Based on Episode 153 of The Hard Truth B2B Commerce Podcast
For more than a decade, B2B organizations have invested heavily in digital commerce platforms, ERP upgrades, and CRM systems. And yet, one stubborn problem refuses to go away: customer adoption.
Across manufacturing and distribution, it’s still common to see organizations doing hundreds of millions in revenue with only 2–5% of orders flowing through digital channels. Teams assume adoption will come naturally once features are live. Sales reps default back to ERP screens they dislike but know. Customers continue emailing, calling, or texting orders despite “modern” portals being available.
The problem is not your tech stack. It’s an experience that the industry continues to underestimate.
Based on years of working directly with manufacturers and distributors, I’ve come to the conclusion that if B2B leaders want digital commerce to deliver ROI, adoption must be treated as the primary challenge, not an afterthought.
Most organizations don’t intentionally design against adoption. They just design from the wrong starting point.
A common pattern looks like this:
Then adoption stalls, sales teams fear cannibalization, leaders struggle to quantify ROI, and ERP-centric processes feel too entrenched to change. Digital becomes “a channel” instead of the operating layer of your business.
The deeper issue is cultural. Many B2B organizations still view commerce as a side system — something customers might use, rather than the primary interface through which work gets done.
Until that mindset changes, adoption will always lag.
One of the most revealing conversations I’ve had recently was with sales reps at a manufacturer running a modern cloud ERP. They had plenty of complaints about the system, slow order entry, poor search, cumbersome workflows. At the same time, they were surprisingly positive about the company’s eCommerce platform. That contrast matters.
ERP systems are critical. They are systems of record that manage inventory, accounting, manufacturing logic, and compliance. But they were never designed to be experience layers for customers or sales teams.
Commerce platforms and CRMs, on the other hand, are built for interaction. They are faster to change, easier to extend, and supported by large ecosystems of integrations. Do you want a better search? Better workflows? Faster experimentation? That’s where these platforms excel.
The opportunity many organizations miss is this:
Rather than forcing customers and sales teams to work inside ERP-driven workflows, organizations should let commerce and CRM platforms define the experience, with ERP operating quietly in the background.
One of the fastest ways to expose adoption problems is also one of the most uncomfortable: require that every order flows through the commerce platform, even if sales reps place it on behalf of customers. This practice will help detect friction in the customer journey.
When all orders go through commerce, you might discover the following issues:
Instead of guessing why customers don’t adopt digital, teams see exactly where the experience breaks down — because they feel the pain themselves.
Organizations that have done this successfully often start small:
The goal is to learn and continue enhancing the workflows. You will see immediate results in faster orders, cleaner data, better upsell opportunities.
One of the most overlooked steps in B2B commerce programs is also the simplest: ask customers what would help them buy more.
Stop assuming or running generalized surveys. Engage in conversations with your customers.
Ask them directly:
They usually give remarkably clear answers.
In many cases, leadership teams discover that features prioritized internally don’t map to the obstacles customers actually face. Fixing the right five things often delivers more impact than shipping twenty new capabilities nobody asked for.
Customers may hesitate to be brutally honest with vendors. This is why third-party interviews can be especially effective. Create a safe space for the hard truths to come out.
McKinsey research consistently shows the following split in B2B buying preferences:
However, most manufacturers and distributors optimize almost entirely for the last group. This imbalance explains adoption struggles.
Customer-centric commerce doesn’t mean forcing everyone online. It means supporting all three modes within a unified experience. Buyers should be able to start digitally, escalate to a human instantly, and move between channels without friction.
When digital only works for “simple” orders, customers quickly learn when not to use it.
Across organizations that successfully increase digital adoption, several patterns repeat.
They invest in:
None of these ideas is futuristic. The technology already exists. What’s missing is urgency and prioritization.
When adoption is low, it’s rarely because customers don’t want digital. It’s because the experience doesn’t align with how they buy.
AI is already reshaping B2B commerce. The most promising applications today:
AI’s real value is getting buyers to the right humans faster, with better context.
In B2B, time lost is trust lost.
Customer adoption usually fails because it’s treated as a downstream outcome instead of a first-order objective.
When organizations understaff marketing and IT, underinvest in experience design, and expect platforms to drive behavior on their own, they get predictably negative results.
The companies that win treat commerce as a customer experience layer, not a channel.
You should design backward from how buyers operate today — not how systems were built twenty years ago.
Customer adoption isn’t the final step in B2B commerce transformation, but it’s the test that proves whether the transformation actually happened.
If you want to explore how experience-first commerce strategies drive measurable adoption and ROI across manufacturing and distribution, Zaelab’s work with B2B organizations offers a practical blueprint for what comes next.
See the full episode:
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