Intelligent Commerce: The Great Leapfrog Opportunity for B2B

In just a few short years, generative artificial intelligence has done something most digital transformations couldn’t: re-patterned our behavior at an atomic level. We no longer search; we ask questions. We no longer browse; we expect answers. We no longer tolerate a delay in finding products; we want instant gratification.

Generative AI has also changed the way we work, and fast. AI is accelerating software development, automating merchandising, and transforming how we understand and act on customer data.

For the past decade, many companies have avoided commerce technology re-platforming — opting for lightweight solutions like Shopify to get the basics done, or making smaller, modular changes to their commerce system of record. For many business-to-business (B2B) companies, the pace of change has happened too slowly or not at all. Why? The risk/reward ratio was way out of line.

All that stagnation is about to end. Generative AI and AI agents are ushering in a new intelligent commerce era that promises better efficiency and lower costs, to the point where sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option. It’s the biggest opportunity for B2B organizations to leapfrog over the last decade of incremental innovation to achieve remarkable return on investment with far less work.

The MACH Debate: What Went Wrong and How Intelligent Commerce Makes it Right

Over the last couple of months, the composable commerce debate has flared up again, fueled by criticism of the MACH Alliance and a wave of architecture retrospectives. Much of the frustration is valid. However, it’s important to draw a distinction: The problem isn’t composability; it’s how the industry tried to commercialize and govern it.

MACH introduced a powerful set of principles: microservices, API-first, cloud-native, and headless. And many organizations have succeeded by embracing them, not as dogma, but as part of a modern development toolkit. However, some have fallen short with integrating and maintaining dozens of services — either burning out internal development teams or blowing through their IT budgets as SI projects spiraled into bespoke builds with limited value.

For businesses that sat on the sidelines or tried and failed with MACH, intelligent commerce offers a more realistic, accelerated path forward. It addresses the real blockers to composable success — front-end complexity, integrations, and data fragmentation — without the overhead of a full re-platform.

Instead of six- to 12-jmonth transformation projects that cost millions, intelligent commerce, powered by AI, enables meaningful change in as little as six weeks, at a fraction of the cost.

Accelerating B2B With Intelligent Commerce

Most organizations recognize the need to integrate AI into their storefront, and fast: 86 percent believe that without AI integration in their online store experience, they will be left behind. For B2B companies, intelligent commerce makes it possible to not only integrate AI into their storefront but also accelerate innovation.

Here are just a few ideas for how this will happen.

1. Automating Repetitive Tasks

AI has the potential to take over routine, manual work, freeing up development and business teams. This could include:

• Auto-generating code snippets or API connectors.
• Building test cases and QA routines.
• Producing structured product descriptions or campaign copy.

2. Acting as a Co-Pilot for Developers

Using modular, API-first architecture, AI tools will be able to:

• Accelerate front-end development through component generation and real-time UI creation.
• Simplify back-end integration by mapping and transforming data between systems.
• Automate API connectivity between core systems like PIM, ERP, CMS, and commerce engines.

3. Serving as a Merchandising and Buying Assistant

Merchandisers will be able to shift from manually building promotions to orchestrating end-to-end experiences:

• Campaign setup, testing, and optimization become continuous and automated.
• AI agents can auto-personalize storefront content by audience segment.
• Product bundling, pricing experiments, and A/B tests happen faster with minimal manual intervention.

4. Enhancing Buyer Experiences

By analyzing behavioral, contextual and transactional data in real time:

• AI will enable dynamic personalization, such as tailored journeys for every visitor.
• Search will become semantic and conversational, improving discoverability.
• Recommendations will evolve from simple “related products” to true guided selling.

5. Providing Platform-Level Intelligence for Smarter Decisions

Unlike legacy systems where data is locked in silos:

• AI will integrate across systems and surface insights at a platform level.
• It will help identify dropoff points, catalog inconsistencies, or underperforming channels.
• Leaders or AI systems can then take action quickly based on real-time intelligence across the full stack.

The Great Leapfrog Moment for B2B: Why the Future is Intelligent

For years, B2B companies have been caught in a holding pattern — either stuck on rigid legacy platforms or hesitant to take on the complexity and risk of composable transformations. Many simply watched from the sidelines. Others tried and failed, overwhelmed by the integration and maintenance burden of sprawling MACH implementations.

But now, something has changed.

AI has created a leapfrog moment. A rare chance for B2B brands to skip the messy middle and move straight into the intelligent commerce era — one defined by automation, orchestration, and fast iteration rather than years-long re-platforming efforts.

What’s enabling this leap, and why now?

• Product catalog complexity has long been a blocker. In fact, 40 percent of B2B manufacturing companies say inconsistent product data across channels is one of their biggest challenges. AI-powered orchestration engines can clean, enrich, and synchronize product data in real time, without patchwork fixes or manual syncing.
• Integration challenges remain a top pain point: 51 percent of companies say they would upgrade their third-party system integration within their commerce technology stack first. With AI co-pilots, teams can rapidly generate APIs, connect systems, and automate back-end workflows without custom development cycles.
• Pricing and process bottlenecks like quoting, multilocation inventory, and rep-led ordering have long been a B2B pain point. Intelligent commerce systems can use AI to apply rules-based logic and automate repetitive workflows while adapting to contract-specific nuances.
• Outdated front-end experiences are another B2B drag. B2B customers today expect more: guided discovery, conversational support, and intuitive interfaces. AI makes this possible by turning static storefronts into dynamic experiences that learn, adapt and convert.

Why now?

B2B buyers have already changed. In their personal lives, GenAI has re-patterned how they shop, search, and decide. They expect answers instead of forms. Journeys, not product landing pages. And they won’t wait for B2B to catch up.

At the same time, the cost and risk of traditional re-platforming remain too high for most. Full-scale replacements take six months to 12 months, cost millions, and often disrupt the business. Intelligent commerce offers a smarter path: modular modernization that delivers results in weeks, not years — without burning everything down.

This is the future of B2B digital commerce: not monolithic, not over-engineered MACH, but intelligent, AI-powered, and ruthlessly outcome-focused.

For companies that have already invested in modular architecture, this is good news. You don’t need to rip and replace. You just need to activate what you’ve already built through orchestration, automation, and a clear focus on customer experience.

And for those who have been waiting for the right moment? This is it.

Bryan House is the CEO of Elastic Path, a composable commerce solution.