Three practitioner stories from B2B eCommerce World that changed how I think about digital transformation

Three stories from the B2B eCommerce World jumped out because they challenged how I think about digital transformation. Khaled Saleem’s account of QXO executing a complete rebrand in 15 days following an $11 billion acquisition—not through recklessness, but through meticulous preparation that made speed possible. His Office Depot story reveals how months of data analysis missed what customers actually experienced standing in stores waiting for their orders. And Amber McDougall’s tale of a customer who genuinely believed spreadsheets emailed to suppliers constituted EDI, because they’d normalised manual inefficiency as progress.

Together, these stories reveal three facets of the same challenge: QXO shows what’s possible when preparation enables speed. Office Depot shows the trap of having data without understanding human experience. Amber’s customer shows how businesses normalise dysfunction so completely that they can’t articulate what would actually help them.

Successful B2B digital transformation requires organised preparation that enables speed, direct observation beyond the data, and recognition that customers have normalised inefficiency—they can’t tell you what they need because they don’t know what’s possible.

Three stories from B2B eCommerce World 2025

The amazing thing about practitioner-led stories at conferences is the candour with which they’re given. True stories without the agency brag, without vendors claiming success is only because of their platform. Just honest accounts of what actually happened.

I recall three stories from real businesses that jumped out to me because I really aligned with them. From being so prepared, you can execute a brand transformation in 15 days—I dream of being this organised—to going beyond the data and getting into the psychology of the humans in the loop, to those captain obvious moments where you just have to smile because if you know, you just can’t believe it took this long to surface.

I hope you enjoy reading my recounting of these stories and that I do them justice.

Story 1: When preparation enables speed that looks impossible

“Data is king, speed is the emperor.”

Khaled Saleem coined this phrase in 2013 whilst leading Office Depot’s B2B ecommerce operations. It surfaced repeatedly across conference sessions, but his story about QXO’s transformation brought it to life in a way that made me rethink what “moving fast” actually requires.

QXO closed their $11 billion acquisition of Beacon Roofing on 29 April 2025. The rebrand was executed on Day 1 of ownership. Not just swapping logos across marketing materials—integration partners needed API updates, redirect chains affected years of SEO rankings, platform partners required new bearer tokens whilst maintaining service continuity. Every day of delay compounded the risk as customers encountered mixed branding across different touchpoints.

The team completed the full transition in 15 days.

Business schools later studied the execution speed as a case study in change management. But here’s what struck me: this wasn’t recklessness disguised as speed. This was meticulous preparation that enabled rapid execution.

They’d mapped every integration partner. They understood every API dependency. They knew exactly which systems needed bearer tokens and had backwards compatibility planned for the transition period. They’d identified every customer touchpoint where branding appeared and the sequence for updating them.

The 15 days weren’t the timeline for figuring it out. It was the timeline for executing what they’d already planned in exhaustive detail.

This same principle guided Beacon’s nine-month platform transformation, which began before the acquisition was completed. They were working with a 2014-era platform that had limitations in search, product display, and digital experience. Rather than a big-bang approach, they structured it around milestone-based releases.

The search solution launched in April 2024. Three weeks later, click-through rates had increased from 1% to 60%. Internal teams who’d started with scepticism—”I don’t think that’s possible”—were demanding acceleration within months: “When is the next feature launching?”

Canada followed in September 2024. Zero ecommerce presence in that market meant zero existing customers to migrate, no legacy systems to maintain during transition. They launched Beacon PRO+ as a completely new offering and became the first in their category to offer digital ordering to Canadian customers. By Q3 2024, Beacon’s overall digital sales had grown 28% year-over-year.

Each milestone proved capability whilst reducing executive perception of risk. CEO Brad Jacobs has set a target of $50 billion in annual revenue within a decade—a goal requiring multiple billion-dollar acquisitions whilst maintaining operational continuity.

What this taught me: Speed isn’t about working faster. It’s about knowing exactly what needs to change, in what sequence, and having the organisational alignment to execute without discovering critical dependencies mid-flight. Well-organised teams with good data can make decisions that look impossibly fast to outsiders who don’t see the preparation.

Story 2: When data reveals friction but misses the experience

Khaled’s Office Depot story illustrated the other side of “data is king, speed is the emperor”—having data doesn’t mean you understand what matters. Jae Lee‘s interview with Khaled uncovers that having all the data in the world can still not address the root cause.

Office Depot’s copy and print application team spent months analysing data across AWS and Google platforms. Every meeting focused on insights, studies, and analysis. They built comprehensive models of customer behaviour, mapped user journeys with precision, and documented pain points in exhaustive detail.

Yet they missed what customers actually experienced whilst standing in the store.

A customer would place an order online, drive to the location, and wait. Ten minutes became twenty. Twenty stretched to thirty. The printed materials sat in a queue behind other orders whilst the customer checked their watch, conscious of their next appointment. The data showed the problem existed in aggregate form—average wait times, queue lengths, and abandonment rates. But the customer felt it viscerally every single time they walked through the door.

Office Depot rebuilt its systems to guarantee 30-minute completion. By June 2021, they launched this as a formal service commitment to customers nationwide. Later, they improved it to 15 minutes. Customers received notifications the moment their orders finished, allowing them to time their arrival precisely. Like Domino’s Pizza Tracker—which everyone instinctively understands and appreciates—the notification system eliminated the anxiety of uncertainty.

What this taught me: You can have all the data in the world and still miss the actual problem. The data showed that wait times existed. It didn’t reveal the emotional experience of a customer standing in a store checking their watch whilst their materials sat in a queue. Sometimes you need to watch what actually happens, not just analyse what the data says happened.

Story 3: When customers normalise inefficiency and call it progress

Amber McDougall, speaking about customer adoption strategies, told a story that perfectly captured those “captain obvious” moments where you can’t believe what you’re seeing.

She made it a point to ask sales reps: “Take me to your most difficult customers. Take me to the ones who aren’t interested in what we’re trying to do, the ones who push back on every digital initiative.”

One day, she drove 90 minutes to Western Sydney to visit a factory customer working for Australia’s largest home builder. They operated under significant constraints—they carried inventory risk on every product, tight construction schedules governed their operations, and missing a delivery window meant idle crews whilst project timelines slipped and penalties accumulated.

After listening to their frustrations, Amber shifted her questioning: “Tell me what’s actually working for you.”

The customer brightened. “Well, your competitor has got us set up with EDI.”

Finally, something positive. “That’s great—can you show me how it works?”

The customer pulled up a spreadsheet. Columns carefully formatted with product codes, quantities, delivery addresses, project references—everything structured to match their supplier’s requirements. They filled out each row with order details, saved the file with a consistent naming convention, attached it to an email addressed to their supplier contact, and clicked send.

This customer genuinely believed they had EDI—Electronic Data Interchange. From their perspective, they were sending data electronically. The spreadsheet went through email rather than fax, which they’d used five years earlier. That counted as meaningful progress. They’d digitised their process.

Amber’s company had sales automation that could accept purchase order PDFs directly—no special formatting required, no manual data entry on either end. She offered to run a trial: “You don’t need to change anything about your spreadsheet or your internal process. We’ll just pick up your purchase order PDF automatically.”

The trial revealed what data analysis couldn’t: this customer needed speed in order entry—not hours or days, but minutes. They needed accuracy because a wrong product meant crews couldn’t work. The traditional manual process, even “digitised” with spreadsheets, created delays they’d simply absorbed as operational reality. They’d normalised the inefficiency because no supplier had offered an alternative they could implement without disrupting their existing systems.

Amber described it as one of the happiest days in her work—watching this customer shift from experiencing daily pain to talking about trust and exploring more business together. “But that could only have been really flipped around by being there at that time,” she reflected.

What this taught me: Your customers have normalised workarounds and called them solutions. They’ve documented manual processes and called them automation. They can’t tell you what they actually need because they’ve never experienced what’s possible. Direct observation reveals gaps that surveys and requirements workshops never will.

What do these three stories mean together?

These three stories sit in my mind as different facets of the same challenge:

QXO shows what’s possible when you have preparation, data, and organisational alignment. Speed becomes achievable because you know exactly what needs fixing and in what sequence.

Office Depot shows the trap of having data without understanding the actual human experience. You can analyse everything and still miss what matters most to customers.

Amber’s customer shows the reality most businesses face—they’ve normalised dysfunction so completely they can’t articulate what would actually help them.

Together, they suggest that successful B2B digital transformation requires three things:

1. Organised preparation that enables speed – Map dependencies, understand workflows, build organisational alignment before you execute
2. Direct observation beyond the data – Watch what actually happens, don’t just analyse what the metrics say happened
3. Recognition that customers have normalised inefficiency – They can’t tell you what they need because they don’t know what’s possible.

The businesses that transform successfully do all three. They prepare thoroughly, they observe directly, and they recognise that customer requirements often describe optimised versions of broken processes rather than reimagined workflows.

Your story belongs here, too

Are you a practitioner with a story to tell about a digital transformation journey? Something that worked so well it’s too good not to share, or something so obvious in hindsight that made such a difference?

Maybe you should think about braving the stage at B2B eCommerce World and sharing your story. If you’re not up for doing it on your own, I can support you by being your copilot and interviewing you. Maybe you’d like to be involved in a panel, or you think your agency partnership is so valuable that you’d like to have them involved as well.

The practitioner stories are what make these events valuable. The candour, the honesty, the “here’s what actually happened” without the polish, because that’s what people remember and learn from.

Reach out if you’d like to explore this. The industry needs more honest stories from people doing the actual work.