B2B Online Atlanta 2026

Day 3: CX, Growth, and Brand Authority

8:00 am - 8:45 am Breakfast

8:45 am - 9:15 am Opening Remarks

8:55 am - 9:05 am Chair's Welcome Remarks

9:05 am - 9:25 am Keynote Presentation: From Defense to Offense: Making Customer Experience Your Growth Engine

Lee Kemp - SVP, Customer Success & Transformation, PCNA

For too long, B2B digital transformation has been pitched solely as a defensive tactic to cut costs and drive internal efficiency. It is time to flip the script and align your entire executive team around the customer experience as your primary revenue driver. This keynote explores how prioritizing frictionless buyer journeys over internal convenience inevitably leads to massive market expansion and retention.

• Align the entire C-suite around the irrefutable reality that the customer experience is the most important metric for long-term retention.

• Protect your buyers from internal operational chaos by establishing dedicated "hypercare" teams during massive ERP or platform cutovers.

• Shift your organization's mindset to view e-commerce not just as a cheaper way to process orders, but as a tool to unlock completely new buyer demographics.

• Audit every internal process change by asking a single defining question: "Does this actually positively affect the customer?"

Lee Kemp

SVP, Customer Success & Transformation
PCNA

See Bio

9:25 am - 9:55 am Keynote Panel: Why Some AI Pilots Scale and Others Stall

We have officially reached peak buzzword fatigue; executives are tired of hearing that AI will magically solve every business problem. This candid panel cuts through the Silicon Valley hype to focus strictly on the non-hyped, practical, and highly effective AI deployments working in B2B today. Learn how to identify narrow, solvable use cases that deliver immediate ROI without requiring multi-year, ERP-level overhauls.

• Deploy AI tools specifically for internal coding assistance, rapid prototyping, and drafting to accelerate your team's output

• Avoid "magic button" syndrome by ensuring you have human-in-the-loop oversight for all AI-generated content and data normalization

• Evaluate AI vendors strictly on their ability to solve a defined, acute business problem rather than their broad generative promises

• Use AI to analyze vast amounts of customer survey data and behavioral feedback to quickly identify and action critical CX pain points

9:55 am - 10:15 am B2B Online Partner Presentation

10:15 am - 10:35 am Keynote Presentation: Beyond the Cart: Transforming Your Digital Portal into a Customer Intelligence Hub

Not every B2B customer wants to click "add to cart," as many large enterprise buyers will stubbornly stick to their entrenched EDI systems or automated ERP emails to place their orders. This presentation reveals how to pivot your digital strategy by building a self-service portal that provides buyers with real-time access to their historical invoices, supply chain trends, and inventory data rather than just focusing on the checkout button. Discover how turning your website into an informational data hub creates a superior customer experience and immense brand loyalty, even if the actual transaction takes place completely offline.

• Shift your initial digital focus away from forcing online transactions, prioritizing instead a frictionless environment where customers can seamlessly access their own account data.

• Design secure dashboards that feed your buyers valuable trend reports, logistics data, and inventory insights pulled directly from your backend supply chain systems.

• Accommodate legacy buyers by granting them 24/7 digital visibility into their complex order histories and invoice statuses without forcing them to abandon their established purchasing habits.

• Recruit key customers as early beta-testers through targeted, one-on-one phone conversations rather than relying on generic email surveys to accurately map out your portal's required features.

10:35 am - 10:55 am B2B Online Partner Presentation

10:55 am - 11:35 am Networking Break

Track A: Marketing & Brand

11:35 am - 12:20 pm Panel Remix: Making it Stand Out and Shine: Elevating Brand Authority Through B2B Creative

The outdated belief that B2B marketing must be dry, overly technical, and visually boring is actively costing you market share. Buyers are human beings who respond to high-quality aesthetics, clear messaging, and emotional resonance. This session explores how to prioritize "clarity over cleverness" and elevate your visual assets to build unshakeable trust and distinguish your brand in a commoditized industry.

• Strip away verbose corporate jargon to deliver hyper-scannable, instantly understandable value propositions (The Art of the TL;DR).

• Invest in world-class photography, video, and design that proves your brand's authority and quality before the buyer even reads a spec sheet.

• Adapt consumer-grade marketing tactics to humanize complex industrial products and showcase their real-world impact.

• Structure your creative teams to foster adaptable generalists who can leverage AI for rapid video editing, copywriting, and design iteration.

Track A: Marketing & Brand

12:20 pm - 12:40 pm B2B Online Partner Presentation

Track A: Marketing & Brand

12:40 pm - 1:00 pm Rapid Fire Case Study: The Account-Based Marketing Reality Check: Scaling True Personalization

While Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has been an industry ideal for years, the harsh reality is that most B2B organizations still struggle to successfully tailor digital experiences to different accounts at scale. This session cuts through the theory to reveal how leading practitioners are executing highly targeted campaigns that drive enterprise-level conversions without relying on automated generative shortcuts. Discover how to align your sales and marketing data to build customized buying journeys that resonate deeply with your most valuable prospects.

• Transition your strategy away from antiquated "batch and blast" email methodologies and toward highly customized, omnichannel journey marketing.

• Restructure your marketing department to separate your direct-response marketers (who live daily for the immediate lead) from your dedicated brand awareness teams to ensure comprehensive coverage across the entire ABM funnel.

• Create distinct, tailored website experiences that dynamically adjust bespoke catalogs, unique site features, and pricing based on the specific priority tier of the enterprise account logging in.

• Leverage mature marketing operations to specifically target the complex "buying groups" within an enterprise, ensuring your tailored messaging reaches every individual decision-maker involved in a B2B purchase.

Track B: e-Comm Ops

11:35 am - 12:20 pm Panel Remix: The Profitability Equation: Hacking the Cost-to-Service Metric

Every time a customer picks up the phone to place a routine order or ask a basic tracking question, your profit margins shrink. This session dives deep into the "cost-to-serve" metric, illustrating how migrating legacy behaviors to digital self-service completely alters your P&L. Discover how empowering customers to serve themselves frees your team to execute highly strategic, revenue-generating initiatives.

• Calculate your exact cost-to-serve for manual orders to build a bulletproof financial case for e-commerce and EDI investments.

• Identify the repetitive, low-value inquiries bogging down your customer service reps and automate them via self-serve online portals.

• Implement proactive post-purchase communications (e.g., automated tracking, delay notifications) to eliminate "where is my order" phone calls.

• Train your customer service teams to transition from reactive order-takers into proactive, consultative product experts.

Track B: e-Comm Ops

12:20 pm - 12:40 pm B2B Online Partner Presentation

Track B: e-Comm Ops

12:40 pm - 1:00 pm Rapid-Fire Case Study: Taming the Beast: Training LLMs to Navigate Complex Product Catalogs

For distributors boasting millions of highly technical SKUs, traditional search algorithms often leave buyers frustrated and empty-handed. This case study demonstrates how training Large Language Models (LLMs) on your proprietary catalog data revolutionizes product discovery. See how predictive AI can instantly analyze compatibility and suggest the exact configuration a buyer needs, entirely eliminating the endless scroll.

• Feed your proprietary product manuals, spec sheets, and historical order data into a secure LLM to create an expert internal search brain.

• Enable buyers to search using natural language or problem-descriptions rather than requiring them to know exact, obscure part numbers.

• Deploy AI to automatically generate hyper-accurate, side-by-side product comparisons that highlight the specific technical differences buyers care about.

• Utilize visual search capabilities that allow technicians to snap a photo of a broken part or barcode to instantly locate the exact replacement.

1:00 pm - 1:50 pm Networking Lunch

1:50 pm - 2:30 pm Rotating Hotseat Panel: Slaying the Giant: Thriving in the Shadow of Amazon Business

Amazon Business is no longer just a looming threat; it is an aggressive, thousand-pound gorilla fundamentally altering B2B buyer expectations. This high-stakes panel unpacks the latest strategic shifts in Amazon's playbook and how independent distributors can fight back by allowing an audience member to jump on stage to join the conversation. Learn when to leverage Amazon as a strategic marketplace partner and how to outmaneuver them through specialized expertise and high-touch services.

• Analyze Amazon Business's latest logistical investments and technology trends to anticipate their next moves in the B2B sector.

• Differentiate your brand by offering bundled B2B services, highly technical support, and curated catalogs that a massive generalist marketplace cannot provide.

• Determine the financial viability, channel conflict, and brand risks of syndicating your catalog to sell directly on the Amazon Business platform.

• Upgrade your own site's personalization and fulfillment transparency to match the baseline expectations Amazon has permanently set for modern buyers.

2:30 pm - 3:00 pm Networking Action Tabletop Discussions: Turning Conference Theory into Monday Morning Strategy

Conclude the conference by transforming three days of intensive learning into a concrete execution plan. These structured networking tables are strictly focused on peer accountability, writing out actionable next steps, and swapping contact information for post-event check-ins. Lock in your strategy, commit to your goals, and build a lasting community of B2B allies.

• Tackling the Unsexy: Strategize the gritty details of automating spare parts procurement, mapping obsolete items, and managing MRO inventory.

• Selling B2B Services: Map out a plan to drive recurring revenue by bundling digital scheduling, maintenance, and subscription models.

• Punchout Perfection: Share best practices for streamlining the technical connections between your catalog and buyer e-procurement systems (e.g., Coupa, Ariba).

• Peer Accountability: Fill out a commitment card detailing exactly "who I met and what I am doing next" to guarantee conference ROI.