This is the third (and last) part of our series about B2B Commerce trends in 2025. For part 1 and 2 see:
TL;DR
- Our research confirms the growing importance of data-driven strategies in B2B.
- B2B leaders face a number of challenges in their transformation journeys.
- Data Analytics to unlock new opportunities, optimize processes and drive growth.
- The Emporix Commerce Orchestration Platform supports future-proof data strategies.
Data is a Prerequisite and Challenge for Business Success
Needless to say, that data is a key driver of modern digital commerce. Without data-based insights into processes, resources and purchasing behavior, it is almost impossible to run a competitive business today. However, B2B leaders still struggle with Data Analytics.
On behalf of Emporix, Worldwide Business Research surveyed 100 European B2B leaders in Q3 of 2024 on the current state of data-led strategies in their organizations, their business objectives, expectations and challenges. The key findings are outlined below.
The State of Data-driven B2B Commerce
Our research confirms the growing importance of data-driven strategies in B2B.
Large Language Models (LLM) take the driving role of data to a new level: no AI without data. That's why B2B leaders are driving their data strategies forward.
Key findings in detail
- 67% of respondents consider data strategies important/crucial for business success.
- 67% are halfway through their data-driven transformation strategy.
- 1 in 4 have just started exploring data-driven insights.
- 77% struggle with siloed data in their organizations or measuring ROI.
What B2B Leaders Expect from data-led Strategies
B2B leaders mainly expect data-driven insights to unlock new opportunities, optimize marketing processes and drive growth.
Top 5 B2B use cases for data analytics
- Increase marketing efficiency by analyzing performance indicators to allocate resources effectively or automating repetitive manual tasks.
- Customized recommendations by enriching product information with metadata that fuels AI- powered recommendation engines.
- Drive customer engagement by analyzing behavior and feedback to optimize marketing communication, campaigns and customer service.
- Understand customer behavior more accurately by tracking and interpreting activity patterns to gain actionable insights for refining marketing strategies.
- Drive conversion by identifying key conversion triggers through data analytics, enabling strategies to orchestrate the buying journey more efficiently.
Key Challenges When Implementing Data-led Strategies
While the intent to embrace data-driven strategies is clear, B2B leaders face a number of challenges in their transformation journeys:
- Siloed data: B2B organizations often struggle with fragmented data stored in different departments or systems, hindering a unified view and seamless analytics that enables informed decision-making.
- Measuring ROI: Demonstrating the value of data analytics investments can be challenging, as linking analytics efforts to tangible business outcomes and quantifiable returns requires robust metrics and alignment with business objectives.
- Other challenges include poor data quality, lack of data-driven culture, data security and privacy, lack of standardized data and a lack of talent in this specific area - just to name a few of the most important ones.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Data-driven commerce is a key competitive advantage. The success of AI initiatives in particular depends on solid data analytics. Improving data fitness is therefore both a must, but also a continuous process that B2B organizations need to strategically focus on.
At the corporate culture level, B2B must aim to improve data literacy, promote data-driven decision-making and empower employees to leverage data insights.
How Emporix Helps Launch or Evolve AI-driven B2B
Using Emporix, B2B leaders lay the technical foundation for an agile data journey.
Emporix is a groundbreaking commerce platform, designed according to the MACH principles for composable software architectures: microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native and headless based. This is how Emporix enables fast and agile migration of data strategies.
Best of breed services and tools that help improve marketing efficiency, buying experience and sales success and other applications that B2B leaders favor can be orchestrated flexibly and tailored to their needs using the Emporix Commerce Orchestration Platform.
Emporix exceeds other composable commerce platforms by offering a unique 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.
