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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
Navigating AI in B2B Commerce with Aidan McGaughey
Legacy Systems Meet AI: Can B2B Can Bridge the Gap?
The B2B sector is standing at a crossroads. On one side: faxes, spreadsheets, and legacy systems. On the other: AI-powered smart agents and instant order processing.
In this episode of The FODcast, Aidan McGaughey – EMEA Country Manager at OroCommerce shares how B2B businesses can navigate this tension, and unlock meaningful value from AI without falling for the hype.
We dig into:
- How AI is already delivering value in B2B – from OCR-powered order processing to smart agents for customer queries
- Why foundational product data is the real key to AI success
- The rise of digital-first buyers – and the pressure for Amazon-like experiences
- Why pilot projects beat wholesale AI rollouts every time
- The evolving role of community, knowledge-sharing, and the human touch in B2B
Aidan makes a compelling case for starting small, thinking strategically, and building from a solid data core.
If you’re balancing digital ambition with operational reality in the B2B space, this episode is packed with practical advice to move forward, not just faster, but smarter.
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Hello and welcome to Season 7 of the podcast, the podcast focused on the future of digital commerce hosted by Simply Commerce. Season 7 promises to continue to bring you some of the industry's brightest minds across the globe as we unpick the sector and where it's heading From war stories to strategy and technology, deep dives to future trends we cover it all as we continue our journey to have one of the most popular podcasts in commerce. Before we start, if you enjoy our content, please do hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening on, like and share on socials. Hello and welcome back to the podcast the Future of All Things Digital Commerce. Today, I'd like to welcome Aidan McGaughey, country Manager EMEA for Oro Commerce. After David Williams' shout out last season, it was only right we had someone from Aura on the show, and who better than Aidan?
Speaker 2:Welcome. Thanks, James. Great to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining me. So before we jump in, why don't you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself and Aura Commerce itself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So on my background quite relevant for today's topic I actually started in e-commerce about over 15 years ago. B2c moved into B2B for British Telecom, looking after lots of their websites, perhaps. After that, I joined the dark side the sales side and business development side. Side and business development side, I've spent about seven years with a company called Channel Advisor, working in three different continents and enjoying various other e-commerce technologies. That brought me right up to where I am today with AuroCommerce AuroCommerce B2B e commerce platform. Our CEO is the founder of Magento and, yeah, we're really excited to be chatting today about B2B and all things AI.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I like the fact you referred to sales as the dark side, Aidan.
Speaker 2:To prospects. I say it all the time, right, they're like okay, yeah, we sort of get it, but I do have another side, right. I like to reference it to think a lot of the problems or pain points. I've maybe sat there and had those problems rather than just being the salesperson to sell a technology, right. So I think it's cool to get that opportunity to sit on both seats.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I mean, like you said, you can understand the problems that the customers are facing. You've been there, you felt it, and then I guess that gives you a good edge above many of the competition. So that's really cool. I guess many see B2B as the area of innovation. Many also see AI as the future. Today, we're going to be talking about both as we drill down on how you can best use AI in B2B right now. I believe it's conversations that you have on a very, very regular basis. So what are you seeing in the market already, Aidan?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right on both of those topics. Let's just say, for example, you're looking through LinkedIn at the weekend. If you're not seeing B2B for the past 12 months and the rise of B2B, it's going to be AI, right? I'm even creating a video over the weekend. I mentioned I was doing my research on the latest AI technologies and you're uploading photos, embedding your own voice over the photos and it's mimicking you talking. Some of the stuff that's out there with AI is really unbelievable, I would say. On that, however, there's a lot of noise, james, on AI and it's trying to see through that noise. If we relate it back to e-commerce and what's going to be right for your business and you're right we touched on B2C is a completely different field than B2B and whenever you try to see what technologies perhaps is best suited to ai, but that's also completely different.
Speaker 1:Again, I think you're right. Right on what you say. Just a quick scroll on linkedin and uh well, put it this way, last week my linkedin feed was absolutely dominated by the, the chat, gpt and shopify. By now, integration um, I think everybody's linkedin news feed, among other social feeds and everything else, has been covered with ai.
Speaker 2:Um, whether it be for picture generation, whether it be for cost optimization, revenue generation, like we're seeing it in in pretty much all aspects of life now yeah, and you know, when you look at the share price for some of these companies, as soon as they make these announcements right, you know you can almost track how many times AI is mentioned on an earnings call. It's like well you know, is that a roadmap? Do some of these platforms already have those features? Are there features that's coming? We also saw that Amazon announced that they were looking at buy for me, probably starting out in the US first of all.
Speaker 2:So what was interesting with that, with AI, is the fact that Amazon was looking at agentic agents to purchase outside of Amazon. Right? So for someone that's been heavily in marketplaces for most of their career within e-commerce, I think that's crazy. You're diverting traffic away from your website, but they see it as such a huge opportunity. It's where the future is going to go. They're saying, if you can't find what you're looking for on Amazon, we could help you find it elsewhere on the internet. Right In the US, there's like 128 million shoppers that use their mobiles when surfing Amazon, and that's primarily where they're going to have that use case to say look, perhaps if you don't find it here, would you like us to find it elsewhere for you.
Speaker 2:Now, I think that's fantastic. On the B2C side. Whenever we move the conversation to B2B, I just hope that B2B companies don't get caught up in all of this noise. Know agentic agents and you know them being able to purchase for you. Companies like amazon already have them. It's like that really is years ahead of b2b and b2b has more basic problems that they need to be first interested in, and perhaps that's where they leverage ai. But back to your point yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It really is crazy the adoption of ai that we're seeing I think you make a really good point there around uh, b2b getting sucked in with some of these, these buzzwords and some of these uh really cool um areas of innovation for for ai. Um, and I think I find it interesting because in so many of these conversations, aidan, I talk about how companies do get sucked in with buzzwords and suddenly, I mean, if we look at things like Headless, we look at the move to composable architecture, they've all just they kind of came around really hard, really fast. Everyone's making those investments. Then later down the line, you hear so many stories of did we need to do that? That probably wasn't the right decision for us.
Speaker 1:I imagine that's going to be very similar with investment in ai as well. It's like, well, we need to do this and let's do it. There's chuckload of money at it. Actually, we can't do that because something basic maybe like the data, is not right in the first place. So they spend x amount of hundreds of thousands, maybe more, and then they can't even get the functionality from the ai in this case yeah, and you know it's almost related to that.
Speaker 2:pwc did a study last year, uh, where they said 73 percent of executives plan to use generative AI to improve performance across the company, profitability, etc. But, as you say, that's nice to be led by an executive, but what does that mean for the actual team on the ground? If we look at B2B, what does it mean for the sales team that's out visiting building sites to sell materials, or visiting shops where they're trying to sell their latest product, or into pubs and hotels? You know where they're selling alcohol like? How does ai relate to them? So I think it's fine to be led by an executive team and a board, but you really need to do it on a step-by-step basis that makes sense for the business and bring everybody along with it that 73?
Speaker 1:is that specific to b2b or is that more generic across execs?
Speaker 2:that that one's generic across uh, b2b and b2c. Um. Okay, it's a report from pwc. Perhaps we can add it to the show notes as well. It's quite useful. There's lots of fantastic reports out there, um on how ai and you know it's been embraced by companies. Do notice that, james, at all. On the people side I know we're going to come to about why people is crucial within B2B and AI Are you noticing anything from the recruitment side or that people's asking more whenever they're giving positions to yourselves In terms of the skill sets that people?
Speaker 2:are looking for the skill sets, yeah, and asking do you have people that's got that skill set or background, or developers?
Speaker 1:It's funny that you say that we're starting to. We've had conversations with one particular client around an AI architect. I wouldn't even know where to start, let's be honest, right, but we're also seeing more candidates in the market start trying to upskill themselves around these areas as well, so I think we will start to see more of a shift there. We have seen an increase in roles like prompt engineers. I think they're going to become far more common over the next sort of 12, 18 months as AI becomes more adopted. Interestingly, looking at the people side of things, and what we are starting to see is ai becoming adopted by a lot of companies.
Speaker 1:Uh, when it comes to hiring, and, in fact, I spoke to somebody last week who said, um, I can't remember who it was now, so I'd love to name drop them if I could. It was a big uh financial services firm that are going to try and automate like almost 100 of their hiring process, which I think is crazy, because people are a business and, yes, you might be able to extract some keywords from a cv, maybe from a linkedin page and all that kind of stuff. However, like you can't, ai can't find you the best match for a. There's so much more to it than what's on a piece of paper. How can a piece of AI understand your cultural fit within a business, your drivers for change and motivations? Also, if we're being completely honest, how are they going to attract the passive candidates, which I think is something that's really important as well? So I don't want to go off on a bit of a rant.
Speaker 2:So I feel like we are starting to see um a lot in the recruitment side of things. Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree with that and you know, as you say, even if we take a step back from ai, I sort of kick things off saying b2c and b2b is very, very different. You know the purchase journey on b2c. We do it every single day. Right, james, you posted you did a sub 40 or some ridiculous time for your 10k running. Running about like uh, like limford christie, right, you're going to buy your trainers so you might already know your brand. You might want to know is there a shop near you to do a gate analysis on your running? You're looking at ship shipping options. You might look at nike. Vaporflies is doing like a three month uh guaranteed. If you didn't like them, you could return them. You know where ai can just jump in. There is a lot easier, I would say, from product recommendations. You know you could be doing uh fitting wardrobes. Virtual fitting wardrobes have been around for a long time, but where ai can take that uh is a very high speed and a high rate of adoption.
Speaker 2:If we move to b2b, they may have issues with their product data. They may have eight million different skus, different SKUs. We have one customer that has over 14 different ERPs. Wow, you've got physical sales team members that you need to bring along right. Whether you call those sales team members, you could call them account managers customer success. They also have problems trying to understand pulling in price lists because they've got their VIP customers. Are they going to take credit card payments for the SMB customer and then the rest is going to be forced behind a B2B portal or a login? It really, really is a different world. What I would say on the B2B side that really gives us a great opportunity, right, that really gives us a great opportunity. Right, they're going to start moving at a greater rate of adoption for e-commerce, particularly buyer portals, where they're trying to bring along technology to their customers, because that's what their customers are actually demanding.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what sort of use cases are you seeing in the market right now? So just quickly, before you go on to that, you speak very well about running with the, the trials with the actual um, the trainers themselves. Do you run as well, aiden?
Speaker 2:I try to yeah I would say in a in a working life, right, it's, it's one of the best quick fixes, right, because we're busy. Um, as you know, I I used to live in london. You didn't get a long lunch break, right, that was a luxury. So even if you decide to go for a 30 minute run or one hour run, you know, I think it's just a brilliant way to clear the mind. Surprisingly, it's where I actually think a lot. Right, come up with ideas, or I go back to my desk a little bit rejuvenate. I'm never tired in the afternoon if I've done a run or a workout. So, yeah, I would highly encourage for everyone and for their mental health, which is a very important topic as well fitness, go for a walk, go for a run. But yeah, I'm not reaching those times, james, that you're reaching, so just leave me to do the likes on linkedin.
Speaker 2:You share the times and I'll do the likes on okay, teamwork, okay teamwork.
Speaker 1:We all need a pat on the back sometimes, but you're, you're right. I mean, it's not about the times, it's about the benefits for your health. And and again, there's a lot. Just for getting up and being active, doesn't matter how fast, how slow. Taking half an hour at lunch to go for a brisk walk or a gentle run can can have a real positive impact, so I'm a big advocate of that as well. Excellent, yeah, fully agree. Right, anyway, back to AI. So what are the real use cases you're seeing in B2B right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm not here today to pitch oral commerce or sell oral commerce, but as a B2B e-commerce platform, that's all we do. That's what we focus on. I'm happy to share what we've released and what we're working on. That's getting great success. We have an AI smart agent Now.
Speaker 2:Where that's different within B2B. That could be somebody in finance just asking for the last 12 months of invoices right, Because they're making lots of purchases. It could be somebody that's surfing the website and sees that there's 100 in stock of a certain item and they quickly just want to know delivery times. Could they split the order? When's it due back in stock? You could even lead that to rfq request for to be able to get prices on that in case they're going to give you a little bit of extra discount, so that can be extremely valuable. I had a breakfast two weeks ago with lots of senior executives within B2B and the joke around the table was I asked everyone for a show of hands. Who still uses faxes today within their b2b business? 50% of the room raised their hands and the other half just looked at them was like are you serious?
Speaker 2:like what is a fax? How do you send the fax? And these are companies that are doing billions in revenue. So percent that's that's high still exist, excel spreadsheets still exist, notepads, pen and paper still exist within B2B. So where we saw an opportunity around that was smart order. What we're able to do there with AI and OCR is the ability perhaps to be reading faxes that have been emailed across to you to try to read the order. You know you could also use our workflow engine to try to put a step in there to say look, this must always have human validation. I think that's an important point.
Speaker 2:On AI, james, that try to be in control. Even it's any other company's AI that you're using. We're sort of suggesting you could take a break there. Yes, we could read your Excel spreadsheet, create the orders, but you might want the account manager just to have a skim through that order to say, yep, that's accurate, to process the order. And of course it's B2B it's a higher order volume, higher average order value. But the reading of faxes, excelets, it could be again. Let's think old school could be somebody on their phone in a warehouse that realizes that they need 500 of another part. They could be taking a picture on their phone of the box, of the barcode and automatically or always reading that as a as an order again can be verified, which usually heads off to their erp.
Speaker 1:So that's two that we've released for a while that we've seen a really good success from okay, they certainly sound beneficial and I mean like, as you said earlier on, it's not going to be quite the glitz and glamour in terms of ai that you might get in b to c, but seem like two very effective use cases for companies to improve themselves operationally, which should either decrease their costs or increase their revenue possibly both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to add to that, james, the joy I know we're joking about being on the dark side for sales the joy of being in sales. I get to talk to so many different companies, right, it's like really enjoyable to hear what's worked well, the pain points, the problems, but this return of investment, particularly in the economic headwinds we've got at the moment and I don't think that's just for the UK market but return of investment is very important. They're maybe doing an RFP and you know, like straight away they're saying this is why we're doing this RFP or this is why we really need to have a buyer portal. But my point being on that, for AI, the reason we've released some of these tools is order processing that smart order I just mentioned about read orders. We've got that down to two and a half minutes for the ability to process an order, and the cost as well is a couple of pence, right, so again, it's B2B.
Speaker 2:This could be hundreds of thousands of orders and executives are thinking how could we streamline our customer success and sales and where are they doing perhaps tasks that are costly to the business? And then the great opportunity is could you retrain these people? So could you give them more accounts, could you retrain them, upskill them. So perhaps you know I think that's good for somebody right as well in your career. If you've been doing the same job for five, six, seven years now you get an opportunity to get upskilled. Could be related to an ai technology, then great definitely.
Speaker 1:I mean and that goes to show the benefits of embracing this technology right, there's there's that fear going around ai is going to replace our jobs and there will be jobs that get impacted right, let's be honest. But actually there's an opportunity off the back of that to to retrain, to relearn, to grow, and that's down to the individuals as well as the companies that implement in order to to maximize, right. Just quickly, you mentioned you were able to streamline that process down to two and a half minutes. Yeah, as just to get an idea of the scale behind that and I appreciate there's going to be varied based on every business and and the orders and what have you but what sort of timescales would you look at before implementing your AI tool?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right that it would be on a case-by-case basis, right? Because whenever we look at B2B and just to give you an idea of some of the customers at Oro we've customers where you're negotiating the cost of a container to be sent, right. So imagine the average order value associated with that. With someone else it's just selling parts I say just selling parts for fork trucks, but that's the example. That has 8 million SKUs, so it can be completely different. But there is a common theme.
Speaker 2:If we're just using email as a way of communication to say, james, do you have that product in stock? Yes, I've got it in stock. Okay, do you have 500 of them in stock? And you say, yeah, I've got 500 of them in stock. When could you get them to me by right? And this is going on and this is a person's time that's typing it in. But you also then have them perhaps offering that as a telephone service or chatting to somebody over the phone. That's whenever you really see that a single sale has taken a long, long time to process and there also could be potential for human error there as well.
Speaker 2:But it would really be a case-to-case basis. But it comes up a lot Current customers seeing good success. But it comes up a lot Current customers seeing good success Whenever we demo it or I say hey, you don't even have to jump on a demo and listen to me. Jump on the Auro website and see these AI features in action or play with the demo account and see Auro. You always get really strong feedback to think you have hit a pain point that we have straight away and you know. That's always good.
Speaker 1:It's when you hit the pain points, I guess, is when, well, it allows you to really sell the product right, because it actually taps into, to where they're struggling and where they need the support of the product, whether it be an ai tool or something else for that matter. Um, so I think that's cool, um, and anything that can speed up processes, remove human, human error, I think it's going to be beneficial to almost every business out there, right? Let's be honest, I think, if we look at I mean, there's a couple of use cases that we've broken down there and I think it's hard to argue against either of them. Is there anything else that you would see that? Is there anything else that you're seeing in the market, whether that be through what Aura Commerce can do itself or just through other conversations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's ignore Aura for a moment. I think it's pretty cool what Nibble's doing for their AI price negotiations. Did you have Rosie?
Speaker 1:on the podcast. Yes, I did. Yeah, rosie joined me at the start of this year. Actually that was a really cool conversation and again, I think that's a great product Very very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really great to see you know the ability to negotiate price back and forward. You know you're seeing use cases of some large companies perhaps having it on sister website companies or clearing stock, you know, and where that could lead to for negotiations on broadband, your mobile phone contract and negotiations there. I think, um, that's really cool. Uh, we work with lots of partner companies that help with product data. It again is probably one of the ones where you go.
Speaker 2:It's unbelievable amount of companies that do not have their product data in place. Right, I didn't really see that as much in the b2c side. Right, because those companies are more digitally savvy, if you will. They're listening on to marketplaces. They know the importance of product data. Whenever you're asking a b2b company, where does your product data live and it could be the excel spreadsheet, example, or it could be missing descriptions right and okay, like you're maybe jumping ahead because your executive won't say yeah, and you've looked at things like recommendation and personalization and a b2b experience, of course it exists. That's a great idea, but if you don't have the foundation of product data for it to benefit, then you're really lost. So I would say product data has lots of rooms for uh, improvement, um, good ai tools that can help with with that as well. But yeah, james, it surprises me. The product one's probably the one that gets me the most faxes and product data.
Speaker 1:I'm like wow it's funny you say about the data being better in B2C. I think a lot of the chats that I've had would probably challenge that. It does still seem like there's a long way to go. That being said, it does sound like they are ahead of where the B2B industry is in terms of their data, not just maximizing it but actually looking after it and having it in a central place where they can access it anyway, which probably leads us along quite nicely to how companies can ensure they're ready for fancy AI tools, Because actually, if you don't have your data in the right place ability to access easily and all that kind of stuff then, going back to what we said at the start of the conversation, it doesn't matter what you can do with. It doesn't matter what the piece of technology you implement can do, because it can't do it anyway, because you're not ready for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and you know, getting ready for AI or, you know, even enhancing what you have in place already. We've just spoke about the product data, right, and the foundations there. Let's go on to the people, because this isn't really going to happen or be a successful project without the people fully on board with what the project and what you're trying to achieve. You know I think you referenced earlier, james that you know ai is not there to take jobs, but that's definitely a perception that exists and if we're hearing that, could you imagine you know the actual workers? Will it be in the warehouses or the account management, finance teams, legal, etc. What they're thinking? So, I think, presenting the vision so that everybody comes on board.
Speaker 2:I would also highly recommend starting small. It could just be a pilot for six months, right. You do not need to be in these five-year contracts with a long roadmap of what you're going to achieve. And B2B has a little bit more of a luxury for proof of concept or test markets right. So we have customers at the moment that are just looking to launch into one country test markets right. So we have customers at the moment that are just looking to launch into one country in Europe right. That can be with AI in terms of some of the features I mentioned earlier, or it could just be they just want to launch a buyer portal. It could be read-only buyer portal. All that means is their customers have a place to log in and see their orders, and to them, that's a huge step right.
Speaker 1:So I always think that if you have the teams aligned, then it's it's a really, really good place to start I always forget until I'm involved in these conversations just kind of how far behind b2b organizations like have been until recently and even still are. Like you mentioned with the faxes. It was only a few years ago we were working with a very, very large uh fmcg business as they were trying to centralize their systems. We're not even talking about anything to do with ai here. We're just about a central system across, like all of the different countries they operate in, which I appreciate is a global scale. But, uh, they ended up having to put that project on hold because they couldn't get the buying from certain countries because they still wanted to go around with the pen and paper and a notepad and do the manual stock, take um and it. It just amazes me, I forget how, forget how much there is still to be done and having people bought into that is absolutely vital.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's what's exciting, right?
Speaker 2:I've spent a lot of my career on the B2C side, as I already mentioned the Amazons, the Ebays, the Mercado Libres, the marketplaces of this world and then suddenly you're realizing these huge, huge problems, right, notepad, pen and paper. We just released something called Sales Rep App and the reaction to it was like it almost is so simple. You couldn't believe that they didn't try to build this as a custom solution or their existing e-commerce platform didn't have it already. This is just a tool that works online and offline, because you could be in a rural pub in the middle of Ireland taking an order which could be five or ten thousand pounds. You could be taking an order from JD Sports and you're a Nike sales rep, but you're in the back room of the building and your internet access isn't as good. So, as you say, it's the ability to be able to place that order and then centralize that data. Right, because we talk so much as well about data analytics and reporting black books, pens, paper, pencils, orders scribbled down. That doesn't really help with your cause for digital transformation.
Speaker 1:No, and let's be honest, a mobile application isn't exactly revolutionary anymore. Right, I mean, we've had apps on our phones for the best part of 15 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and you know, it just seems that B2B is a little bit of the forgotten land. Now we have seen for 12 months, six months, that everybody's on this bandwagon. B2c is really feeling the economic headwinds. So the companies are looking to see, okay, where could we move to? That could be search and merchandise tools, it could be personalization, it could be content management systems. And they're trying to think, okay, what is our play for b2b? Try to articulate that. How do we help distributors, wholesalers, enhance what they're trying to do on their digital journey? So, yeah, there's, there's definitely a lot of activity in the b2b space. Just important to see through the noise, right yeah, so just on that note.
Speaker 1:Then you mentioned that you feel as though b2b has been forgotten about. Why do you think that is? Is that because companies generally have forgotten about them and they've just been focused in, uh, delivering services and and making products for b2c? Um, or has it been a reluctance to invest from B2B, which has put companies off designing and making products for the industry, and you can't say a bit of both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you've got me with a really tough question there. What I'm going to suggest is that sometimes demand can help change these things, and what I mean by that. Let's go back to James. You need to order your latest running gel, right? You have an expectation that that could be two minutes in your hand by a marketplace. It could be someone that's already captured your details, whether that be Amazon or PayPal. You've got your Apple Pay on your phone. You have an expectation.
Speaker 2:So if someone doesn't meet that expectation, you're not purchasing your running gels from that website, right? And you probably don't want to go 20 minutes away in your car to even go and get it. So I'm suggesting that, on the B2B side, there wasn't the expectation that you needed to provide a digital experience, a website where you could log in and see your own personalized, customized prices that could be completely unique to each individual buyer within that organization. And suddenly you've got a younger generation coming along that they've just known to purchase via Amazon's in their hand. So whenever they come into these businesses, they're like so how does somebody order? And then they're taking free the little playbook of oh, this is a fax and this is an Excel spreadsheet. And they're like what?
Speaker 1:What the hell is that? Yeah, they're like, what is that?
Speaker 2:Run that by me one more time of what a fax is Like. You know, and you've got those old telephones that you press the number and spin around right. This is in the playbook. So now you see leaders coming in right and these are great positions. You know chief commercial officers coming in and they've done large digital transformations, usually in B2C elsewhere. Just dust off their hands and go right. This is the way forward. So I think the demand is what's leading that, mostly within B2B, and I suppose it's also data and for presenting numbers back to boards and executives. It's relatively easy to show success right, like would you go against somebody saying you're going to change this way of working, where you had X number of mistakes and problems and time to order, versus this way of doing it? And here's a great personalized website. I think that's an easier sell as well.
Speaker 1:I would agree, and actually having that demand is force in their hand. If we're being honest, we are where we are now. Only in five years we'll be going to be even further ahead with digital natives. As you've already said, there's a lot of people now in the workforce that have never seen a fax before and would have absolutely zero interest in understanding how to use one. I mean, I've seen one. I don't think I've ever used one um.
Speaker 1:So the execs of these large firms are being forced into change um, which I think puts companies like oro commerce and other other businesses that serve into the b2b market in good stead. Um. Yet we are still seeing b2b organizations uh, put pauses on their digital transformation, their digital transformation, sorry. In fact, just this morning I read a post on my news feed um from another chap in the b2b space who said one of his customers has just paused their digital transformation because they've had poor sales in Q1. So they're looking at this very much on a quarter by quarter basis, which isn't ideal for anybody, unfortunately, but we're seeing that in the market Now, from what we've just said, is these companies that aren't in aren't undergoing these transformations. They are going to struggle in a few years, they're not going to be able to communicate with their customers effectively. So what, what? What would you do in that scenario, because I'm sure you've had similar conversations over the last 12 months.
Speaker 2:You've already touched upon the economic headwinds that we've been facing yeah, I'm a huge fan of companies entering into a discovery phase and what I mean by that is a discovery phase is typically led by an agency partner or an si, that's a systems integrator, where you scope out problems that you have, what you're trying to achieve, the outcomes, the time frames, so it's well documented and you and that is presented to the executives. So, on your example of someone's paused a project because of per q1 results, there probably wasn't strong foundations there for this project to you know, take off right. It was going to get caught, caught at some stage if they reacted so quickly to it. And also go back to my point of proof of concept, so what if they were to launch a site within four to five months, enable some of these ai features into a certain market? And they made up those gaps right. So this is something that they're going to have before q1 per results, and then something in q2.
Speaker 2:You almost could be doing this. Uh, in q3 we have about four to five months average uh launch time for customers where suddenly you know you're looking at the yearly view. So I'm a big fan of discovery. You might just lead it internally and that goes back to the importance of people within any company having the ability to scope. What is this project about at the core? What is it you're trying to achieve?
Speaker 1:the discovery process again is something that comes up in a lot of conversations and just how important it is to any transformation, and I like that. The fact you said maybe it's not a big bang, it's not a we need the whole business to do this and has to pivot to this fully digital first model. Actually, what we can do is, uh, cool, roll out in south america and in this, try it. If it works, then we can look at bringing it into into europe or into individual countries or what have you. So I think that's quite cool and yeah, obviously, the discovery being being key to understanding, understanding the why they're doing it in the first place, not just doing it because we need to be more digital, it's like okay, but why do we? What do our customers want us to do? What?
Speaker 2:yeah, and look, to be honest, we've probably been, you know, doing this for quite a long time. Quite often I'll say to somebody that they're maybe not ready to have that conversation with me, you know, and a lot of the time I'll point them in another direction to maybe it's a partner. If I think the issue first is with the data, as a classic example, I say I think you should speak to this company. I think you have a big problem with your data that you need to solve first before you know considering an option like Auro or the discovery with the SA. So I think, just being the ability to be open about it and hear their challenges, hear their pain points, I think where you potentially could go wrong.
Speaker 2:You know, if you're a B2B company, a SaaS company selling solutions is.
Speaker 2:You know you're a b2b company, a sas company selling solutions, as you know, trying to go for that quick win, they're going to buy something that they can't actually use and then that leads to those problems you mentioned of cancelled projects.
Speaker 2:Or you know projects that are taking a year and a half to launch or they've been caught up buzzwords. They're saying, okay, composable, I think that's good and the right scenario, mac and a B2B. It's like, wow, are you sure you don't have bigger problems before you really want to launch a project where you're really focusing on the foundations or principles of the Mac alliance? That's where you really just need to take a step back. This isn't b2c, this is b2b. What is the core problems that you have today and what do you want to solve them in a phase one step? Love to know phase two and phase three, but let's get there first and ensure that you've got the right people internally and externally as support around you to help make the project happen but like a good, a good analogy for that would be don't run before you can walk.
Speaker 1:Uh, you, would you say that you, you get that feeling. You, you get that feeling when you have these conversations with execs in the b space, are they? Are they trying to run before they can walk?
Speaker 2:in this instance, on occasion, perhaps if they've uh spotted something else, especially from a competitor. You know we're very strong and lots of sectors, but you know chemicals. I could point to parts where there's complex b2b sales processes. That's that's really good for us. So on occasion they may have looked at another website or portal or a case study that we've shared and they see you know that's the north star to them, right, and they want it within one year. That's where it's like.
Speaker 2:I probably would recommend that you consider resolving this first right, and every business is completely different. I think sometimes in b2c you could see somebody selling polo shirts and it looks quite similar business. What you didn't see, perhaps in the b2b example is they have a thousand sales reps around the world. Or you mentioned south america. The company isn't even in south america. Perhaps that's an opportunity for your company.
Speaker 2:What you could be looking at is I mentioned smart agent works in any language. It's like, okay, you actually could try to self-serve into a region that you haven't been before, using AI technology and perhaps just a small sales team in the local company where you're based supporting that to see. Is there additional revenue wins that you could get there? Maybe that's a better opportunity. But, as I say, these are all brilliant opportunities. You can see I'm smiling, I'm excited by these conversations and, I think, trying to do as much research as you can as well, james, I spoke to somebody last week that was telling me they were at Imperial College London doing a course on AI and I was like scribbling down the name of the course, right? I think I think that's fantastic, as an executive sees it's the future within their role. Back to upskilling as they try to get as much information as possible so you can make valuable decisions, and what you're going to do for your digital transformation.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really good point and and I guess, going back to what you were saying as well around kind of cut through the noise. I think we're already starting to see lots of ai courses, certifications, um, again, I think it's just really important to note here that it's definitely worth doing your due diligence on which ones you're doing. Can you get any recommendations to them, because I'm sure there's going to be a lot that are coming out that maybe aren't as beneficial as others, um so uh, but I like it and it's it's uh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'd have to give me the name of that course yeah, and I think you know, just as you said, they're asking for recommendations. What I noticed within b2b e-commerce there isn't a lot of events, particularly in the uk networking, where you're just talking about the same problems. I gave the classic example of the show of hands for who uses faxes, who knows what fax is in. You have so many of these events like the shop talks of this world or e-com expo. That's a b2c event. So if, whenever you do get those opportunities for a b2b breakfast or a you know, a b2b webinar, I say jump on, try to make connections, add people on linkedin and, uh, there's a really good community around that as well yeah, I'm sure we'll start to see more b2b events, given the focus in the in the uh in the industry now for many um, but you, I completely right.
Speaker 1:I hadn't thought of that until just now either. Okay, so we spoke a lot about transformation within B2B in general, but we're specifically around AI. Obviously, there are other areas of innovation as well. So, outside of AI, what other areas of innovation are you seeing right now within B2B? Adam?
Speaker 2:Product recommendations, personalization, um, I I probably would say that any answer I give, somebody's going to tell me that there is a, an ai element to it available now or they're or they're building it. Um, but I think that's really cool for the more complex b2b companies. You know, that could be the example of you know Coca-Cola. Perhaps somebody has logged in as a junior buyer, they're making a purchase let's just say it's for their offices, right, and you've got the ability to see oh, did you know that your colleague you know in a city nearby was also looking at this combination of products? Or they already have these products in their shopping basket or a shopping list that they're going to sell internally. So I think that can be really powerful and B2B to try to stop companies working in silos. I gave the example of companies that allow every country to make their own technology decisions, the 14 plus CRPs or lots of different PIM product management solutions. So recommendations is definitely a really strong one.
Speaker 2:One that interests me as well, you know, is that you can be quite comfortable getting the exact same order in B2B. You might've got the exact same order for four years, right, and that could be an order that's worth £20,000. And then suddenly there could be a drop-off in that order. I love the idea of being able to quickly enable a sales team to realize your customer might have started shopping elsewhere. Right, that could have been they're buying their crisps elsewhere, they're buying their nuts and bolts elsewhere, and that could be through a task in a crm.
Speaker 2:It's pinging a rep on a monday morning to say the order value changed like this is your high value account. You know you might want to do something about that. And to do something about it is quickly get a face-to-face meeting or a call. Maybe you do disclose what you've noticed or you say hey, was it a mistake? Did you mean to add that to your bath? So I think that's pretty cool on the B2B side, because these high-value orders, they're really important. Whether there's recessions, potential recessions, economic headwinds, you do need to hold on to your best customers 100%.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think it's your customers that are going to keep you going through these tough times, because we all know how hard it is to acquire new ones. So making sure your existing customers are feeling valued and getting what they need from you is really important. That if they're getting what they need from you, chances are you're probably getting what you need from them in terms of your revenue. Um, so having, uh, something that flashes up to say, look, hey, this company's ordered 15 less of these two items and give them a call is something that'd be very useful. Um, they definitely have a strong argument for saying that's going to be linked to ai to get to get that kind of pop-up and recommendation, but it's something that's very useful and I'd be surprised if that's not implemented in some businesses already yeah, you know there is ways to do it if you're already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know there is ways to do it. If you're exporting data and google analytics and power bi, I just think for companies that are thinking like that, right, I understand they would want to know that. It's simple, it's logical, but implementing it that's sometimes uh. The different story and maybe another one just to that, james as well is that you know b2b. A lot of that is they already have customer accounts and credit limits and you know you're not actually making payments, but you do see that they're trying to increase revenue.
Speaker 2:I mentioned a bit trying to go into more countries or new countries at a low cost. Another one could also be going a little bit down market right, just for the customer that's just maybe going to purchase from them once or twice, and the ability just to accept credit card on the website, and you might just have a website for that. That could be you're selling parts. You may allow the local plumber just to be able to quickly jump on because he's decided he needs five of those exact parts and he wants them by tomorrow delivered to him, and that might have been a market that he ignored. And now you're thinking could we get five percent additional revenue if we start to look towards those customers, not just the big guys, right?
Speaker 1:no, it's another good point and yeah, I guess it's something that's never really been associated to b2b. I'm I mean, I'm gonna be quite open here and maybe sound silly, but would are there businesses? I mean I'm gonna be quite open here and maybe sound silly, but would are there businesses? I mean I'm answering my own question in my head as I'm asking it, but I guess are there businesses that would specifically ignore those types of customers?
Speaker 2:because it seems when, when you can get revenue from so many places, it seems silly to ignore it it could be a distraction for some companies right as well, if they're trying to look for that um smaller segment. It could also be channel conflict, where they're selling to a company that they know that's their customers.
Speaker 1:So sometimes there's a fine line as well, and b2b, that you're not wanting to step on your customers toes yeah, I guess they're some of the nuances where, uh, maybe I'm not sort of I don't quite understand in terms of the the sector, um, which I understand is obviously very, very complex, which would, which may be, explain why, um, I also guess as well, if you're thinking out loud, then actually there's only so much you can do.
Speaker 1:And if 90 of your business is going to be selling x amounts of thousands of units, I also guess as well, if you're thinking out loud, then actually there's only so much you can do. And if 90% of your business is going to be selling X amounts of thousands of units, then you want to focus on that 90% of your business in order to maximize the thousands of units of sales, rather than the smaller portion of business where actually you might just have your one or two man bands or what have you, that are just picking up single digits of units every month, or so exactly, james, and they're all completely different in their business models as well.
Speaker 2:You know, whilst they might see that they've got competitors, I was at bdb online in düsseldorf last december and some of these customers were joking saying, look, they're actually our competitor, but they're. They're our customer as well, like we sell to them, but they compete against us as well. So it definitely gets complex within B2B. I wouldn't even say that I fully understand it as well at times, but that goes back to discovery. You're going to have to share with me what your pain points are for me to try to understand what direction this conversation goes. It goes back to trying to understand their needs and pain points first.
Speaker 1:Well, that makes me feel a little bit better than if you don't quite get it all yourself. Just quickly, before we wrap things up. You said b2b online in dusseldorf. How did you find that?
Speaker 2:event yeah, it's the best in europe uh to go to. Uh. It's going to be on again this year. They might move cities, definitely focusing on the large enterprise. There was a good contingent from UK Ireland at that one. We do have IRX with the B2B e-commerce association involved with it this year. Again, check out the B2B e-commerce association. They're definitely helping lift the game of b2b in the uk. And also I'd mention the department of trade, emma jones doing a great job over there running a webinar series that I believe has just kicked off. I'll be on a few other podcasts talking ai, talking b2b marketplaces, but, as you rightly said, james, you're now seeing, you know the uptick in b2b events and you know information education, so I would highly recommend people get some involved with that nice.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're listening to the episodes and you're in the b2b space and you want to be more clued up on the events and the socials that come with it, I guess make sure you're following aiden, because it's clear this man is very much involved in all of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, trying to get there I just posted up on linkedin, james, to make people think about all these events, right, and I'm in all these places at once. But no, it's good to get out there and one of the big takeaways from our event in London, face-to-face right, making those connections. It doesn't have to be with the solution provider. You know, auro, just all their companies saying, look, you actually mentioned at the table. You have the exact same problem as us. You know, would you fancy a coffee? I love that, to be honest, right.
Speaker 1:I've seen a lot online actually about networking and just the value that it can bring. I'm a massive advocate for it. I try and get out to as many events as I can do. I try and get to as many face-to-face meetings as I can do as well, just for that very reason. You never know where a conversation can lead, and actually I think a good number of guests on the podcast have come off the back of these networking events. Look, I mean, that's how we met, right, Aidan.
Speaker 2:So there, so yeah, so there we go um cool. Well, I think that wraps the show up nicely. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks james, much appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. No, I really enjoyed the conversation and, as we said at the start, I mean b2b and ai are the two most talked about topics um that I've had over the probably 2024 and the start of 2025. I think that's going to continue. So, for anyone that's been listening, I hope you found this session valuable and, yeah, please do like and share and I'll see you next week. Thanks, james.
Speaker 2:See ya.
