B2B Commerce Trends 2025 Part 1: How Businesses Use AI, and where it is heading

This is the first part of our series about B2B Commerce trends in 2025. See part 2: Personalization.

A new Emporix report conducted by Worldwide Business Research reveals the state of AI in B2B: objectives, expectations and concerns - find out more in this article.

TL;DR

• Leveraging AI is a key strategy for B2B organizations across Europe.
• 2 out of 3 companies are currently selecting or testing AI solutions.
• Expectations focus on AI-driven processes streamlining, cost reduction and automation.
• The Emporix Commerce Orchestration Platform facilitates AI migration.

The Age of Artificial Intelligence Has Arrived in B2B

The B2B landscape is constantly evolving, and the explosion of AI solutions over the past 18 months have opened up new avenues for B2B brands to innovate at scale. European B2B companies are following in the footsteps of almost every other industry and are beginning to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) in value-adding and meaningful ways.

On behalf of Emporix, Worldwide Business Research surveyed 100 European B2B leaders in Q3 of 2024 on the current state of AI implementation in their organizations, their business objectives, expectations and concerns. The key findings are outlined below.

The State of AI in Business to Business

Our survey reveals that almost all B2B leaders interviewed have an AI strategy in place. However, most organizations are still in the early stages of AI implementation.

Key findings in detail:

• 31% are currently selecting AI technologies
• 29% are testing AI solutions
• Only 1% have fully implemented AI
• 1% do not have an implementation strategy at all

What B2B Leaders Expect from AI

B2B leaders focus their AI expectations on processes, costs and automation.

The business potential for the use of AI in B2B commerce is considered almost infinite. Respondents identified process streamlining (35%), cost reduction (26%), and automation (25%) as top areas where AI is expected to provide great benefits.

• Process Streamlining: Optimize workflows by automating repetitive tasks, reducing bottlenecks (e.g. in stock management), and improving efficiency with AI capabilities.
• Cost Reduction: Use AI capabilities to reduce high operating costs, e.g. due to manual non-value- adding work in customer service or returns management.
• Automation: Reduce repetitive manual tasks such as inventory management, customer support and order fulfillment to increase speed and accuracy.

Other use cases for AI that B2B leaders expect to gain the most from include data analytics and collection, fraud detection, enhanced customer experience and content creation.

Key Challenges When Implementing AI in B2B

While B2B organizations recognize AI's potential to drive efficiency and innovation, they remain cautious about its risks and implications, especially related to data:

• Data protection and security are considered paramount concerns, to which appropriate solutions must be found.
• Data breaches and compliance issues are considered significant risks when handling sensitive information.
• There are also doubts about the reliability of AI-generated content and its ability to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions.

These and other common concerns will likely diminish as AI technologies mature and experience grows. Best practices in data protection and well-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) will help build trust, while the benefits of AI far outweighs potential risks.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Leveraging AI is a key strategy for B2B organizations across Europe.

While organizations may be at different stages of implementation, a significant 99% have already developed an AI strategy. Moreover, 12% have successfully implemented solutions and are now scaling their AI initiatives. This trend will accelerate.

AI has the potential to enhance every aspect of a business, and European B2B organizations are already reaping the benefits. Commerce businesses striving to maintain or increase their future viability and competitiveness have no choice but to leverage AI.

How Emporix Helps Launch or Evolve AI-driven B2B

Using Emporix, B2B leaders lay the technical foundation for their agile AI journey.

Emporix is a groundbreaking commerce platform, designed according to the 4 MACH principles for composable software architectures: microservices-based, API-first, cloud-ready and headless based. This is how Emporix enables fast and agile migration of AI capabilities.

Best of breed AI services and tools for process streamlining, cost reduction, automation and other applications that European B2B leaders favor can be orchestrated flexibly and tailored to their needs using the Emporix Commerce Orchestration Platform.

Selection of Emporix built-in features for a jump start into AI:

• AI-driven front-end Software Development Kit (SDK) for fast and agile headless front-end generation, supporting common code authoring and editing tools.
• No-code tenant setup, using a chatbot to guide administrators through the setup process, eliminating the need for technical expertise.
• AI-powered product content generation automating the creation of product names, descriptions, and translations, streamlining content management.
• Smart documentation assistant, using a chatbot that provides instant answers and working examples to help users navigate Emporix.
• AI-Import to streamline and enhance the process of uploading and integration data, incl. brands, categories, catalogs, products, product media, and category assignments.
• AI-powered process orchestration by simply describing a process. The AI generates a ready-to-use template, accelerating process creation and iteration.

Emporix exceeds other composable commerce platforms by offering a unique Process Orchestration Engine (OE) enabling B2B businesses not only to orchestrate capabilities, but also to efficiently streamline business processes - a use case that 35% of the B2B leaders interviewed consider a major gain.