B2B companies constantly ask where they stand in digital maturity and what to do next. The Master B2B digital maturity model provides a practical framework for answering both questions. Four practitioners shared their actual scores across four dimensions and revealed what they learned about closing gaps.
The four dimensions of digital maturity
The model measures companies across four dimensions. Digital tools covers technology infrastructure, from inventory availability to personalization to core commerce platforms. Team culture examines organizational readiness, including senior leadership engagement and sales team adoption. Customer experience assesses buyer-facing functionality like ordering, payments, and assistive features. Data and insights evaluates analytics capability, KPIs, and the use of AI and machine learning.
Companies score from stage one (starter) through stage four (advanced) in each dimension. Stage one companies often fear e-commerce, face internal channel conflict, and view data as a cost center. Stage four companies have CEOs driving digital strategy, clean data integrated across systems, and real-time operations that prescriptively anticipate customer needs.
Digital tools: Zoro’s near-perfect score
Andy Goodfellow, CTO of Zoro, scored nearly perfect across digital tools. Zoro is a billion-dollar division of Grainger that doubled revenue in five years. As a digital-first company born in the cloud, Zoro built capabilities required for scale: proprietary availability software, transparent pricing, advanced personalization, and cloud-native infrastructure.
If we did not have the digital tooling, we could not scale to the size that we scale at right now, much less aspire to in the future. Digital tools are a thing for us.
Andy Goodfellow, Zoro
When asked where companies should start, Goodfellow recommended beginning with whatever creates value for customers. If a customer searches for gloves, show them disposable gloves if they are a dentist, not cut-resistant gloves meant for machinists. Invest in search and personalization that makes the customer’s job easier. The revenue that follows enables further investment.
The key mind shift is viewing technology as a value driver rather than a cost center or risk. Until that shift happens, companies remain stuck at earlier stages regardless of investment.
Team culture: Ergodyne’s practical application
Teresa Kuske, digital marketing director at Ergodyne, scored stage three overall but demonstrated how to use the model as a practical tool. She exported the assessment to Excel, added weights and impact priorities, then had leadership score it independently. Disagreements became discussion points.
The exercise led to creating a cross-functional change management team with IT, finance, and digital leadership. The team will address legacy system upgrades and AI initiatives that require organization-wide coordination.
On profitability expectations, Kuske explained that Ergodyne stopped favoring particular channels. Rather than pushing customers toward e-commerce for better margins, they leveled terms and conditions across channels to see where customers naturally wanted to purchase. Efficiency gains from digital remain, but the priority is serving customers however they prefer.
We really want to service the customer however they want to purchase. If that means they would rather purchase through our customer service team, then so be it.
Teresa Kusky, Ergodyne
Sales team adoption remains a work in progress. Some tools see strong adoption while others face resistance, particularly legacy CRM systems that lack investment. The 1.5 score on sales team adoption reflected this split reality.
Customer experience: Normet’s gaps and opportunities
Pekka from Normet, a Finnish manufacturer of tunnel mining equipment, scored stage two overall. The company excels at connected equipment and predictive services based on fleet data but lacks assistive features like chat functionality.
The assessment revealed that Normet had been so focused on certain capabilities that they missed others. Customers want support in real time when problems arise. Without chat or similar features, the experience falls short even when product data and ordering work well.
Payment options presented another gap. Normet operates invoice-only, which creates barriers for customers who want to purchase immediately but cannot arrange internal procurement. Larger enterprise customers are requesting punchout capabilities that Normet has not yet implemented.
Customer procurement processes also create friction. Even when Normet offers advanced capabilities, some customers have outdated purchasing workflows that prevent them from taking advantage. The maturity challenge extends beyond sellers to buyers.
Data and insights: Dawn Foods and the hardest dimension
Gireesh Sahukar, VP of digital at Dawn Foods, scored stage two overall despite having over 50% of revenue flowing through e-commerce. Data and insights is the hardest dimension because data remains messy and siloed across most organizations.
Dawn Foods uses AI for demand planning and forecasting, determining what to manufacture, when, and where to position inventory closest to customers. Machine learning powers product recommendations that change from session to session based on customer activity and transaction history.
Yet KPIs remain at stage one. Dawn Foods still measures e-commerce the same way as offline business. Digital-specific metrics require years of hypothesis testing before they become reliable enough to set as KPIs. The company spent two years measuring on-time-and-full fulfillment before establishing it as an official target.
We have to value the digital aspects of our business differently than our offline business. There is no data there in offline. There is no predictive nature to that offline business.
Gireesh Sahukar, Dawn Foods
The state of data also scored low because cleaning data is a multi-year journey. Even well-run organizations with sophisticated digital operations struggle to achieve the clean, integrated data that enables stage four capabilities.
Key insights across all dimensions
Several themes emerged across all four practitioner interviews. First, customer focus must drive investment decisions. Every panelist mentioned starting with what creates value for customers rather than internal processes.
Second, CEO engagement is essential for stage four maturity. Companies cannot reach advanced stages with leadership that passively supports digital rather than actively driving it. The C-suite must make hard decisions about investment and organizational change.
Third, data and insights consistently underperforms relative to other dimensions. Even companies with strong digital tools and customer experience struggle to measure digital differently and build reliable KPIs.
Fourth, the maturity model works as a practical tool. Multiple practitioners used it to spark internal discussions, identify gaps, and form cross-functional teams. The assessment creates a common language for conversations about digital investment priorities.
Fifth, composable commerce architecture enables faster progress. The ability to test hypotheses quickly, swap components, and scale successful experiments without massive implementations helps companies move through maturity stages faster than those locked into monolithic systems.