The 2025 State of B2B eCommerce Report draws on a survey of B2B eCommerce practitioners fielded in January 2025, along with in-depth executive interviews. The clearest finding this year is that many B2B companies are held back less by technology than by a shortage of senior leadership with real digital experience, which then limits the headcount and specialized roles needed to keep pace.
The digital culture gap is still the hardest problem
When practitioners ranked their most significant challenges, the top answer was the most fundamental one: migrating the business from analog-centric to digital-centric and growing revenue through digital channels. After two decades of digital commerce, a cultural barrier still keeps many B2B companies from embracing digital the way most of their B2C counterparts did years ago.
The next challenges followed the same thread. Practitioners cited managing product, inventory and customer data, improving the customer experience, and obtaining leadership and cross-functional buy-in for digital investments. Underneath all of them is the difficulty of getting clean data into the hands of customer-facing teams and the digital tools meant to improve the purchase experience.
Our take: now is a good time for open conversations with senior leaders about how they view digital in the business. Most digital practitioners are already true believers, so the work is in listening to skeptical leaders, understanding their concerns, and building trust over time rather than pushing harder.
To raise digital maturity, teams need more digital maturity
More than 40% of execs said the most senior business leader in their organization has little or no digital experience, with 31% saying little and 9% saying none. Only 26% described that leader as having extensive digital experience. The picture lower in the organization was similar. More than 40% said their company has very few or no employees in specialized digital roles, relying instead on people juggling digital work alongside non-digital responsibilities.
Our take: there is no easy path to digital maturity when neither the C-suite nor the day-to-day team has digital experience. Senior digital leaders in these companies need to commit to a persistent education of the C-suite. Without leaders who understand the value of digital, companies will struggle to mature quickly enough to meet rising customer expectations.
AI tops the trend list, but it is not alone
Asked which trends will have the most significant impact on B2B commerce over the next three to five years, 89% of practitioners selected AI and machine learning for the digital customer experience. Omnichannel experience and AI for real-time inventory and supply chain visibility tied next at 52% each. Amazon growth and innovation came in lower than expected at 27%, which is striking given how long Amazon has been applying exactly those capabilities at scale.
Our take: the companies pulling ahead are clear about where they can outperform Amazon. One Master B2B member who runs marketing and digital for Grasshopper Mowers sells aftermarket parts on Amazon, but offers those same parts at a lower price with same-day delivery through the dealer network. Knowing where you are uniquely positioned to provide a better experience is part of thinking through real-time inventory and omnichannel.
The skills that matter complement AI
When we asked an open-ended question about the skills critical for B2B commerce success, AI and machine learning ranked high, but it did not stand alone. Data analytics, critical thinking and problem solving, change management, and customer experience and empathy showed up strongly, and analytical skills collectively outweighed AI on its own.
Our take: leaders do not see AI as an autonomous system that ingests data and produces output without human judgment. They expect analytical people to guide both the inputs and the outputs. That marks a shift away from hiring for task execution and toward hiring people who can analyze response data, build segments, and direct AI tools toward outcomes that match the analysis.
Gain alignment before buying technology
Budget remains the headline constraint. 59% of execs named budget constraints as their biggest challenge in making tech purchasing decisions, followed by aligning business priorities with technology capabilities at 49%, demonstrating ROI at 41%, and aligning priorities across departments at 38%. Only 11% pointed to limited technical expertise and only 8% to evaluating vendor offerings, which surprised us given how often Forum members say it is hard to tell competing products apart.
Our take: alignment comes from making sure as many teams as possible are represented in the buying process, organized as a senior group that meets periodically to review key decisions. Only 31% of respondents said finance leadership was part of that group. If proving ROI is a challenge, bringing finance in from the start helps clear up whether an investment will pay off.
Product findability leads the 2025 investment list
Site search and recommendations was the top technology investment priority for 2025 at 43%, followed closely by PIM and product content management tools at 41%, ERP deployment and back-end integration at 39%, and commerce platforms at 35%. As SKU catalogs grow in depth and breadth, practitioners need better search so buyers can find products quickly, and they need clean product data feeding it.
Commerce leaders largely underestimate the power of building good data governance and centralizing product information.
Master B2B member
Our take: digital leaders should expect a growing number of questions like, “Why do you need more money for search? Can’t AI just do that for us?” Anyone asking for significant search investment needs a clear story for the C-suite about how AI factored into the decision.
Integration complexity is becoming the real cost
Two-thirds of practitioners (67%) named ensuring compatibility between systems as a top integration challenge, with managing data consistency across tools close behind at 63%. High implementation costs (46%) and limited internal expertise (43%) rounded out the list. Once a company reaches a critical mass of different tools, integrating and maintaining them demands time, money, and people beyond what many can budget.
When you join 30 or 40 solutions to become one suite, there is one big winner … system integrators.
Mariano Gomide, founder and Co-CEO, VTEX
Our take: companies that keep investing in new technology should hire at least a business analyst who works with the digital team to define which requirements truly matter, and to do so on an ongoing basis rather than once. A strong foundation lets a company add tools without breaking what already works.
B2B buyers want vendors to solve B2B-specific problems
Many of the integration headaches B2B practitioners face are shared with B2C. What sets B2B apart shows up in the specific functionality they ask for: improved LTL freight calculation based on order value, more flexible quoting, shipping costs based on cart dimensions and weight, real-time customizable pricing, and true parent-to-child account hierarchies that tie orders to ship-to locations rather than individual customers. Many also want business users to be able to change the site, front-end and back-end, without waiting on scarce technical resources.
Our take: buyers will not accept B2C software that lacks core B2B functionality, nor B2B-centric tools that lack B2C-grade customer experience. The harder gap to close is the missing B2B functionality, which requires vendors to invest specifically in the B2B market and staff with people who understand it. For providers willing to hyper-focus on B2B, a large market is open.