform. So we've, selected Optimizely as that, platform. And we continue to invest in evolving our website, features, functionality so that we are delivering a best in class customer experience. At the end of the day, it's it's our goal to make it as easy as possible for our customers to do business with us, and we want to meet our customers wherever they are in their digital journey. Beyond ecommerce and our ecommerce platform investments, we are doubling down on product content. Yeah. We have resources dedicated to creating best in class product content, product data. We've invested in PIM to to manage that process as well as, efficiently distribute that product data across the digital shelf. We feel as a manufacturer, it's up to us to really own that, and it's in our best interest to do so. It's going by by being able to distribute that content across the digital shelf, it's going to help not only drive consistency, for our brand, but also drive discoverability and ultimately sales. Right. Including, of course, on Amazon as a part of that strategy. Right? Absolutely. So so Bunzl, and for those who don't know who are listening in, Bunzl is a very large company. You guys are global, I think, fifteen, twenty billion dollar both manufacturer and distributor. In fact, I think you started mainly as a distributor out of UK. Is that is that accurate, Chris? I believe so. I don't don't quote me on that, though. Yep. Okay. So so, you know, Bunzl's a, you know, a company that has a lot of, ways to go to market. And when you think about that and and it's it's you know, think about, you know, one of the key concerns that a lot of companies hear about Amazon is that for its potential to cause channel conflict. So you own these brands, a lot of safety brands. I know that's kind of your part of Bunzl. You know, the company, you know, obviously as a manufacturer of those brands goes to market with traditional distribution. But then you've got Amazon in the mix, and you're also a distributor yourself. So how have you approached the challenge of managing channel conflict? And, you know, if some of it is inevitable, you know, to some degree, you know, do the benefits of Amazon outweigh the cost? Could you speak a little bit to to channel conflict? Yeah. Absolutely. So channel conflict was certainly a concern early on in our journey. Channel conflict is real. Oftentimes the the fear of channel conflict is stronger than the actual reality. Right. And, but what we found was it was super helpful in engaging our customers, being transparent, bringing them in to our Amazon strategy. Listen, Amazon's the number one product search engine. And when we started looking into Amazon, we noticed that we had several of our products already selling on the channel. Yep. And half the time, we didn't know who these resellers were. Our our product content was, subpar. The data was inaccurate. Pricing was all over the place. So for us, it was, just as much about gaining some control over our brand on the marketplace as it was about driving brand experience in sales. So, again, just bringing our customers into that conversation was helpful in mitigating some of that conflict. The other side of that too is, price, competition is often driving channel conflict. So having clear pricing policies and online reseller agreements is also very helpful in mitigating some of that conflict. Yeah. So, I mean, I know that you've you've experienced some nice growth from the channel, you know, in in working directly with you. I guess at the end of the day, you know, we think about the frictionless nature of commerce now. I mean, just maybe could you comment on, you know, what Amazon does well there? And have you learned things for your own ecommerce from that from that process? Yeah. I mean, Amazon, I think, just the the breadth of their catalog, is is is impressive. It's something that, yeah, we've we've been, you know, focusing on as well. You know, we wanna make sure that we we include, more of our product assortment across the channel. Obviously, content is a big focus as well. Some of these manufacturers coming, you know, overseas are have, you know, done an incredible job as it relates to the the product content and really has, you know, risen the bar there. So that's that's obviously, you know, driven some of the focus internally for for our business. Yeah. It's amazing to me. I you know, you and I talk about this, and you consistently see new competitors across all different kinds of industries coming into compete on Amazon and take advantage of that frictionless experience because the the buyers are now trusting the channel. I think the stat is sixty five percent of buyers trust Amazon, and they'll buy from a brand that they'd never heard of. Sixty five percent of people will do that because because they trust the channel, because it's frictionless, because they're an Amazon native. So, well, Chris, you know, this has been really great. Thank you for your insights, and we appreciate you joining us today and spend some time. Thank you so much. Alright. So, Andy, any any thoughts or reactions to what Chris said? Well, this is like a a commercial for your other business and see Right. That is. Right. Yes. Little self serving. I know. Well, no. I mean I mean this honestly because as Chris just pointed out, selling at Amazon competing on Amazon, being on Amazon requires product data, pricing data, a whole host of things. You can't just wake up one morning and go, let's sell on Amazon. Right. You need to get your ducks in a row. And I think Chris's point was I think he he said it eloquently. You know, we've had all of these problems. Our brand was a mess. Our product pricing was insufficient. That a is a really critical component here. So go in eyes wide open, sign on Amazon. But do so to the extent you can, but you gotta have the right data and pricing to make it happen. Yeah. I think you can leverage those things in other channels too as you as you learn from Amazon. And as you build that content, you can use it in your own ecommerce. Okay. So next, we're gonna talk about site search. And site search, folks, is in a state of flux thanks to our friend, generative AI. So massive number, eighty six percent of B2B buyers said they would be very or somewhat likely to use chat GPT on a website to help them find information. So we have a great industry leader here, Shareen Reed, director of product marketing at Coveo, one of the leading search solutions out there, to comment on this. Welcome, Shareen. Hi. Thanks for having me, and I'm, absolutely happy to weigh in here on one of my favorite topics to talk about. Sweet. Awesome. Andy, take it away. Yeah. So, Shareen, tell us a little bit about you said one of the things that frustrates you is that people confuse AI and gen AI. So why don't you tell us about your take on the difference between those two things? Sure. No problem. First off, I I just wanna add though that, you know, I'm not extremely surprised by the data that you're sharing here because we've done our own commissioned research, and we see similar responses coming directly from consumers. So, like, three quarters expect their experiences to evolve with Gen AI. So, you know, it's it's very much aligned from what you see on the b to b side. So happy to add that in. So yeah. So we need to try to take a step back and really look at AI and Gen AI because you really can't use them interchangeably. And I wanna avoid confusion. So when we talk about AI being used in product discovery, it's not new. Right? It's been around for a long time. We've all experienced it. We would go to, a a site and we type in that search box. We get suggestions that pop up. That's machine learning, part of AI. When you have results page and they're all ranked in a certain relevance order as they call it, that's machine learning working in the background. If you're on a product detail page or you add something to your cart and you get recommendations based on a whole bunch of algorithms, algorithmic models behind the scenes that are looking at what you're doing on the site, what you've selected, and then are recommending other products. So putting that into, you know, the AI bucket, if we wanna look at now Gen AI and what everybody has gotten excited about, which is a little bit different in the last year or so. It's around breakthroughs in really law the context of large language models. And so so the ability to not only understand a natural language question, like the long question that you put in the search box, not like two or three words, but also to be able to generate a fairly on point response and one that's kind of human like. Right? And of course, it's it's cool to no longer just be given, let's say, a document or an extract from a document, but the actual it actually creates content, right, in the form of text or images or videos. And people are excited, I think, about this because they probably already experimented firsthand with chat g GPT, and they see the potential there. Right? So I I think that that's what I want to highlight in terms of the difference between AI and GenAI. Do we wanna dive into maybe where we think that there's value in b two b now in terms I wanna ask you one question before that. I used a term, when we talked before that I really like called the intent box. You said it's really not the search box anymore. It's the intent box. Can you share with us what you mean by that? Yeah. Sure. So, search isn't going away. It it it's becoming that when you go to a site, it's almost there. It's the only place that you can actually capture what person's looking for. Right? Because they're they're letting you know right then and there. Am I looking for, you know, a size twelve safety boot? If you take an example of of, Chris that was just on on the call before. Or do I wanna know, you know, how does thickness matter when it comes to safety gloves? Like, that those are two very different intents. And you don't wanna you you wanna be able to respond to them adequately in both scenarios. One is more act asking, you know, expects more of a product kind of, experience where you're gonna see products, maybe get get some relevant fastening or filtering going on there, automatically show me, you know, size ten. And then the other one is more like an answer or question around what the product attributes are and and what I need to look for. Yeah. So you're saying that that AI and Gen AI really serve different functions at different places in the buyer journey. So there's the browsing sort of education phase, and then there's, of course, the the buying phase. And you're saying that there are roles that, say, Jennie can play at various points along the way. Do you wanna share a few examples or tell us a little more about that? Yeah. Absolutely. And it picks up on the theme again that that we were all just discussing around efficiency and and and getting to what you need as quickly as possible. Right? So if you have a returning customer, for example, that, you know, they simply wanna reorder or they have a specific part number, they wanna enter it into the search box. They wanna get the right product suggested to them with with also, you know, the availabilities and probably their own specific custom pricing displayed right there. They wanna add to cart and get on with their jet. Gen AI, maybe not so so helpful in that scenario. Do you really wanna put a chatbot in front of that person and have them enter a question and then wait to get some kind of generated answer? Probably not. Because you're going to aggravate them, right, more than anything. However, on the other end of the spectrum, if you have a new customer or maybe, you know, a current customer even so, but that's coming to your site to do research. So they need to understand information about those products. That's an opportunity for GenAI. Right? And it's also, I think, a big opportunity to differentiate versus your competitors. If you're able to offer that education, because now you have a captive, audience there that's not only looking for education, but probably then looking to buy right after they they are informed. Caveat, of course, is that you have to have the content, not just the product content, but the educational type content that can be leveraged to answer those questions. So things like, you know, product guides, articles, how to videos, might even have, you know, spec documents. All of these can be used to generate answers that are specific to your business and to your products. And it goes beyond that. So we've talked about maybe education, purchase, but there's support. That's a big part of that journey as well. Right? Post post purchase support. And that's where we've already seen value from our customers that have deployed this. So you take a case in point, one of our customers zero that I can share, like, the twenty percent less case submitted, just by offering up generated answers versus just, you know, a snippet of a specific document or a link to a document where you can go and and look for the answer yourself. Sharina, is that within the search box? Is that actually within the oh, should I say a tent box? Is where It's intent more of intent box because you enter what you want, it generates the answer, but it also has it has citations where you can go and verify those answers. And it also has the search results below it. And it also has your filtering and facets, which is important because maybe it's a specific context you want to apply or filter the information out. So that's really important too when, deploying something like this. Well, I think you make an excellent point about the role of Gen AI. It feels to me a bit like search is sort of like getting an answer. Gen AI is about more having a conversation. Sometimes you wanna get an answer and you don't want a conversation. Sometimes you want a conversation and and hope to get an answer. I think there's a role for both. But, hey, Shereen. Thanks so much for joining us today. Fantastic conversation. And, I look forward to talking again here soon. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Awesome. Andy, you know, again, the theme of making the buyer's job easier carries through here. And I you know, to me, there's it's not an either or. Right? It's not is ChatGPT gonna replace site search? Right? It's it's, it's really as Shereen just mentioned, it's it's a convergence of these things and is using the tools together. And I like the way you characterized it with conversation versus, you know, you know, versus intent to buy or find something specific. It's, it's great. I I I Coveo intent intent box. That's great. That's such a good that before. Sreen brought that one up. I'm like, that's that's a good way to phrase it because you know? And in fact, I always thought search was kind of the wrong word because I don't wanna search. I'm gonna find. Right. But find never caught on, and I heard people talking about findability that people still toss that term around. But for some reason, search stuck. But I do think this Gen AI thing maybe shifts it a bit. Yep. But, yeah, I I think she makes a great point about the intent. That's really what you're there to measure. That's right. Well, we got a couple more things we wanna cover, folks. A couple other sections we wanna talk through. And so Andy and I, are gonna keep, driving through some of this. So let's go ahead and bring up the next slide and talk about, you know, some of today's, you know, the metrics and some other things. So buyer expect experience drives everything. Expectations continue to rise. You know, I've been saying, you know, for years, Annie, I I mentioned age of transparency. It's here. And our our our results show this, you know, greater than ever. I mean, for example, displaying prices has an impact on conversion rate. Sixty two percent of buyers say their companies are asking them to move, you know, these lower consideration replenishment orders to the online channel. So we've got, you know, the nuts and bolts, and and and, frankly, a lot of b two b companies still don't have that right. Well, I love that stat you just shared. And we didn't share it earlier, so I'm glad you bought it up, but the sixty two percent asking them to shift to another channel because, you know, for lower consideration replenishment and reorder stuff, you don't need all the bells and whistles. And, to Shireen's point earlier, you know, you you may just not even wanna you want a a frictionless path to an answer. And I think what we've learned, and and it varies from industry to industry, replenishment numbers are pretty high as a percentage of the total volume of sales they do. Yep. In other industries, it's lower, so it's gotta be circumstantial here. But if you're an industry where there's a high percentage of replacement and reorder volume business. Yep. All that stuff needs to be coming through the online channel. I can't tell how many times I've heard when I did the death of a BDB salesman research. I had companies say, no, we want them to talk to our sales reps when they're reordering and doing replenishment stuff. And because that touch is what separates us. And I'm like, have you ever asked the customers where they care about that or That's right. That's exactly right. Alright. So this next one here is, no. Great point. The we you know, you and I, Andy, we we sit here in amazement and disbelief at the number of brand manufacturers. If you just go back a little bit there, Gabe, to what we're just talking about, that, that will not come to grips with their channel conflict concerns. Manufacturers, you, you know, customer doesn't care. Manufacturers need to accommodate that, the end distributors. They need to accommodate the buyers need. They don't care about your channel conflict. They're for they're foregoing incremental revenue by not and then moving beyond this. We Coveo beyond this in b to c ages ago. If you were selling a a shirt or or footwear or fashion apparel, you know, you'd expect as a retail and I worked in retail. You know? Then we're talking about twenty years ago at PacSun almost. We would we would expect our brands to be selling online. We would expect them to. They weren't. We didn't even carry the brand because they weren't doing a good enough job being present in the market. It's here in b two b. Manufacturers had to be selling, you know, and and moving beyond these concerns. What do you think, Andy? It's a multidimensional problem. There's no easy answer to it. It's as much will as it is anything else. But, you know, I've written about this extensively. My research, a brand new day in b two b, talked about this. The big insight to me about this was that the manufacturers were have been forfeiting up they've been opportunity cost is missed here because, you know, we know that distributors and the channel specialize in selling and servicing products. And for brand manufacturers, traditionally, that has always worked. Great. Right. That doesn't that's not in threat here. What is a threat though is when you do a Google search or you go to Amazon and you type in the name of a product, what do you expect to see other than a site or the brand itself? Right. So this is where the conflict begins, which is if I'm searching for a brand, why would I go to a channel site? I would, in fact especially if I wanna learn more about the product. So this puts a a new burden on brand manufacturers that many of them, I don't think, have sort of rationalized yet. They still think of it in terms of we make, they sell. But what upended the whole process was the interactivity of the web. Right. When I start searching for a brand, because I know the brand, I kind of expect to go see a brand. And so the brands are the ones that have to step up here that have been reluctant to do so. Amazon has kind of wedged itself in the middle here because Amazon has now said, we'll be your your distributor. So it's increased the channel conflict, but brands have gotta sell some of this stuff direct because they're creating a bad experience if they don't. Yeah. I agree with you, and I think brands have to, for example, make sure they're represented on these channels because I I always say manufacturers can't control and shouldn't try to control the channel preferences of the b to b buyer. Stop it. You you know, just accommodate where they wanna where they wanna show shop, look, buy, research, etcetera. Okay. We have two more to cover here quickly, Andy, for the sake of time. Cross channel metrics. You know, listen. You know, they just they they they matter, and and the metrics are falling short on capturing ROI because it is cross channel. Right? The influence, between online and offline, we cited it earlier. B two b leaders, they have to be working with their finance teams to be able to measure this in a in a meaningful way. And so we talked about this earlier. And then and then the last one, wanna talk start a stat two quick stat Throw a stat out. Go ahead. I'm stats guy. So fifty four percent of b two b buyers research half or more of their purchases online before buying offline. Okay. Right. Yeah. That kinda stands to reason. It's easy. People are doing it. Twenty seven percent of b two b buyers research half of more of their purchases offline before then buying online. That is something that I guarantee the vast majority of people do not expect or understand or appreciate. So you know what? If you if you disconnect, separate these channels, do so at your own peril because that statistic actually proves that they are interconnected. Yeah. No no question. So this is a tough one, and I know we talk a lot about these at our round tables and our summit and such that that cross channel attribution thing. So, ongoing, and I think it's gonna continue to be a theme. And the last, of course, of our, categories of salespeople, hey. They never left, but the role has changed. Forty one percent of buyers say they prefer not to interact with a sales representative. Imran shared some other good stats earlier in our conversation. AI chatbots are playing a role here as we just talked about. So any any, final thoughts on this one, Andy? Well, it's always been a complex picture. And in fact, what we've seen pretty consistently is that some percent of the people wanna talk to salespeople even more, probably a highly considered purchase. And by the way, the salespeople are now armed. They're enabled with technology. So you're not just talking to Bob, the sales guy. You're talking to Bob, the sales guy with an army of information or information resources behind him, including things that can help you size, fit, price, etcetera. So it's a digitally enabled version of a sales rep at a minimum. But we still continue to see, especially younger generations who don't wanna talk to sales reps at all under any circumstances because they don't wanna talk on the phone. Sixty eight percent wanna gather information alone on their own before, talking or interacting with the sales rep. So they're starting their research on their own. And depending on the quality of the resources, they can always end that on their own too. So there is a role for the sales rep. It again, that's why we said the role has shifted. Maybe it's a little bit more down funnel now. Hey. Before I make that purchase, I wanna just gut check it with somebody. Or, hey. I did some research, but I there are some pieces that are missing. But the role of the rep used to be the primary source, the first source. Now it's it's a role that fits in at various points on the customer journey, which is a different role. No question. Alright. Well, folks, you know, those are our those are our observations, and you can download the report. The twenty twenty four state of b two b ecommerce is available on our website, master b two b dot com forward slash twenty twenty four state of ecommerce report. Put a dash in between these of those words, and you'll get to our, report. It is free. Thank you again to our sponsors, Optimizely, Coveo, and SAP who partnered with us in this, and were a guest here, today that that they all did a fabulous job along with Chris from, from Bunzl. So thank you everyone for joining us. Any other final comments, Andy, before we wrap for the day? Love doing the state of b two b commerce report and generating the insights. It was helpful to remind ourselves this world we live in, and this is a rapidly changing but massive b to b market, that is got some people who are very far along and some people who are not quite so far along. And, we love helping both. So great to be here again. Yeah. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, everyone, for joining. We'll see you next time.