B2B Chicago 2025
April 28 - 30, 2025
Chicago Marriott Downtown
April 12 - Day Two: Delivering Value Throughout the Lifecycle
7:30 am - 8:30 am Women In B2B Breakfast
Katrina Schiedemeyer - Senior Customer Experience Center of Excellence, DanoneLimited capacity to 30 Distributers and Manufacturers. Please RSVP to ryan.kulp@wbresearch.com
A breakfast full of fun and reflection of women paving the way in B2B business success!
Kickstart your experience at B2B Online in an interactive breakfast session. Interested in hosting a breakfast to get your conference experience brewing?
Interested in kicking off the day as a private breakfast host? Contact vince.esposito@wbresearch.com
7:40 am - 8:30 am
Continental Breakfast & Registration in the Expo
8:30 am - 8:40 am
Welcome Remarks
Ryan Kulp -
Portfolio Director,
WBR (B2B Online)
8:40 am - 8:55 am
Chairperson’s Opening Address: Navigating New Dimensions of Digital Revenue Generation
Mark Newberry -
Partner,
Tata Consultancy Services
The explosion of digital capabilities has created new revenue opportunities for manufacturing and distribution companies. However, there are many pitfalls with your sales and operating models that can hamper success. Using the expansion of services as an example, we will explore approaches for effectively shifting to new value propositions for your customers across digital channels.
8:55 am - 9:15 am
KEYNOTE: Engaging Customers Through Critical Channels
Marta Dalton -
VP Data Analytics & Customer Insights,
Amyris
The disruption caused by COVID-19 has forced B2B companies to expand the channels they leverage for sales and customer service. At the same time, customer expectations have shifted, and customers are demanding easier ways to make their purchases. In this keynote session we’ll talk about:
- Shaping effective purchase paths for your customers
- Leveraging eCommerce sites, procurement software, and punchout catalogs
- Identifying the channels that will yield the most ROI while improving the customer experience
9:15 am - 9:35 am
Fireside Chat: Forging Ahead into Service Distribution
Alana Widdess -
Partner,
Tata Consultancy Services
Akash Khurana -
EVP, Chief Information & Digital Officer,
WESCO
There’s an evolution happening in the distribution industry as early movers begin to shape up Digital Strategies for the future. Hear how Wesco is embracing / ushering in the shift to digitally enabled service models.
9:35 am - 10:05 am
PANEL: Improving the Customer Experience to Gain Efficiencies at Scale
Alana Widdess -
Partner,
Tata Consultancy Services
Eric Rehl -
Head of Digital Transformation,
Avnet
Meeta Kratz -
Head of Strategy, Commercial Marketing and Data Science,
Thermo Fisher Scientific
B2B customers are demanding more self-service options and technical functionality when it comes to online purchases. Furthermore, businesses have determined that by shifting order entry for long tail customers to self-service, headcount will be freed up. B2B buyers increasingly expect Amazon like experiences, but what types of B2C engagements should you be considering in your customer portal? How can you crack the issue of order status? Panelists will discuss how they are implementing and enhancing self-service portals to drive repeat purchases and realize efficiencies, including:
- Defining the user profile and optimizing for your B2B purchasers
- Adding capabilities for re-order, subscription and pre-populated carts with favorite products
- Creating a simple re-order process for complex configurations to make the customer’s life easier
Meeta Kratz
Head of Strategy, Commercial Marketing and Data ScienceThermo Fisher Scientific
10:05 am - 10:35 am
GUEST SPEAKER KEYNOTE: The Creator Mindset - How To Be More Creative at Work
Nir Bashan -
Founder,
The Creator Mindset
According to a recent study by the World Economic Forum, the #1 in-demand skill at work today is creativity. Yet there are so few places where people can learn real creativity they can use at work immediately. In a groundbreaking new keynote, Nir helps attendees who think they are not creative to learn how to be creative. It turns out that creativity is a skill that anyone can learn. You just need to learn how to become more creative.
10:35 am - 11:15 am
Donut Worry Break In The Expo
Time for a sugar jolt! Don’t miss the donut wall featuring Chicago’s famous Do-Rite Donuts in the energetic hub of the event, the Expo!
In January 2020, Beacon Roofing Supply, the largest publicly traded distributor of roofing materials and complementary building products in the United States and Canada, brought together its 40 brands to become Beacon Building Products. This change allowed Beacon to help their customers be more efficient and grow their businesses by providing products, services in a new omni-channel format, including a robust e-commerce platform. Our speakers Jamie Samide and Sarah Bradley will take a deep dive into the B2C e-Commerce strategies they’ve since leveraged to tackle the unique challenges and opportunities of B2B.
- Constantly evolving to improve the customer experience on an ongoing basis
- Implementing strategies that support customers’ business at every stage
- Offering products both on-site and online to meet customers where they are
The old ways of doing business by placing orders through phone calls and emails are not able to support the demands of today's supply chains. Customer cannot receive timely pricing, stock availability, or lead times; it takes days, sometimes weeks, to place orders; and customers spend too many hours trying to figure out when their orders will arrive.
To address this, Stanley Black & Decker has partnered with VTEX and Clouda to build self-service portals across their various business units that give their customers the ability to get instant and accurate pricing, stock availability, and order delivery info. These B2B portals are expected to increase sales and lower operating costs for Stanley Black & Decker, and its customers, by empowering customers to self-serve (pricing, stock, lead times, ordering, shipping status, etc.) which will reduce burdens on internal Customer Service, Engineering, and Sales teams.
Chris Teer
Sr IT Business Relationship Manager, Industrial Digital TechnologiesStanley Black & Decker
Order fulfilment is a critical function within the overall CX, yet it’s one of the tougher things to crack in B2B. The supply chain disruptions of the last two years have not made fulfilment easier, but there are opportunities for removing friction and improving the end-to-end CX. Hear how digital leaders are bridging the gap, including:
- Optimizing the B2B customer portal to include features like invoicing status
- Informing customers about potential disruptions and giving them choices of alternatives to choose from
- Identifying ways post order to smooth the process and make things easier for the customer
- Partnering with the supply chain organization to get better insight into what vendor inventory looks like to set expectations with customers
This workshop will include group discussion around the challenges and opportunities how product catalogs are managed. The topics will also include discussion around an enhanced shopping cart experience, to name a few: multi-cart, saved carts and print cart.
Limited to 20 MAX
12:25 pm - 12:45 pm
Presentation: Grow Revenue and Personalize Customer Experience with Connected Commerce
Aaron Schubert -
Director, Product Management,
Salesforce
Manufacturers are finding it more challenging to differentiate themselves from their competitors based on product alone. It is now the experience a manufacturer provides to its customers and partners that increasingly provides market differentiation. Join this session to learn how connected commerce can provide a 360-degree view of your customer, from customer acquisition and fulfillment to customer support and loyalty, helping to grow revenue and personalize the customer experience throughout the entire digital journey.
12:45 pm - 1:05 pm
CASE STUDY: Evolving Your Go-To-Market With Ecommerce To Drive Growth
Antonio Espinoza -
Sr. Director, Head of Digital Marketing & eCommerce NA,
Philips
Antonio Espinoza, Sr. Director and Head of Digital Marketing and eCommerce for Philips North America leads the company’s strategy, planning, and execution of digital programs for Philips’s Health Systems. In this session he’ll take a deep dive into the process his team has undergone to take Philips’s B2B business to online commerce via eStore and EDI. Some of the strategies he’ll discuss will be:
- Collaborating across global and local functions
- Establishing lean management methodologies to sustain growth
- Finding opportunities to drive incremental growth by targeting under penetrated customer segments
- Leveraging digital tools to drive direct business and/or partner with sales force
Concurrent Sessions
Track A: Data Driven Customer Engagement and CRM
2:15 pm - 2:35 pm Presentation: From zero to one billion in online sales: executable customer-centric data-driven tactics to win in eCommerce Riccardo Caruso - Sr Director DCX Platforms and Ecommerce, CepheidIn this session, Riccardo will share the most valuable lessons from his eCommerce deployments. What are the key elements to ensure a frictionless user experience? How can data help to make sure you are going to hit your numbers? Find out how you can:
· Build your eCommerce team to successfully deploy on customer-centric data-driven tactics.
· Map out your way to the billion.
· Establish operations to execute on your plan.
Track A: Data Driven Customer Engagement and CRM
2:35 pm - 2:55 pm Presentation: Protecting Your Margin During BOTH Inflationary and Deflationary Markets Kim Watson - Director, Strategic Consultant, PROSInflation is at its highest point in decades, demand continues to be volatile, and supply chain interruptions and production issues have led to almost daily changes in manufacturing capacity and costs.
Many companies are ill-prepared to deal with this environment, leaving both sales and margin at risk. To protect profitability companies must model, execute, and analyze at a lower level of granularity and a higher level of preciseness than ever before.
AI-based technology and automation are a prerequisite for this level of detail. Attend and learn more about the necessary strategies you need to enhance margins during inflationary periods and maximize sales in deflationary times.
What Attendees Will Learn:
- Why pricing is the most powerful lever for driving profitability.
- How market volatility translates into variable profits.
- Understanding demand at a micro-segment level.
- Why companies must adopt different pricing models and monitor competitor pricing behavior.
- How to execute against new customer requirements
Track A: Data Driven Customer Engagement and CRM
2:55 pm - 3:25 pm PANEL : Harnessing the Power of Data in Digital Enablement Miriam Metcalfe - Digital Channel Global Sales Manager, Dormer Pramet Nick Crumlett - Senior Software Development Director, MiSUMi Brandon Snyder - Head of Online Customer Experience, City Electric Supply Paul Wlodarczyk - Director, Business Transformation, R.P. Fedder IndustrialAcross the industry, B2B digital leaders are looking to data for opportunities to enhance the CX, determine new product and service offerings and more. Manufacturers and distributors are quickly updating and maturing their data capabilities to deliver value to the business. How do you design a data strategy for diverse channels? How can you pull data from disparate systems?
Panelists will discuss:
- Starting points for understanding the current state of your data
- Engaging internal stakeholders to map out a roadmap of what you need in the future
- Overcoming the challenges of disparate legacy systems to enable data integration
- Understanding what you can act on when it comes to customer data to build this into your plans
- Developing a cloud migration strategy as a centralized point to access customer data
Track B: Conversion Optimization
2:15 pm - 2:35 pm PRESENTATION: Key Steps for Building a Successful B2B Ecommerce Website Ljubitza Frkovich Mallqui - Head of Marketing, PromelsaFor an established B2B Company that is looking to re-platform or for a B2B that is new to Ecommerce, it is important to know the actual business needs in order to build on functionalities that will allow the online business to operate in a successful way. The following are helpful steps to ensure that the most critical things are being considered before your Ecommerce launch.
- Know your customer: To whom you want to target? What are the business needs of that customer?
- Define your Ecommerce Goals in your Business Plan
- Spend time Building your RFP: Take into account B2B features that your target client would appreciate (Bulk ordering, Request a Quote, Product Spec Comparison).
- Choose the Right Ecommerce Technology and your Implementation Partner: Look for a technology that fits with your business model and allows you to scale, and for the implementation partner it is important the experience they have with the software in your market, as well as the good reputation they have among their client portfolio (also important for UX/UI).
- Product Content: Taxonomy, Descriptions, Product Attributes, High Quality Pictures, Value-Added Info: Videos, Certificates, Drawings. Working with your Manufacturers is key.
- Process Efficiency: A new website would give you online visibility for which is important to review internal workflows and make necessary adjustments before receiving claims from clients.
- Price: Consider the complexity of B2B to have the right pricing model
- Payment Methods
- Preview and Test your Ecommerce Store with real B2B Clients
Track B: Conversion Optimization
2:35 pm - 2:55 pm FIRESIDE CHAT: Scaling globally: Dover’s digital transformation story Deepika DiGiovine - VP Digital Applications and Connected Factory, Dover Corporation Laura Madden - Vice President, Translations.comDover, an $8B diversified global manufacturer, accelerated into their company-wide B2B and B2C transformation when COVID hit in 2020. With customers and operations worldwide, Dover realized that they needed a strategy to quickly create and publish high quality multilingual content across their digital properties. Deepika and Laura will discuss the following topics:
• Enabling global sales and marketing teams to create and deliver global content with ease and flexibility
• Creating a seamless multilingual digital experience to promote a frictionless buyer journey
• Integrating a translation management system into a global tech stack
• Managing global adoption and education of translation services and technology
Track B: Conversion Optimization
2:55 pm - 3:25 pm PANEL: Building Out Enhanced Functionality on Your Site to Drive Conversion Silvija Papka - Director, Strategic Programs, Snap-on Industrial Brian McGlynn - General Manager, Commerce, Coveo Ken Garrow - Sr. Manager, eCommerce, HD Supply Chris Osos - VP, Marketing, Transtar IndustriesWebsite optimization is a key focus area for marketers to examine the customer journey and make improvements to help customers find things more easily. How do you determine where to start first? Which technology should you be considering to optimize conversions now and into the future?
Panelists will discuss:
- Designing a roadmap to prioritize different features to add to your website that increase conversion rates
- Creating more functionality for workflows and approvals
- Adding more robust account management functionality that B2B buyers are demanding
- Linking accounts to internal sales reps to support your personalization and conversion efforts
3:25 pm - 4:05 pm
Tuesday Tailgate Networking Break
Enjoy game day bites including pretzels and cold beer as you make new connections and peruse the latest tech in the Expo.
4:05 pm - 4:35 pm
CLOSING PANEL DISCUSSION: Attracting, Training and Retaining Talent to Support Your Digital Business Into the Future
Kelley Bennett -
Global Head of E-Commerce,
Step2 Company
Brandon Snyder -
Head of Online Customer Experience,
City Electric Supply
Jonathan Toler -
Head of Product & Innovation,
Kloeckner Metals
Gabriella Churchill -
Director of eCommere,
Sullair, LLC
Talent is a hot button issue for this community. Everyone is in competition with each other with businesses pushing digital skills. As the industry moves more into digital and AI based technologies, what does this mean for recruitment and talent retention? How can you market yourselves and revise your recruiting approach to feel more like a tech company to attract skilled digital technologists?
- Attraction and recruitment best practices, capturing talent when competing with the tech industry
- Talent development and training best practices, treating people as your first asset
- Retention best practices, knowing what keeps talent motivated in the long-term
