Modernizing the Frontend and Backroom in B2B Manufacturing

After decades of decline, B2B manufacturing in the US is entering a digital renaissance. 

US manufacturing is leading the global industrial resurgence as companies reshore production and invest in digital infrastructure. The sector outpaced the world in 2022 and is continuing to expand, with smart manufacturing—powered by AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics—projected to more than double by 2030.

However, this transformation has focused on production, not the digital systems that power sales and customer experience. Modern B2B manufacturers now need to connect what happens in the factory to how they sell and serve customers online.

To succeed, B2B manufacturing businesses must adapt their use of technology not only on the shop floor but across their commerce operations. This includes using AI and automation, capturing and processing data in new ways, and investing in digital customer portals and real-time pricing tools to improve the buying journey.

This guide explores how B2B manufacturing leaders are building smarter factories and connected commerce systems to drive efficiency, lower costs, and accelerate growth.

What is B2B manufacturing? Understanding the digital opportunity

B2B (business-to-business) manufacturing is when companies make products for other businesses, not for retail shoppers. This industry is a $36 trillion piece of the global economy, and how it sells products is changing fast.

Historically, industrial sales have been relationship-driven, relying on sales reps, distributors, and paper-based purchase orders. However, modern B2B buyers now expect the same seamless, digital experiences they get in their personal lives, and they're rewarding manufacturers who provide data-driven omnichannel options. 

That’s why 50% of B2B manufacturers now consider ecommerce a primary focus of their digital transformation efforts over the next 12–24 months.

The opportunity is in digitizing these traditionally offline interactions—transforming complex industrial buying into connected, self-serve B2B ecommerce.

B2B vs. B2C manufacturing: Key differences

While both B2B and B2C models involve selling manufactured goods, their operations, audience, and sales processes are fundamentally different. The most significant difference lies in demand structure.

• The customer: B2B manufacturers sell to other companies. A single sale can involve a whole team, often six to ten people, in a formal procurement process. B2C manufacturers sell straight to individual customers.
• The orders: B2B sales often involve large, stable batch orders that repeat over time. B2C demand is highly variable, which complicates scheduling and inventory management, even if the profit margins are potentially higher.
• The price: B2B pricing is usually negotiated through contracts, with options for purchase orders and payment terms. For big orders, buyers will call suppliers to get the best price. B2C sales use fixed prices that customers pay right away with a card or digital wallet.
• The sales channels: B2B buyers use around 10 different channels to make a purchase. This can include everything from sales reps and online portals to marketplaces and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems.

These added layers of negotiation, approval workflows, and channel complexity make B2B manufacturing far more operationally intricate than DTC manufacturing—and more dependent on digital systems that unify data and processes.

Market statistics: Only 7% of manufacturing sales take place online

Right now, the industrial manufacturing industry is still early in its digital transformation. Only 7% of its sales happen through digital channels, meaning most business is still done offline.

This slow shift stems from the complexity of industrial products and established sales models. Many items are complex and custom-made, requiring technical drawings, 3D models and direct access to engineers, which has made face-to-face sales the norm.

But expectations are changing. Manufacturers that bring these complex processes online through modern industrial ecommerce platforms are finding faster quote cycles, stronger customer loyalty, and lower cost-to-serve.

Navigating this reality requires a platform that is both built for industrial complexity and modern agility. Shopify B2B addresses these challenges head-on by providing a unified B2B commerce solution that reduces reliance on strained IT resources. 

The foundations of modern B2B industrial manufacturing

Once defined by manual processes and long-standing traditions, the industry is rapidly embracing smart manufacturing to build more resilient and efficient operations. 

And the trend is becoming a main business strategy. Today, 95% of manufacturers are investing in AI for their smart-manufacturing plans, with a focus on cloud, software as a service (SaaS), AI, cybersecurity, and quality management.

Digital transformation on the factory floor must connect seamlessly to transformations in how manufacturers sell. Building those connections requires strong B2B integration between systems, data, and customer experiences.

Digital maturity levels in manufacturing

A 2025 Deloitte survey found companies using smart manufacturing saw big improvements, including a 20% jump in production output, a 20% boost in employee productivity, and 15% more capacity. 

These upgrades start in the factory, but they affect the entire business. They're changing not just how products are made, but also how they're bought, sold, and serviced.

Not everyone is adopting digital tech at the same speed. Experts use five-level maturity models, like those from PwC and BCG, to measure a company's digital abilities in areas like factory operations and supply chain management. These frameworks group companies into stages like Novice, Follower, Innovator, and Champion.

Most of the industry is still in the early stages. One survey found the average manufacturer is only at Level 2 out of 5, which means there's a lot of room to grow. This makes sense, as 93% of the industry's sales still happen offline through traditional sales reps and distributors.

Industry 4.0 and smart factory integration

Industry 4.0 is the next step in this evolution, where automation and data are connected through the whole manufacturing process. The World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network (GLN), with 201 top-performing facilities and value chains as of September 16, 2025, provides great examples of factories that have successfully scaled up this technology.

Top GLN factories report productivity boosts of over 50%, defect reductions of about 40%, and cuts in CO2 emissions of about 30%. This demonstrates how connected data can dramatically improve efficiency and sustainability.

AI is a huge part of these improvements. In the newest GLN assessment, about 60% of the top projects involved AI, up from less than 20% when the network started.

But a smart factory alone doesn’t guarantee business growth. To get the most out of these factory upgrades, manufacturers need a smart, connected sales platform to match. The data and efficiency from the factory need to flow right into a modern commerce platform that connects with the company's ERP, the heart of the business. To realize full ROI, the same intelligence guiding production needs to extend to commerce systems and B2B buyer experiences.

A time of digital transformation

The shift to digital in B2B commerce is happening now, and it's happening fast, with some estimates projecting the market could reach $61.9 trillion by 2030.

To bring that into focus for the US market, online sales are projected to hit $3.03 trillion by 2027. By then, ecommerce will make up 14.3% of all B2B product sales in the country, a noticeable jump from 12.0% in 2024.

The opportunity is clear: manufacturers that modernize early will be best positioned to capture this next wave of digital growth. 

📚 Read: How To Build a Successful B2B Ecommerce Strategy in 2025

B2B ecommerce adoption rates and growth projections

Both buyers and sellers are driving this change. Today, 71% of B2B sellers use at least one form of ecommerce to sell their products. For companies that offer it, ecommerce has become their number one revenue-generating channel, bringing in over one-third of their total revenue. At the same time, the share of revenue from in-person B2B sales has fallen.

Buyers are also growing more comfortable making large, complex purchases online. A recent McKinsey study found that 39% of B2B buyers will place orders over $500,000 through self-service ecommerce, and 20% are willing to spend more than $1 million online.

Unified commerce platforms help manufacturers support these omnichannel expectations without duplicating systems or adding operational friction. 

Digital customer portals and self-service

Modern B2B ecommerce is built on self-service. Today's buyers don't just want to browse online; they want to manage the entire purchasing process themselves. In fact, one-third of B2B buyers say they prefer a rep-free sales experience.

Digital customer portals make this possible, letting business customers place orders, view invoices, and manage account details independently. A 2025 study found that while 90% of buyers are aware of customer portals, they are the second-most preferred purchasing channel—but are only the fourth-most used. The benefits are clear for companies that offer them:

• 95% of users say portals improve efficiency.
• 68% report saving 30–60 minutes per purchase.
• 88% of portal users say that a supplier having a portal influences their decision to buy from them.

For manufacturers, self-serve tools do more than add convenience—they combine essential B2B features like custom catalogs, tiered pricing, and payment terms to deliver consumer-like buying experiences, with the operational control complex B2B sales require.

Automation and the need for new skills

As automation reshapes production, it’s also transforming how manufacturers manage commerce operations.

The latest National Association of Manufacturers Outlook Survey shows that 47.5% of manufacturing leaders in the US consider attracting and retaining a quality workforce to be a big business challenge. 

Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute’s newest workforce study projects demand for 3.8 million new US manufacturing employees through 2033, with roughly 1.9 million of those jobs potentially going unfilled if skill gaps persist.

Labor shortages are still constraining output. A 2024 report from UKG found that 70% of manufacturers say they can’t meet production needs due to staffing, and one in five plants cite labor as a capacity constraint.

Workforce transformation

Manufacturers are responding to this situation in various ways. One is with money: Nearly three-quarters of respondents to a survey by the National Association of Manufacturers said they planned to raise wages an average 2.5% over the coming year. Others are responding by reskilling employees and making sure they understand how their efforts contribute to overall success, in part through recognition programs.

These efforts have been working well. According to a joint survey by the Manufacturing Institute and the American Psychological Association, the vast majority of workers who felt valued by their employers said they were highly motivated, satisfied with their jobs, and would recommend their manufacturing company to others as a good place to work.

This shift in skilled labor presents an opportunity to rethink roles, skills, and operations. To stay ahead of the labor crunch, businesses should look to new tools to simplify complex processes and help teams focus on higher-value tasks.

Automation tools

Providing such tools and services is part of Shopify’s mission. Shopify Magic is helping manufacturers tackle time-consuming tasks like generating content, finding reports, and building features. Sidekick, an AI-enabled Shopify Magic commerce assistant, can answer questions, create reports, and complete tasks 24/7.

Shopify Functions extends Shopify's back end in significant ways, turning Shopify from a product into a platform, where businesses can build logic and workflows that suit their needs. It can enhance business processes in various ways, including creating new discount types for clients, customizing bundles, and making custom cart and checkout validations.

Shopify empowers businesses to automate many manual processes using Shopify Flow and Launchpad. Shopify Flow can automate tasks like identifying high-value clients to reward them with special offers or unique pricing. And instead of sifting through data yourself, Shopify Flow can find and execute your sales strategy automatically—saving time and improving margins.

A new external study by a leading global management consulting firm analyzed the conversion rates of major commerce platforms as well as custom builds. The study revealed that Shopify’s overall conversion rate outpaces the competition by up to 36%. and an average of 15%.

Together, these automation capabilities help B2B manufacturers streamline operations, reduce manual errors, and scale repeatable processes across both production and sales.

Embracing sustainability

The push for sustainability and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) compliance in manufacturing is growing, driven by both internal goals and emerging regulations from regions like Europe.

For manufacturers, tracking ESG data now overlaps directly with product, supply chain, and commerce data systems—making sustainability not just a reporting exercise, but a core part of digital transformation.

ESG reporting and compliance

A wave of new regulations is making sustainability reporting non-negotiable. Companies are now expected to track and disclose their environmental impact with unprecedented transparency.

Key regulations to watch include:

• EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD): This directive expands mandatory sustainability reporting to over 50,000 companies. It requires external assurance and detailed disclosure on value chain emissions (Scope 3), where relevant.
• California's Climate Bills (SB 253 & SB 261): Large companies doing business in California will be required to report on their climate-related financial risks and disclose their full range of greenhouse gas emissions (Scopes 1, 2, and 3), with first reports due in 2026.

Preparing for these requirements takes time. Best practices suggest a 12–18 month lead time to map boundaries, set up data pipelines, and get ready for auditing.

Sustainable supply chain management

For most manufacturers, the biggest environmental impact lies outside their own factory walls. A 2024 analysis from Boston Consulting Group shows that supply chain emissions (Scope 3) are, on average, 26 times higher than a company's direct operational emissions.

Despite this, there's still a readiness gap. Only 41% of companies report actively engaging their suppliers on climate goals. At the same time, buyer pressure is rising, as 46% of executives now require their suppliers and partners to meet defined sustainability criteria.

Digitally mature B2B manufacturing businesses can integrate sustainability reporting directly into enterprise resource planning (ERP) and procurement platforms, turning compliance into a competitive advantage. 

A customer experience revolution

Industrial ecommerce used to be slow-moving. Selling complex products meant you had to talk directly with suppliers for custom specs, 3D models, and technical data. 

The speedy convenience of sites like Amazon has reset everyone’s expectations, and young engineers and managers are pushing their companies to go digital. Delivering a modern, self-serve buying experience is now a competitive differentiator in B2B manufacturing.

B2B buyer expectations and behavior changes

Today's B2B buyers, who are mostly millennials, want the same fast and easy digital experience at work that they get when shopping for themselves. This is now a major competitive factor.

If your website is hard to use, you will lose business. Globally, 74% of B2B buyers said they'd switch suppliers for a better website experience, and in the US, that number climbs to 91%.

As expectations rise, manufacturers that offer intuitive, personalized experiences are gaining loyalty and market share.

Omnichannel strategies for manufacturers

To keep business customers around, your sales channels must work together seamlessly. B2B buyers will clearly switch suppliers if your omnichannel experience isn't smooth across all touchpoints. This means your ecommerce site, sales team, and distributor networks must feel like one connected system.

This is tough when you sell highly customized products, like a motor where the coil, voltage, and torque are different for every order. To succeed, your platform needs three non-negotiable features:

1. Smooth and direct ERP integration
2. Automated database updates that alert customers to product changes
3. Easy integration of technical drawings and specs

Manufacturers like Carrier are already seeing the impact. Using Shopify, the HVAC manufacturer now launches new ecommerce sites in about 30 days, instead of 9–12 months. The cost per site dropped from $2 million to around $100,000, helping Carrier roll out sites for dealers and distributors faster than ever.

Filtrous achieved similar gains, launching their wholesale channel in just 63 days with B2B on Shopify. Their self-serve portals and automations increased their organic conversion rate by 27% and saved their teams about 12 hours of manual work per week.

Mobile commerce for field sales and technicians

The customer experience continues long after the initial sale. Aftermarket sales, such as replacement parts and services, are consistently twice as profitable as new equipment sales, according to McKinsey research spanning from 2017 to 2023. This is where mobile commerce becomes essential.

Technicians need a simple, user-friendly way to order repair kits and parts directly from a jobsite. The market is already shifting to meet this demand:

• 74% of organizations now prefer field service platforms that have mobile apps.
• Service teams are heavily investing in AI and mobile tools to meet higher customer expectations.
• The market for field service mobile apps is expected to grow from $2.1 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion by 2033.

By extending B2B ecommerce to mobile, manufacturers can turn every service visit into a potential sale—deepening relationships and improving customer lifetime value (CLV).

Data integration

All the benefits of automation and customer experience depend on unified, real-time data. For any industrial manufacturer, the ERP serves as the nucleus where all critical information resides, including orders, schedules, pricing, and part data. 

A seamless sync between your ERP and ecommerce platform is standard now for a digital transformation. A bad integration, plagued by middleware issues, can cause massive rippling effects across the business and negate the benefits of moving online.

ERP and CRM integration best practices

To connect your systems correctly, you need a flexible, modern approach. This lets you update legacy systems without the risk and cost of a full rewrite.

• Use an iPaaS to connect your apps. An iPaaS (integration platform as a service) is a core tool that lets your ERP, customer relationship management (CRM), and commerce platforms talk to each other through APIs without being permanently locked together. This makes it much faster and easier to automate processes or add new systems.
• Build a composable ERP. Instead of customizing one giant, rigid ERP, it's better to build a flexible system from modular services that connect with APIs. A composable business approach helps you adapt to new technologies like AI.
• Use clear data standards. A shared data model for products and customers, along with industry standards like GS1 for traceability, makes everything simpler. It reduces errors and makes your data much easier to analyze later.
• Govern your integrations like products. From day one, your integrations should have versioned APIs, SLAs, and built-in security. This professional approach can breathe new life into older ERPs without a risky overhaul.

Unified, well-governed data not only improves operational accuracy but also reduces costs and improves pricing consistency across every sales channel.

📚 Read: Best Practices for Implementing Headless Commerce for B2B Businesses

Real-time inventory and pricing management

For any B2B buyer online, the two most important things are price and lead time. You can only provide this information accurately in real time if your systems are perfectly in sync. 

With material costs changing so fast, manufacturers are already moving from yearly to monthly price updates, making real-time data essential.

• Improve inventory accuracy. Most companies have an inventory accuracy of around 70%. Using technology like EPC/RFID can boost that to over 95%, according to GS1, so you can confidently show customers what’s in stock.
• Increase service levels. One building-products distributor used an AI-powered supply-chain control tower to increase its fill rates by 5–8 percentage points. The system proactively managed inventory and flagged issues in real-time.
• Use dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing uses live cost and market data to adjust prices in real time. In B2B, this has been shown to significantly improve margins.
• Grow faster with unified data. B2B brands on Shopify's unified platform have seen up to a 53% higher GMV per buyer in their first year. This growth comes from having consistent pricing, real-time inventory, and easy self-serve reordering.

Analytics and reporting dashboards

A fully unified system generates a wealth of data. The right platform turns that into usable insights without a heavy business intelligence (BI) setup. 

• Get built-in B2B reports. Shopify Analytics comes with B2B-specific dashboards. You can immediately track sales by company, see how well your catalogs are performing, and analyze reorder behavior.
• Dig deeper with ShopifyQL. For more advanced analysis, your team can use ShopifyQL. It lets you run custom queries on your orders, products, and inventory data directly within your Shopify admin. 
• Justify your investment. A unified commerce B2B software removes the fragmentation tax you pay for running many disconnected systems. It lowers your total cost of ownership (TCO) while boosting conversion and growth, a clear argument for getting executive buy-in.

B2B manufacturing platform selection guide

Even with a multimillion-dollar purchase of manufacturing services and components, on some level it’s still one store. Recognizing this, Shopify has rapidly expanded its B2B capabilities—releasing more than four dozen new wholesale features in the past two years to meet the evolving needs of manufacturers. As a result, Shopify was recognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave: Commerce Solutions for B2B in our first year of participation. 

Shopify’s suite of B2B features is built into the core platform, giving businesses access to the same powerful tools used for B2C to support their wholesale operations. This includes custom themes, Shopify Functions, discounts, Shopify Markets, APIs, Flow, and an optimized checkout experience proven to convert at the highest rates. 

Businesses can sell to all of their customers from a single platform—or even a single store—creating tailored experiences for every customer using curated catalogs, custom pricing, personalized storefronts, flexible payment terms, and a self-serve portal.

These capabilities help manufacturers unify complex operations without the cost or risk of building custom infrastructure. By connecting existing systems with partnered or custom integrations, companies can take advantage of Shopify’s robust suite of APIs and extensible architecture.

What to look for in a B2B manufacturing platform

• Custom data models: Build custom fields and objects that model your unique business data and extend core business workflows.
• Data analysis: Generate business insights with ShopifyQL, our query language custom-built for commerce, or export data into your own data warehouse.
• Headless API: Create unique commerce experiences for any platform, from the web and mobile apps to AR, VR, and 3D models.
• Customer data: Power growth and retention with accurate customer data, integrated with your centralized customer database.
• Marketing insights: Build your data layer with secure events that connect customers across devices.
• Order management: Integrate your preferred order management system and set custom business rules.
• Product catalog: Integrate and sync product information, pricing, and collections from any source.
• Checkout platform: Make more money with industry-leading checkout conversion rates. Skip the work, cost, and risk of building your own. 
• Fraud protection: Keep your revenue secure with fraud protection built on data from millions of retailers around the world.

Modernize your B2B industrial manufacturing operation with Shopify

Shopify’s unified B2B platform helps manufacturers streamline complex transactions, lower TCO, and scale globally.

Major drivers of conversion—for consumer products as well as advanced technological capabilities—are speed, a streamlined flow, customer trust, the ability to simplify complexity, and above all, the ability to handle transactions at scale.

In other words, we understand manufacturers because we meet them on their home ground. Our focus is on giving manufacturers a checkout experience built for scale, flexibility, and growth—without the heavy lift of custom development.

As the manufacturing industry continues to grow and change, Shopify will be there, ready to handle any sale at any time.