I’m pleased to announce the release of "The Forrester Wave: B2B Commerce Suites, Q2 2015." Peter Sheldon and I last took a deep dive into the space in 2013, and since then we've seen B2B grow both in size and importance.  

However, today's B2B environment is more complex, crowded, and competitive than it was in 2013. B2B buyers now insist on an "Amazon-like" customer experience with real-time interaction, extensive price and inventory transparency, and robust guided selling.  B2B companies are still plagued by both internal and external channel conflict, which in many cases is impeding their forward progress with digital. And not only are offline companies moving online, but omnichannel competitors in adjacent categories and pure-play online sites are entering select markets as well. 

It was against this backdrop that Peter and I evaluated several top B2B Commerce vendors. We found once again that hybris (an SAP company), IBM, Oracle Commerce, and Intershop led the pack. But this time around, Insite joined their ranks.  NetSuite returned as a strong contender and was joined in that category by eBay Enterprise (Magento).  New to both the B2B commerce space and our Wave evaluation is CloudCraze, a company offering eCommerce as a native application within the Salesforce environment.  

As Peter Sheldon outlines in detail in his blog post:

"Andy Hoar and I spent the last four months putting eight of the leading B2B commerce technology vendors through a grueling process of due diligence, product demos, capability assessments and customer reference checks. We looked beyond features to examine toolset usability, extensibility, integration of suite modules, and innovation strategy. Here’s what we found:

  • IBM, Insite Software, Intershop, hybris and Oracle Commerce play head-to-head. These five vendors go head to head in the majority of B2B commerce RFPs today. All five have proven, mature B2B commerce capabilities, a large installed base of B2B customers, and a focused product strategy for supporting B2B channels. Although each has its own merits, the total cost of ownership, time-to-market, geographical presence, existing vendor relationships and the strength of their respective implementation partner networks are increasingly influencing decision outcomes. All five of these vendors pack a heavy punch of leading B2B capabilities that in many cases represent a significant leap of maturity compared to the current operational B2B capabilities of prospective clients.
  • CloudCraze, Magento (eBay Enterprise) and NetSuite offer competitive options. Each of these vendors has a strong offering in B2B, but all come with noteworthy caveats. CloudCraze is a native SalesForce application, and as such appeals to B2B firms standardizing their cloud infrastructure and applications on Salesforce.com. Magento offers a low-cost, highly customizable solution for firms that want to develop a B2B engagement platform without being beholden to complex solutions from the 'big 3' software firms. NetSuite appeals to mid-market B2B firms who are attracted by the ability to run B2B commerce, ERP and CRM on a single multi-tenant SaaS based architecture."

To gain further insights into the Wave process and results, clients may reach out to either Peter or me directly via inquiry access.