Beyond legacy IT: multiple barriers stand in the way of B2B eCommerce success
- Aging technology leads to frustration, innovation backlog and poor performance
- Different incentives across business and IT lead to a standstill
- Misalignment between organizational maturity and e-commerce strategy further stalls growth
Berlin, October 23, 2025
In an era of digital ubiquity, B2B buyer expectations are as high as in B2C. Speed, personalization, and full data integration, once a luxury, are now a must. However, companies struggle to meet these requirements and to bring their organizations up to speed to implement the necessary organizational and technological changes. Cloudflight’s study of 150 European B2B eCommerce leaders reveals what’s holding digital transformation back.
Companies are trying to meet modern demands with aging technology
As companies grow, their systems inevitably get older and more complex. The data shows significant correlations between company size and both the age of the core platform and the likelihood of using a separate enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This creates a foundation of “architectural debt,” meaning a complex, intertwined, and aging technology stack.
Architectural debt acts as a silent tax on every new initiative. For instance, a simple request for a new pricing model from the sales team can trigger a six-month IT project. This is where innovation goes to die: not in a single dramatic failure, but through a thousand small, frustrating delays.
Problems like:
- slow product launches,
- poor data insights,
- clunky user interfaces,
- a lack of intelligent search,
- difficult integrations
are felt evenly across all roles, industries, and company sizes. This suggests a shared frustration with the limitations of older systems.
Beyond the frustrations of working with outdated and inflexible systems, there’s a tangible financial impact. System downtime and poor performance affect all companies, but manufacturers are hit the hardest, with some estimating annual revenue losses of up to €1 million per year.
Conflicting investment priorities are stalling the change companies urgently need
The study also highlights the impact of company structures on business outcomes, as our data suggests a divide between departments for modernization funds. This classic conflict arises from differing organizational KPIs and perspectives. IT and technical leaders (CIO, CTO) want to invest in foundational “plumbing.” Their top priority is data integration (ERP, CRM, PIM) (63.6% for CIOs, 60% for CTOs). They measure success by system stability, data integrity, and efficiency, and they know that without a solid data foundation, no customer-facing feature can truly succeed.
On the other side, business and operations leaders (COO, Head of Sales) want to invest in the customer-facing “storefront.” Their focus is on customer portal/self-service tools (76.2% for COOs, 80% for Heads of Sales). They’re looking at revenue and customer satisfaction and are responding directly to customer demands and pressure on their teams. This conflict often leads to stalemate where no one gets what they truly need.
Failure to align organizational maturity and eCommerce strategy hinders growth
The survey data shows that the desire to grow eCommerce channels is high across all participants, regardless of a respondent’s role, industry, or company size. At the same time, the strategies for achieving growth are fundamentally different.
This suggests a differing understanding of eCommerce’s role in the business:
- For the largest enterprises (≥ €500M), the focus is squarely on the bottom line, with 72.2% prioritizing to grow online revenue.
- Mid-market firms (€50–99M and €100–499M) are most focused on the customer, with a majority in both segments prioritizing to improve customer experience (65.5% and 92.2% respectively).
- For smaller companies (< €10M and €10–49M), growth comes from reach, with a strong majority focused on how to expand to new markets (70% and 75% respectively).
The study underscores the importance for executives to understand where their company stands on the digital maturity curve and to align their commerce strategy accordingly. Growth often stalls when strategy and maturity are out of sync.
“Digital transformation is not merely a platform upgrade. It’s a strategic transformation of the entire business model and operations. The future of B2B eCommerce belongs to companies that can build innovative, flexible, and powerful digital ecosystems, tailored to their unique business goals,” says Vanessa Belstler, Vice President Digital Commerce Sales Cloudflight.
Cloudflight’s study of 150 European B2B eCommerce leaders was conducted on its behalf by moweb. The research spans five core industries — Industrial Equipment, Automotive, Electronics, Chemicals, and Wholesale/Distribution — and includes respondents from across Europe, grouped by headquarters location in DACH, the Nordics, CEE, Benelux, and other regions. Participants represent the C-suite and senior management.
About Cloudflight
Cloudflight is a leading full-service partner for digital transformation. The company offers strategic consulting, customized software development, and cloud operations with a focus on eCommerce, IoT, artificial intelligence, and cloud-native application development. Cloudflight supports customers across Europe in putting innovation into practice and creating measurable value.
