As more B2B buyers demand seamless experiences across digital and physical channels, omnichannel strategy has become essential — not optional.
Ryan Swiderski, technology partner, Wipfli
But for many companies, aligning tools, data, and teams remains a challenge. In this interview, Ryan Swiderski, a technology partner at Wipfli serving the manufacturing, retail, and distribution (MRD) practice, shares what the most forward-looking companies are doing right — from AI integration to unified customer data — and where others are falling behind.
Trends in the B2B omnichannel sphere
Digital Commerce 360: What are the most significant trends you’re seeing in how B2B companies are integrating digital tools into their omnichannel strategies?
Swiderski: The trends we’re seeing in how B2B companies integrate digital tools into their omnichannel strategy are in support of enhancing personalization, efficiency, and scalability. At the core is the CRM, which unifies customer data across touchpoints, enabling consistent engagement whether through sales reps, ecommerce, or service channels. Self-service CPQ and digital deal rooms are increasingly utilized and integrated with the tech stack to allow for consistent pricing, quoting, and branding. These systems help streamline complex quoting processes, ensuring accuracy and speed across channels. Connecting these systems is critical, either through connectors, APIs, or iPaaS solutions.
The other major trend is AI — both for automating lead scoring, pricing, and proposal generation, and for deploying AI agents to automate components of the customer journey. As our clients evolve their platforms and structure their data to be “AI-ready,” they are creating sales co-bots and smart chatbots to lead customers through sales and customer service engagements, enhancing the customer experience through faster — and in many cases, smarter — interactions.
Ecommerce evolving traditionally offline fields
How is the role of ecommerce evolving in traditionally offline or field-based industries? For example, manufacturing, distribution, health care, etc.
In the manufacturing and distribution world, ecommerce is no longer optional. It’s a clear expectation from customers. Gartner states that by 2028, 60% of B2B transactions will be completed through digital commerce. The buying and service experience has become a key differentiator, especially in traditionally offline or field-based industries. Our manufacturing clients recognize that delivering a streamlined, personalized, omnichannel experience is essential to winning and retaining business.
Traditional in-person interactions are still critical to developing and maintaining key relationships with customers and distributors,. But those interactions are rapidly becoming supported by digital tools. Customer-specific portals, integrated pricing and quoting platforms like DealHub, and centralized systems such as Dynamics 365 or Salesforce are foundational. Again, we’re also seeing AI play a growing role — whether it’s powering predictive product recommendations, automating routine service interactions, or giving sales teams real-time insights to tailor their outreach. The organizations getting this right are treating ecommerce not just as a transaction platform, but as a central part of the overall customer experience strategy.
How AI and ERP integrations play in
What technologies are proving essential for delivering a seamless B2B omnichannel experience today?
To deliver a seamless B2B omnichannel experience, companies need a tech stack that creates a single source of truth for product, pricing, and customer data — while still allowing teams the flexibility to access and act on that data across multiple platforms and channels. At the core, this means tightly integrating ERP, CRM, ecommerce, customer portals, and analytics platforms, typically through an iPaaS solution or integration layer that ensures real-time data flow to the right systems and users.
CDPs are also becoming essential for personalization on a scale. The ability to unify a customer’s purchase history, intent signals, marketing interactions, and even social engagement is critical for delivering relevant, timely experiences. We’re also seeing AI take on a bigger role in powering this ecosystem, whether it’s surfacing next-best offers, optimizing pricing in real time, or automating customer service responses.
The companies leading in this space aren’t just collecting data — they’re activating to make every customer interaction smarter and more connected. The evolution of AI agents is still in the initial stages, but we see this technology increasing the efficiency of customer-facing roles, while providing better customer experience through faster, potentially smarter interactions across sales, marketing, and service. We have clients heavily investing in bots — whether customer-facing or internal “sales co-bots”—to drive these efficiencies today.
Unifying data across channels
How are leading companies using customer data to unify digital and physical channels? Where are others falling short?
Leading B2B companies are using customer data to bridge digital and physical channels by creating a single view of the buyer journey across touchpoints. Those touchpoints include direct sales through your sales teams, ecommerce, and portals, or physical sales through distributors, trade shows, and wholesale outlets. We have a building materials manufacturer who sells through all of these channels, and they are in the late stages of pulling those sources of data—plus third-party marketing and sales intelligence data—into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to gain deep insights into their customers and really personalize their varied and complex customer journeys.
However, many of my clients at this point fall short of effectively unifying customer data. They are in the initial stages of understanding their customers outside of what order history lies in their ERP system, and even with that one data source they don’t have an effective strategy to analyze, visualize, and capture actionable insights from that data. We are guiding them down that CDP journey, but many SMB organizations are just beginning to realize the incredible asset a unified customer profile is to their product, sales, and marketing teams.
Barrier to entry
What’s the biggest barrier B2B organizations face when trying to modernize legacy systems to support omnichannel delivery?
The biggest barrier to modernizing legacy systems for omnichannel delivery is rarely technical — although it often presents that way at first. The challenges tend to stem from competing priorities across sales, marketing, and product teams, limited IT resources, and the organizational impact of changing long-established processes.
What separates the organizations that make meaningful progress is their ability to articulate a sharp vision — one that defines not just the technology goals, but the tangible outcomes for the entire business. When that vision is well-communicated and universally understood, it becomes the foundation for a smart, phased roadmap that addresses people, process, and technology together. Without that shared understanding of what the future state looks like and why it matters, it’s impossible to align the organization or sustain momentum. A unified vision is what pulls teams through the complexity of true omnichannel transformation.
Tracking progress
Are there emerging benchmarks for ROI or customer engagement that indicate digital-first omnichannel models are paying off?
The main KPIs to monitor for digital-first omnichannel return on investment are:
- Customer engagement rates
- Average order value
- Increased conversion rate
By monitoring the amount of time customers visit and engage in your digital channels, conversion rates from those visits, and AOV, you can analyze the trends and determine what combination of digital or digital and physical journeys are proving most effective, and gather actionable insights on how to maximize conversions based on how your customers buy.
The actual benchmarks depend heavily on the industry and the buying journey expectations from your customers. But a McKinsey study found a 20% uplift in order sizes for distributors investing in digital channels. Other studies point toward a 2x–3x increase in customer engagement with your digital channels, along with increased CSAT scores.
Changing sales models
How are B2B organizations adapting their sales and service models to align with digital-first buying behavior?
We’re seeing B2B companies rethink how sales and service teams show up in a digital-first world. Reps are becoming more consultative, leaning on real-time data and CRM insights to add value instead of just taking orders, and in fact leaning on inside sales teams to funnel all transactional tasks. At the same time, there’s a big push toward self-service—features like customer portals, digital quoting, and chat support—to make repeat buying faster and easier.
Leveraging platforms that allow sales and marketing to gain insight into the buyer journey before the first phone call is also key. Buyer intent and sales intelligence platforms are being introduced as part of the sales process. The most successful teams are aligning sales, marketing, and service around the buyer journey and investing in upskilling so everyone’s comfortable using the tools and speaking the language of today’s customer.
Industry leaders
Which industries or companies are setting the pace in omnichannel transformation? What can others learn from them?
Industries like manufacturing, industrial distribution, and healthcare supply are really starting to set the pace in omnichannel transformation. The most forward-thinking companies in these sectors are taking cues from B2C—prioritizing ease of use, personalization, and self-service across every channel. They’re not just building ecommerce sites, they’re integrating them with ERP, CRM, and field sales so the customer experience is seamless whether you’re online, on the phone, or face-to-face.
Additionally, approaching omnichannel transformation as a combined goal for sales and marketing is crucial. A recent Gartner report noted that organizations are 1.8x more likely to exceed expected profit when marketing and sales co-create digital buyer experiences.
What others need to learn from them is not to treat digital as a bolt-on, nor siloed only to sales or marketing. The organizations winning in this space are rethinking their entire go-to-market strategy around how their customers want to buy and interact with vendors and suppliers, and taking personalization to a new level across sales, marketing, and service.
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