The Forrester Wave™: Commerce Solutions For B2B, Q2 2024

Commerce Solutions For B2B Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

Key features and pros and cons of top Commerce Solutions For B2B products:

Commercetools - Leaders

Pros:

Vision and innovation - quickly adapted to tighter customer budgets and brought precomposed B2B solutions to market
Application architecture and extensibility and integration - productive with Connect offering that integrates ISV solutions with no-code configuration
Good adoption by serving architects and developers while allowing agency partners to serve practitioners

Cons:

Weakness in reporting and analytics - chooses to make itself a repository for other reporting and analytics tools
Reference customers would like to see some capabilities (e.g., data extraction) made simpler for nontechnical users

Optimizely - Leaders

Pros:

Innovation powered by investments in the platform that underpins entire portfolio
Testing and optimization capability that fewer than half of vendors natively provide
Good partner ecosystem that continues to grow selectively with partners that deeply understand B2B for industrial distributors and manufacturers

Cons:

Reference customers would like to see simpler and more transparent scaling in the core

Salesforce - Leaders

Pros:

Vision and integration into new Embedded Commerce strategy to help customers start transacting with small steps
AI-powered feature set including Copilot for Merchant features for conversational configuration
Strong customer account and contract entitlements for modelling complex buying organizations

Cons:

Weakness in order and inventory management from a light version of full OMS that scales down number of inventory locations
Reference customers would like to see more focus on performance and scalability

Shopify - Leaders

Pros:

Innovation with rapid pace of delivering features for core B2B audience (consumer goods brands selling wholesale)
AI capabilities with Sidekick feature allowing nontechnical practitioners to use natural language for promotions and UI changes
Good community of developers that can potentially help conquer other B2B use cases beyond consumer goods

Cons:

Weakness in assisted buying and quoting - covers only basic scenarios of sales reps negotiating wholesale deals
Reference customers would like to see native functionality tuned for high-scale operations with large catalogs

Adobe - Strong Performers

Pros:

Strong partner ecosystem and community that knows how to put solution to work in B2B scenarios
Personalized search leveraging Sensei AI in combination with signals captured through Adobe Experience Platform
On-par extensibility and integration powered by AppBuilder for building storefronts and serverless backend extensions

Cons:

Weakness in workflow and business process modeling - relies on pro-code rather than low/no-code methods
Reference customers would like to see shift from emphasis on technology operations toward focus on end customer needs
Front-end story is fragmented

BigCommerce - Strong Performers

Pros:

Innovation through organic and inorganic means and partnerships with Google Cloud Platform for high-scale data
Strong front end with investments in Next.JS capability and acquisition of Makeswift for visual editing
Good partner ecosystem that continues to grow in support of B2B capabilities

Cons:

Weakness in customer account and contract entitlements that don't yet fully support complex customer organization hierarchies
Reference customers want to see improved checkout options and integrations

Intershop - Strong Performers

Pros:

Good vision of how buying experiences will evolve as smart manufacturing is adopted across industries
Personalized search with investment in Sparque.ai
Good application architecture with many capabilities decoupled from core into microservices

Cons:

Weakness in community as it builds more experts around new product innovations
Reference customers would like to see a larger pool of platform experts available for implementation

Sitecore - Strong Performers

Pros:

Innovation from architecture, customer-focused agile roadmap, and close partnership with Microsoft
Application architecture is cloud-native with fine-grained APIs that don't constrain clients (unopinionated architecture)
Good partner ecosystem that continues to build trust in new portfolio

Cons:

Weakness in front end - elects to support any touchpoint via APIs but doesn't bundle visual editing capability
Reference customers would welcome more comprehensive training

Spryker - Strong Performers

Pros:

Good customer account and contract entitlements that can mimic complex business models
Good extensibility and integration powered by bundled iPaaS capability white-labeled from Alumio
Good partner ecosystem that helps solve clients' complex problems

Cons:

Weakness in innovation - has yielded flexibility but not a specific dominant feature set
Weakness in reporting and analytics - defers those capabilities to customers' enterprise capabilities
Reference customers would like to see improvements in upgrade and maintenance process

VTEX - Strong Performers

Pros:

Extensibility and integration boosted by VTEX IO serverless infrastructure and data-as-a-service layer
All-in-one composable platform approach with Pragmatic Composability
Founders continue to steer direction and culture, engaging with clients' leadership teams as partner

Cons:

Weakness in front end - still early in migrating full breadth of B2B capabilities into decoupled FastStore framework
Reference customers would like to see better training programs

Elastic Path - Contenders

Pros:

Good partner ecosystem of ISVs that are pre-integrated and SIs that can guide transition to composed architecture
Good extensibility and integration with Composer no-code integration hub

Cons:

Weakness in community relative to others that have spent more time cultivating developers
Weakness in AI - defers those capabilities to hyperscalers and partners
Reference customers would like to see improvements in reporting
Declined to participate in full Forrester Wave evaluation process

OroCommerce - Contenders

Pros:

Assisted buying and quoting thanks to embedded CRM module for sales teams
Good community boosted by open-source ethos
Breadth of out-of-the-box features in a PaaS approach

Cons:

Weakness in innovation relative to others that can invest more into evolving as cloud-native SaaS
Weakness in extensibility and integration approach - customizations carry cost and risk during product upgrades
Reference customers would like to see improvements in developer onboarding

SAP - Contenders

Pros:

Strength in assisted buying and quoting
Scale and stability appreciated by reference customers

Cons:

Weakness in application architecture despite substantive steps forward
Growth prospects remain uncertain
Reference customers would like to see better cost flexibility
Declined to participate in full Forrester Wave evaluation process

Shopware - Contenders

Pros:

Strong workflow and business process modeling with no-code Flow Builder and Rule Builder
Good community powered by open-source roots and boosted by new investments

Cons:

Weakness in innovation - investing in foundational capabilities but hasn't found its killer app yet
Weakness in reporting and analytics - fit for simple implementations only
Reference customers want to see stronger core functions with less reliance on plug-ins

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

A: Commercetools, Optimizely, Salesforce, Shopify

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

A: Leaders in the Forrester Wave are vendors that have built a balance of both modern architecture and proven feature sets. They enable customers to compose commerce platforms using whatever parts are best for their needs. Leaders orient their feature sets to specific industries, have visions that match customers' architectural realities, have the right ISV and service partners, and demonstrate strong current offerings combined with robust strategies for the B2B commerce market.

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

A: https://www.forrester.com/policies/forrester-wave-methodology/

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Commerce Solutions For B2B in 2024

Commerce Solutions For B2B Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

Reference