Jonathan Steffens

Most Manufacturers that do not sell direct-to-businesses and must rely entirely on their distribution partners to accurately represent their brand and optimize product discoverability in the digital wild. This panel explores the delicate art of sharing rich product data, syncing technology roadmaps, and influencing how your products are positioned, searched, and personalized on partner sites. Learn to break down the data silos that lead to disjointed customer experiences across the supply chain, ensuring your catalog remains highly visible and relevant to the modern B2B buyer. 

• Develop a streamlined syndication process for advanced search and product discovery that easily feeds high-quality product specs and rich media directly into your distributors' PIM systems,  
• Align your digital roadmaps with major distributors to ensure your technology upgrades synchronize seamlessly 
• Share vital e-commerce analytics and customer search data back and forth to power hyper-personalization to understand how different buyer verticals search specific audiences.  
• Create robust partnerships 

B2B buyers now expect the ease they get from any B2C site, and most B2B journeys still leak orders at every step. This panel walks the full path from search to checkout and gets into the tech that actually makes it flow. The architecture pitch is composable and API-first, but the real story is what it takes to move a buyer from "found it" to "bought it" without friction, dead ends, or wrong inventory showing up at the worst moment. 

• Decouple the front end from the backend mess. How headless architecture lets you ship new features, portals, and mobile experiences fast without waiting on a monolith to catch up.  
• Kill the friction at checkout. Dynamic CPQ, instant B2B financing, automated tax compliance, and invisible fraud protection working together instead of fighting each other.  
• Deliver on the promise after the click. OMS and RMS that give buyers real-time Available-to-Promise inventory, proactive delay alerts, split shipments, and self-service returns.  
• Feed it all from clean data. Agile PIM and fast site search that connect straight to the cart, so buyers find the right product and it's in stock. 

Every digital initiative looks good in the pitch. The real test is month nine, when the quick wins are behind you, the complexity is in front of you, and someone in the CFO's office is asking what you have to show for it. This session is a candid conversation between practitioners who have navigated that moment and the technology partners who helped them get through it, focused on what actually works when the pressure is on. 

• The budget defense frameworks practitioners use when leadership starts asking hard questions mid-transformation. 
• How your tech partners can help customers build the internal narrative, not just deliver the product. 
• What leading organizations do differently in how they structure accountability and communicate value during long-cycle initiatives.