Each month we go in-depth into topics discussed in one of the Master B2B Boardrooms, our monthly roundtables for B2B ecommerce executives.

What we heard in the Boardrooms:

We’ve had struggles implementing the new ecommerce platform that we’ve selected.  We went into this project excited about what a new platform would allow us to do – how it would offer us new ways to grow our business. But we were unpleasantly surprised by how difficult the implementation has been.  We knew that getting the buy-in for the project and securing the budget would be difficult, but we’ve heard so much about how modern ecommerce platforms can handle the needs of B2B eCommerce teams like ours.  We’ve been shocked by how difficult it is to get the admittedly complex B2B commerce functionality built correctly.

Why that matters:

For manufacturers going through their first steps in the digital transformation process, building an ecommerce site (or upgrading from a years-old homegrown system) is often one of the first steps.  We say “one” of the first steps, because changing the company mindset is the first step (and also the middle steps and in the steps after you go live, and then after that, and after that…)  If there are missteps with the implementation, it leaves the door open for the naysayers internally to start making noises about how they knew the company wasn’t ready to make this kind of change.

Implementing a new platform feels like a technology project, but it’s really a change management project.

What to do about it:

We saw a number of fingers in the Master B2B Boardrooms being pointed straight in the direction of their system implementation (SI) partners.  We’ve seen a shift over the years where technology providers used to get the brunt of the blame for projects that went awry, but we’ve seen an increased amount of scrutiny on the SIs.  What’s causing this shift?

As technology has become more flexible and capable of handling complex use cases and business models, the primary challenge is no longer whether a commerce platform can handle your business requirements.  Rather the primary challenge is whether your team and your SI partner can IMPLEMENT the platform that can handle your business requirements.

One of the members of our Master B2B team went through an ecommerce platform implementation in the early 2010s and described that platform thusly:

“The good news is that it’s flexible enough to do anything.  The bad news is that it’s flexible enough to do anything.”

That’s only gotten more true over time.  With many platforms being built headless, there are so many connections that need to be built – to your existing tech stack, to other headless technologies, to external partners – that the complexity of managing flexibility we saw 10 years ago is multiplied manyfold across all those integrations.

After that platform implementation years ago it became clear that these are the two most important people on the implementation project: The client’s project manager and the SI’s business analyst.

The great project manager will learn who is the final decision-maker on the client team, and they’ll know instinctively what questions they can answer on their own, and which need to be bubbled up in the team. Plus, they’ll know when to sound an alarm well before there’s actually a fire.

The Business Analyst will understand how to take complex requirements and translate those into requirements.  It’s imperative – IMPERATIVE – that the analyst on your project has experience working on complex B2B commerce implementations.  B2B eCommerce is a distant cousin to B2C eCommerce – sure, they’re related but there are some very significant differences between them.  If an analyst isn’t a B2B expert, that person will make assumptions that will inevitably turn out to be wrong.  And that will set off a rube-goldberg-level set of unfortunate outcomes.

Our advice – have your team interview the business analyst before bringing that person onto the project.  They’ll be the difference between success and continuing to take orders by fax.  (Hey – sometimes that’s still the best way!  …Though not usually.)