AI, Talent, and Scaling B2B eCommerce Platforms with Alexander Graf | Spryker

Complexity Isn’t the Problem in B2B eCommerce – It’s the Advantage

Complexity isn’t killing B2B eCommerce. Complexity  is fueling the most meaningful innovations in our industry.

That’s one of the key takeaways from a recent conversation I had with Alexander Graf, co-founder of Spryker and a long-time digital commerce operator. And while Spryker’s evolution is an interesting story, this isn’t just about Spryker – or Alex.

Although, he gets it at a different level than most.

It’s about a broader shift that too many still haven’t fully recognized: B2B is where digital strategy actually gets interesting.

B2C Was Supposed to Lead. It Didn’t.

For years, B2C captured the headlines and hype. Personalization. One-click buying. Flashy UX. The retail darlings shaped how we thought eCommerce was supposed to look.

But what B2C called innovation was often just uniformity at scale. The same discounts, same product recs, same checkout flow – regardless of whether the user was a casual shopper or a procurement manager trying to get a job done.

As Alex pointed out, the promise of personalization never fully showed up in B2C. In contrast, B2B didn’t have that luxury. And that’s what makes it worth paying attention to.

In B2B, Complexity Is Not a Bug – It’s the Blueprint

If you’ve worked in this space, you already know: there is no “standard” B2B transaction.

You’re dealing with multi-stakeholder purchasing. Products that need configuration. Pricing that shifts based on contract terms, location, and timing. Buyers who don’t care about browsing – they care about accuracy, accountability, and integration with their ERP.

Where B2C prizes simplicity, B2B demands specificity.

And that demand creates opportunity.

This is why Spryker – and companies like it – ended up focusing on B2B. It’s not because B2C is irrelevant, but because B2B needs real solutions to real problems. And the companies that get that – those who embrace the mess instead of trying to simplify it away – are the ones pushing digital forward.

Why “Just Make It Like Amazon” Doesn’t Work

One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make is trying to bring a B2C mindset into B2B. Copy-pasting consumer logic onto industrial buying doesn’t just miss the mark – it creates friction.

In B2B, the buyer isn’t looking for entertainment. They’re not looking to be wowed by your marketing funnel. They’re trying to meet procurement compliance, ensure availability, and fulfill operational requirements – all before 3pm on a Thursday.

A VP of digital pulled from retail might know how to build a slick front end. But if they don’t understand punchout catalogs, cost centers, and EDI confirmation, they’ll struggle.

B2B is operationally grounded. You win by understanding how people actually buy – and then designing around that reality.

Sophistication > Simplicity

B2B isn’t just more complex – it’s more sophisticated. The best digital strategies in this space don’t start with UI design. They start with a deep dive into the buyer’s journey:

• What roles are involved in each type of order?
  
• How does this customer want to pay, confirm, and track?
  
• What does the handoff between field sales and eCommerce look like?
  

That sophistication isn’t overhead. It’s value. When your platform flexes to the way your customers actually work, you’re not just enabling transactions – you’re integrating into operations.

And that, by the way, is what digital transformation really looks like in B2B.

Final Thought: Complexity Is Your Edge

Here’s my take: B2B companies shouldn’t be trying to eliminate complexity. They should be investing in understanding it, mapping it, and building systems around it.

That’s not easy – but it’s exactly where the competitive advantage lives. The companies that succeed in B2B eCommerce won’t be the ones that create beautiful front-ends. They’ll be the ones who understand that every messy layer of their business is a signal, not a problem.

B2B doesn’t need to catch up to B2C. It needs to stay focused on what makes it powerful: real buying, in real businesses, driving real outcomes.

And that means treating complexity not as a burden – but as the opportunity it really is.

Watch this insightful video with Alex from Spryker.

Contact Alex | Spryker

Spryker

Alex Graf

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Transcript

Alexander Graf:
B2B is far ahead because like every customer journey, every workflow in B2B is way more complex than in B2C. B2B figured out the models around how to retain in customers, how to approach customers in a tailored approach way earlier. So whatever they come up with online solutions is very advanced compared to what we have achieved in B2C and B2C. If we are honest about it and it’s true for Amazon and Zalando and Walmart. There’s no, there’s no tailor made customer journeys. It’s, it’s really, everybody’s like seeing the same, getting the same discounts, getting the same recommended products and all the promises our industry made. Especially in B2C, you know you’re starting at this website and you’re only getting the brands you want for the price you can. You, you only can see and achieve with your individual discounts.

Alexander Graf:
Never happened.

Justin King:
So Alex, I’d love to hear first just kind of your journey. I know you’ve been in the industry for quite a few years, a couple decades and especially us old guys in the industry. It’s, it’s interesting to kind of hear the path that you took to Spryker and kind of the path that you came into B2B E Commerce as well.

Alexander Graf:
Yeah, Justin, thanks for the invitation. It’s funny that you’re saying that it’s decades now in the industry. It’s true. For me it’s like two decades. I’m working in this industry actually for 20 years and 20 years ago when we started and we were like the young guys and girls who said okay, you know, the old stubborn white male usually working in our industry not able to change from mail order or whatever into like E Commerce. We will disrupt them. And now I’m wondering now we are the old white guys or girls. So who, who and who is sitting where and like laughing about us and saying okay, what Alex and Justin are doing that’s so outdated.

Alexander Graf:
Let’s do like TikTok B2B sales. No, as I started actually 20 years ago when I in, in retail at a big mail order company called Auto Group. They are the owner of Crate and Barrel in the US So that might, might be a known brand there. And I was lucky because I was starting like in E commerce when E commerce was still not seen as a dominating industry. It was and I had a very average kind of result in my, the university exam. So I had to choose retail. No investment banking, no consultancy was like available for me with this, with this test set and Then when we started became really clear that’s just like a couple of like new business models that are trying to like reinvent how people are buying and selling. Especially in, in B2C.

Alexander Graf:
And this actually was also the angle where I started in this kind of industry. But over time I kind of realized okay, B2B is far ahead because like every customer journey, every workflow in B2B is way more complex than in B2C. B2B figured figured out the, the models around how to retaining customers, how to approach customers in a, in a tailored approach way earlier. So whatever, whatever they come up with with online solutions is very advanced compared to what we have achieved in B2C and B2C. If we are honest about it and it’s true for Amazon and Zalando and Walmart, there’s no, there’s no tailor made customer journeys. It’s, it’s really everybody’s like seeing the same, getting the same discounts, getting the same recommended products and all the promises our industry made. Especially in B2C, you know you’re starting at this website and you’re only getting the brands you want for the price you can. You, you only can see and achieve with your individual discounts.

Alexander Graf:
Never happened. It’s, it’s happening now more with Timu and Shein which are having a tough time now in the US but actually B2C under delivered promise wise and E commerce and B2B was like the way more interesting journey or became the more interesting journey for me over time. That is because A the projects we did even before Spryker and B2B were more were more interesting. In the B2C project this was all about how to handle Amazon, how to scale Google Ads. B2B project was way more around the product, the customer journey, real solving a problem right in the area. I live in Germany around Dach, we have very very strong manufacturing competence. Very very strong complex B2B journeys that can be helped. And so over time, when we started Spryker more or less 10 years ago, also the Spryker journey adapted more to B2B challenges.

Alexander Graf:
So we kind of solved, we say sophisticated journeys, others say it’s complex journeys and we can solve them better than anybody else. And that was my way into B2B. It all started with B2C and I thought B2C was way ahead. But over time I’ve learned that that’s not true. And now most B2C journeys are lagging behind. So kind of E commerce, B2C E commerce is still the same like it was in 2012. Maybe one or two new payment methods are in there. But if you’re like opening up a website today, people cannot tell if this is like a screenshot from 2012 or 2022.

Justin King:
That’s so true. What, what do you think are the like when you, when you talk about sophisticated commerce like in the B2B world. Give me some practical applications of what that means.

Alexander Graf:
Yeah, so obviously if you’re like, if you’re starting like an RFP process with B2B companies, like it’s usually not about like one customer journey. It’s like many, many, many different like customer cohorts with like dozens of different customer journey. So that’s like the customer journey side. That’s one thing. It’s usually not about like readymade products that are like in a warehouse. It’s more make to order kind of stuff, request for quote processes where like different providers need to be connected, where you have to come up with a price through a very sophisticated process of like finding out is the material available, is the production capacity available, what does the logistics cost for this specific item for this specific customer. And that’s what we are seeing like in B2B and usually you don’t see this in B2C project. That’s what I find interesting because in B2B projects you definitely need very strong product managers that understand the problems of specific customer cohorts and say, okay, is it pricing difference in logistic costs? Is it something the customer is interested in? Or is the customer not so price sensitive? Because anyway puts like the price on top at a, at a certain invoice for his customers.

Alexander Graf:
So we should like optimize for another process. And this level of insight you usually don’t find in B2C companies.

Justin King:
You have an, you have a kind of a unique perspective, a global perspective. About half of our audience is global and half the audience is us. Half the audience is global. We found in the US that kind of the biggest challenge is executive buy in the company’s executives actually believing that digital is a strategic advantage inside their company. Do you see the same challenges like in Doc and earlier we were talking about Dubai and other areas.

Alexander Graf:
We see the same challenges. So obviously in the US and in Europe we have a way more sophisticated market because many, many of Those decision makers, CIOs usually or CMOs grew up with commerce that was different like 10 years ago or 15 years ago when you had to convince them of like commerce or digital commerce is like more advanced than made auto commerce. We don’t see this kind of talent level in other regions. In some APEC regions we see them in the MENA region especially like Dubai, Saudi, Qatar, Egypt we don’t see this because there was no developed commerce industry. So usually you don’t have executives with kind of in commerce history or like with digital commerce history. So there the explanation, the explanations and presentations are very different from what we are using in the US and Europe. But what’s interesting now is that over the last like 15 years digitization was kind of optional. You could do it or not and then company A is doing it, Grainger is doing it, but C, their margins are not so much better.

Alexander Graf:
So I was right Alex. So I stuck with like the mail order catalog kind of thing thing and obviously it was kind of one direction decision, right? So there was like different, different, different degrees of digitization. But like you, you, you kind of worked on the, with a similar value chain. Now where we’re heading now with AI and some other stuff, it’s not optional anymore. It’s like really mandatory. If you’re not doing it within the next like five to ten years and you have to start with like basic digitization to, to get actually to the level where you can apply AI, you’re out of the business. And this kind and this is something those decision makers are starting to understand because they’re seeing how everything is disrupted by AI around them. And when they’re starting to look into AI use cases they figure that ah, without this kind of relevant discipline around like building my own data, protecting data, I cannot do anything in AI.

Alexander Graf:
Maybe I should have listened to Justin and Alex who told that they told me like 10 years ago to build this kind of data set. So this kind of new, new level of importance is changing the, the, the, the culture because now we are moving into more formal kind of discussions. Before it was kind of optional and I was like first 10 years in my career I had the strategy, okay, I will convince like the old Justin, he will learn it. I, I will show him that it’s so much better to go for the digitalization way and it’s so much cheaper along the way and eventually it’s cheaper doing it now instead of like do it like in 10 years. But over time I’ve learned there is no way of convincing like old Justin. If all Justin is saying digitalization is just optional, I don’t want to do it. I believe in the mail order way. I just have to wait because either the market is pushing all Justin into, into that direction or his working contract Expires based on age or whatever.

Alexander Graf:
And then somebody will come and then we can do it again. Because like from an agency or vendor perspective, if we need to sell the importance of digitization in the B2P project and then deliver it and be successful for the result, this opens up so many discussions that you don’t want to have that you cannot control. So we need to work with companies that are 100% on board and that don’t need this executive buy in. And that’s actually how I look at it today. There’s like, yes, there are many companies where executives are still not buying in, but they will, they will give up anytime soon because it’s not option, the optionalities is out of the discussion anymore.

Justin King:
Yeah, I think, I think for the first probably 15 years of my career was always about convincing people to come along with me. Right. An invitation. And then it moved to a critical survival. Like you’ve got to do this to survive, you know, and, and it takes time. It takes so much time to get this right and test and optimize and figure out your customer journeys. I love that. What, what, what do you, what do you see in the kind of the macroeconomic pressures, especially when you look at kind of the global stage.

Justin King:
What are you seeing and hearing from manufacturers and distributors in the market today?

Alexander Graf:
Yeah, so it’s interesting, like region by region is super interesting. So two years ago or three years ago, I started a bit digging into Middle east, especially like Saudi and Dubai. And it was like two, three years ago. It was like everybody was like super hyped and people were moving from Dubai into Riyadh, the capital of Saudi and say, okay, what Dubai achieved, we’re going to achieving now in Saudi. So much money, so much opportunities and now they are running out of money because of the oil price drop and some other like macroeconomic exchanges. And many, many of our agency partners are not getting paid anymore, right? Not, not particularly for Sparka projects, but there’s no money anymore. Like 3 years ago I would have told you, hey, go to Dubai. It’s like definitely interesting place today.

Alexander Graf:
I would say 100% avoid this region for the next like one or two years until, until the dust settles the other way around. Like it was with the, or it was like similar with the US So US was like the market like also for us last, last 10 years, like a gross market. 50% of all like software licenses are I think paid in the US So it’s a huge, huge, huge, huge market. All the investors, all our partners were pushing us moving in that direction. And like we have like a big team there now. What we’re seeing is like Europe is like developing much, much, much, much better because there’s, that seems to be the place where money is moving, where, where people see, okay, some investments can be made that make sense, infrastructure wise, digitization wise. Germany will be by far the biggest beneficiary of this development because there are no euro bonds, there’s no bonds where you can invest in Europe. You have to decide for country.

Alexander Graf:
Germany is like the biggest country in Europe. So therefore most of the money will come into Europe. I’m pretty sure if like Germany’s like taking on another, another trillion of debt, the market will buy it easily. So what was interesting, I last recently, like two weeks ago, I’ve heard the CEO of the biggest like German bank giving a keynote and he’s saying with a new $500 billion in debt, interest rates for the euro for the German bonds went down because the market is believing that more investment is, is leading like to better Germany. So, and I think this, when the, when the bond market is like starting to swing and the bond market is a very, very slow swinging environment, it’s not swinging like it’s, it’s swinging in decades and not in years, not in months. So but that’s an interesting development. So I’m a bit more careful now being like too bullish on like a certain market, as I was in the Middle east region like three years ago or in the US maybe last year or maybe I could be very optimistic about Europe right now. So lots of stuff can happen within days.

Alexander Graf:
I believe like globally that there will be a bit more collaboration between China and Europe because there’s lots of potential politically there’s definitely kind of blockade between like China and the US Which I don’t see any way to solve it within the last three years of Trump. But therefore I’m a bit more bullish on the European market, especially the dach market in B2B right now and bit more pessimistic on the US and, and middle east and undecided what, what it means for South America and South America. Let’s, let’s be honest, that’s, that’s essentially like Mexico, if you put it in the South American bucket, and, and Brazil, the other markets. You can basically.

Justin King:
Right, how, how have you experienced kind of the customer journey itself changing? What do you, what do you see as kind of the kind of biggest movements in customer journey? Not, not manufacturing distributors, but manufacturing distributors, customers themselves.

Alexander Graf:
So what we are seeing within the companies is. So we expect that many of those companies will build pure digital teams that are like that are becoming the masters of the digital B2B user journey and their own tech teams to start developing. They were slower in adapting it than I expected, but they are there now. And I see a big differentiation between two types of B2B companies. B2B companies that did digital project in the last like five, six, seven years, they do have like an understanding what a product manager means in a digital, in a digital way or what a digital customer journey is and companies that are starting now and the companies that do have this kind of teams that in some cases are idling, idling now for last like six months because of this kind of global recession. They’re looking into like new projects, new new opportunities, new stuff they can do to support like revenue growth or to stabilize, stabilize revenue versus the other companies are struggling finding these product managers and developers because Most of those B2B companies are located in remote locations and we have this big demographic shift. So to be very honest, there is not like too many 30 year old digital natives being available to become like your next CIO close to Stuttgart. It’s a very, very tight market.

Alexander Graf:
So there’s very, very different types of those stuff. The conversations with multi company CIOs or CIOs that have been like 3, 4 years at like a company and shifted, it’s a very different one from the ones who are now figuring out how to get a bit more independent from ATG or SAP or Microsoft. And I don’t know if they have a chance to catch up because it’s like the market is like moving too fast.

Justin King:
How do you see? I think the talent, I think the talent problem is actually pretty significant. I think the talent. There’s kind of two parts of the talent problem. One is in the U.S. what you said is very relevant. There’s where these companies are at is not where the talent resides. Yes, right. And these companies aren’t really built for remote work.

Justin King:
So it’s a, it’s kind of a, a battle between that. Right. So even if you get talent, you’re not really built for remote work. How do you make that work? The, the second part of that is that a lot of people struggle with their careers inside of B2B companies. Like what, what is your career path? CI CIO is a little easier one to wrap your head around the progression to cio. But, but if you’re in, if you’re a director of digital, what is your career path? You know Both, both by, you know, where you live, your geography and your, you know, position within the company. Have you seen similar?

Alexander Graf:
Yeah. So on the, on the talent pool, I think the situation in Europe is worse than in the us. There’s a couple of countries that do have managed this demographic shift a bit better. The US is one, Turkey is one, India’s one. And then some of the African countries obviously Brazil is also still young. In Germany alone we are losing 500,000 workers net per year. So no chance to replace them with immigrants, no chance to increase like birth rates. That’s a lot.

Alexander Graf:
That means essentially that you won’t find anybody doing blue collar labor jobs for entry wages, for entry salaries, right? So like in two or three years you don’t find anybody to open up your retail store at 6am in the morning so somebody could buy some toothpaste. It’s not possible. There’s just no people anymore. Not even immigrants will do that. We need them for higher paid jobs. And we have a very still immigrant positive kind of agenda here. And that’s one thing, one perspective. The other second perspective is I’m not sure if I was like a digital director if I would aim for CIO anymore because obviously the next big job in line is C A I O, the AI officer, right? Which is like 10 times more complex, 10 times more budget than the CIO.

Alexander Graf:
The CIO kind of work like try to, to, to make things work, to get all the data out of SAP or Microsoft and to establish like a couple of connections to like the new vendors. But the IT he still stayed in lane, he still worked with the stage standard value chain of the company, the CAIO or I don’t know how to.

Justin King:
Pronounce it, I like it sounds good.

Alexander Graf:
He is working in two dimensions. He’s working on a new value chain because everything is changing. Plus this whole new digital stuff which is very different. Doing AI strategy work is very different from doing a PIM project. It’s super, super, super different. So as a digital director I would rather aim for this. And third perspective is the demand in these companies, even the remote ones that are like located somewhere in Montana. It’s not optional anymore.

Alexander Graf:
They have to find a way to hire those people. And there’s companies with a very, very good offering, whatever it is, could be a retail company, could be a manufacturing company, could be a parts company where there’s no easy replacement from China or India or Mexico. So and in those companies there’s budget, there’s hopefully like young enough and clever leadership. Those I would Pick from a digital director’s perspective and try to make it work. And maybe you have to fly there like two days. And it’s easy to say for European perspective because our longest destination travel time is like two hours and then we’re in Madrid and the other two hours is in Helsinki, you know, but like it’s a bit longer in the, in the U.S. but these are like the three things I would have in mind there. It’s definitely a market where we are moving which is like for the top talent who really knows the stuff.

Alexander Graf:
It’s a sensational market for let’s say mid market employees that usually were like the project managers in the PIM project. Right. It’s a horrific market because there’s not like too much value they can add in these, in these new times.

Justin King:
Yeah, like that. I think, I think another part of that is there’s, there’s something about like in the E commerce world, this B2B world is just so unsexy. It’s so not sexy. And there’s something about that doesn’t.

Alexander Graf:
There’s nothing more sexy same than machinery and manufacturing stuff.

Justin King:
So. I agree. I, I am 100. You and I are on the same page with your typical e commerce talent or digital talent or strategy talent. They don’t see that the same like if you’re, if you’re in supply chain, B2B becomes the thing. Right. It’s the, it’s the epitome, it’s the pinnacle of your career in digital. Sometimes there’s a perception of that and so often it’s difficult to get talent just even outside of budget and strategy.

Justin King:
Just because you’re a manufacturer, distributor making you know, widgets or something like that. It’s just, it’s a difficult thing to do.

Alexander Graf:
Yeah.

Justin King:
How do you, how do you see companies themselves solving some of these larger challenges?

Alexander Graf:
Yeah, it’s very good. I think it starts like from the top. So these C level must understand so what’s going on and that there are like new customer customer journeys. So if we like dial back a bit like 15 years ago we would have started like E commerce projects for B2B companies as side projects. Okay. Let’s solve a certain issue in a certain sub market where there’s no headwinds, where there’s no people arguing against it. And then let’s open up the online store in Austria. That’s like usually stuff from a German perspective you would go to Austria, so smaller market and then we could, could test it out.

Alexander Graf:
Right. And then let’s see if there’s some tractions on this kind of project, then we can bring it back into the headquarter kind of thing. And I think the same happened in the U.S. i don’t think you have time for this strategy anymore. So you have to change. You have to start like changing stuff in your core value chain because like changes are so fast now that you cannot adapt. Learning from like a two years remote market, we had some artificial ingredients built in there. No field force, for example, no kind of no existing B2B relationships.

Alexander Graf:
And that’s tough because now as a B2B CIO or CEO, you have to really make like tough decisions. You have to make decisions where maybe a supplier will call you next day and tell you, okay, I don’t want to work with you anymore because you’re selling now directly. And this is something we’ve always told you that you should not do it. And it’s kind of tough decision time right now. And I think it’s a good time to do this maybe in a time where the market is struggling because all the suppliers or your partners have to figure out anyway what’s going on the next like two years. It’s definitely tougher. If you do it in a market way, which is like growing strong anyway, then everybody believes he has a right to call the CEO and yell @ him. But this is changing now.

Alexander Graf:
It’s tougher. I started my career also as a consultant and it was rather easy to come up with a couple of proposals and okay, let’s do proposal A in like a geographic market. B, let’s do proposal C in a different domain, like same geographic market. And let’s get some budget and let’s do it. This is way more complicated when you have to, it’s kind of an open heart surgery now with, with. But it’s, it’s not optional. You have to do it anyway.

Justin King:
How do you deal with, I think of some of the biggest objections within that are often the systems they already have in place that provide challenges to innovation in general. Right. You know, the ERP being, being a significant one. Even if you’re on modern, you know, one part of your company’s on a modern stack, you know, another big part of your company’s on a very unmodern stack. Like how do you, how do you kind of work through some of that?

Alexander Graf:
Yeah, 20 years ago we would have believed, okay, let’s do everything like in a modern way or in a future proof way and let’s rebuild everything. Many, many companies tried it, especially tried to build Everything around microservices or so. But to be honest. So Boris, my co founder usually uses a sentence he never met, like an IT manager, like who after like a successful relaunch project is coming back to you and saying, hey Boris, that was such fun. Let’s do it again, let’s do it again. It’s always painful. And even like in setups where everybody’s like on the same side, there’s no hiccup between vendors and sis and the customers. So even then there’s so much stuff like in IT projects which you cannot predict.

Alexander Graf:
So the only way to manage this is to make those projects smaller, right? So like to let’s say to cut those projects in a way where like the longest timeline is like three months until you see success. And this is also something where you need like very, very smart and strong product managers, like people that understand IT and business and to accept that you cannot replace the ERP system, most likely not within the next five years. But you can start like building around and you can start like pulling stuff out. You can start like building your middleware and interfaces. But the successful experienced people have learned that you, you need to reduce like hiccup risk where. And the more, the more, the more systems you’re touching, the more people that are involved along, the longer the timeline is, the bigger is the risk of something is of a clusterfuck, to be very honest. And it’s not about that people don’t want to do it and are like anti change. It’s like it’s way too complex.

Alexander Graf:
And the more people are involved in a project, the more communication streams you have. And we all always, I always like use one example which I found so eye opening when I was still working at the auto group, you know, this mail order company. And there was like a time where the company decided okay, let’s get rid of our old Ecom ERP back end. Like it was based on Inter Shop and lots of custom code. Now we want to do it right. And there was one guy called Udo was doing requirement management. You know, he went from like from team to team to get like all the requirements they would need for their domain. So I was responsible for the mobile commerce domain.

Alexander Graf:
Even 2005 the auto shop was doing like 2 or 3 million euros a year in mobile commerce on Nokia screens, right? So it was really, really interesting. And then Udo came to us and did like this requirement list and okay, Florian, Alex, so what’s your requirements? Blah blah blah blah. And we gave it to them and we Wanted to be like the companies in Japan because there was Imode was back then was like the status quo of mobile commerce. One year later Oodoo came back. And in this year there was like the launch of the iPhone in 2008, right. Like mobile commerce was like really changing. And then Oodoo came back and say okay, Florian, Alex, I’ve made now I met with all the teams now I have now my full list. I want to do just a quick check if everything is still in the right place.

Alexander Graf:
If like your requirements are still correct. And then we said kudo, like with any. Everything changed, nothing what we wanted to do. And you know, I still believe he’s in. He’s doing this like for 50 years now. Like he’s still doing requirements. It’s like it’s just not possible. And he was a super nice guy and a smart one too.

Alexander Graf:
It’s just not possible.

Justin King:
Yeah, that’s so true. Where do you see architecture decisions in this process? I know you guys have, you guys have made some pretty significant choices about how you, how you go to market the platform and the architecture choices you guys have made. How do you see that as part of this decision process?

Alexander Graf:
It depends who is doing the decision, the business, if the business is doing the decisions or actually they don’t care what the architecture is, they just want it working. So if we do it like this breaker composable way using like Lego Technic building bricks sounds nice, but eventually they want to have it work. In the early 2010 years, many CIOs tried this microservice architecture journey. And most of them, if not 99% of them failed because it was just too complex to handle. The idea was good to separate like different like business domains from each other with like own databases and own protocols and own interfaces. But again it’s the same example like with Odo, this certain domain maybe is not necessary like next year, but then you still have to this whole kind of maintenance block for this kind of microservice. So. And what we are seeing today is there was kind of a swung back from composable into like composed solutions.

Alexander Graf:
People don’t want to take risks anymore. They’ve learned last 10 years that if they are contracting with like 10 different vendors on a PIM project or commerce project, then they have like 10 different ars to pay 10 different salespeople calling them who wants to earn more money next year. And it’s obviously not really, it’s nothing that’s really helpful for our industry. So the approach we are taking is we are providing a rather composed solution. You can rip out whatever you want and replace it with your part, but there’s like a lot of power is built in already. I believed like five years ago that we should, should be, should be opening up like even more into this kind of platform world where everything is connected via interfaces and API. But the team decided to have like more stuff built in, which is now something that is working out pretty well for us because eventually you can go without in PIM and cms, whatever. So you can still, you can, you can use the basic stuff built in and save costs and time.

Alexander Graf:
But this seems to be kind of a, it’s, it’s swinging back and forth. I’m pretty sure like in three years we are like fully back on the composable world and like and then three years later it’s back on the, on the composable world but eventually for the business. So it doesn’t matter. And to be very honest, if we are going now to, to a trade show like let’s go to shop talks in Vegas or let’s go to nrf. If you’re like hiding the logo at a booth and you’re just listening, it could be everything. It could be an email provider, it could be a commerce system, it could be a PIM provider. They’re all telling you the same API first AI driven innovation, B2C and B2B, it’s all the same shit. So it’s something where our industry really, really, really did not deliver.

Alexander Graf:
So everybody’s like, so there’s no differentiation available for an interested like CIO or business user. So even SAP and Microsoft are pitching total cost of ownership as a concept and time to market where they want to be like really good. But it’s like you cannot go to any vendor website and like find like even tiniest bit of truth because everybody’s like copying from each other. And that’s part of the problem, I believe. So finding out who’s standing for what. And even I have like a tough time to understand what a certain partner in like the, I don’t know, data governance space is doing. Even when I like downloading 10 white papers, trying to understand the whole website, I don’t understand what problem is solved here and why him. It’s like, and that’s like, I think that’s, that’s our industry.

Alexander Graf:
It’s like a huge problem in our industry.

Justin King:
Yeah, I do this often when I walk around like a shop talk or our event B2B E Commerce World and walk around just and compare signs that everybody’s using the same words in the same way and on other booths. It’s kind of interesting. Let’s talk specifically about Spryker. Talk to me about what Spryker does. Let’s talk about first in the kind of especially the manufacturing distribution world, like what type of companies do you guys focus on serving?

Alexander Graf:
Yeah, obviously companies that do have kind of a transactional business model that want to sell something, it doesn’t matter if they sell a certain product or service or if they want to build a market marketplace. So if you want to build a marketplace for services in the construction space, for example, so then Spryker is definitely one of your one or two picks. One of the one or two only picks you have in the, in the industry. So we just have been recognized as leader in the Gartner magic quadrant for this kind of vision. We are usually we are leading most of the, of the use cases Gartner has in their, in their vendor assessment. And that is those use cases in the Gartner magic quadrant are now focused a lot like in B2B. And it’s not about like selling products that are sitting on a shelf anymore. What we are seeing is there’s way more demand for our self service portal where existing customers can pick stuff where they need like a spare part, for example, where customers can pick a service as a product.

Alexander Graf:
Hey, I want to have this, this thing repaired next week. Please give me like three quotes from garage services close by that, that can do it and that are certified with the right spare part. So it’s, it’s, it’s a very different way. It’s, it’s usually not finding new customers online. It was finding new customers online like five, six years ago. Now it’s like serving existing customers way more efficient and better, being integrated more in the customers and the customers like product pipeline. And that’s where we are helping most. So whenever there’s a use case where you believe okay, that is too complex to solve with our ERP system, it’s not just setting up an online shop which you could do with even B2B cases within Shopify today.

Alexander Graf:
When there’s like individual workflow, different types of customers, complex pricing matrixes, that’s where we are strong and that’s actually where our team can help you to deliver the right thing.

Justin King:
Do you guys typically do the services yourselves or do you work with partners?

Alexander Graf:
No, it’s like it’s 95% partner led motion. But it’s an interesting thing you’re naming it what we’re seeing and this is definitely something our industry needs to discuss. The usually little triangle between vendor SI and customer is not working perfectly anymore because many, many customers learned that they don’t want to work with two different parties. Because then parties are usually blame each other. The vendor was not honest about like product capability. The vendor is like blaming the si. This was like on the project level was not delivered the right way. And therefore we are finding more and more customers that are approaching us and saying, hey Spryker, cool solution, cool people, but I don’t want to have an SI involved.

Alexander Graf:
Do whatever you want to do. But we want your quote on the services side. This is definitely not scalable from a vendor perspective. We cannot scale if we do all the projects ourselves. But what we should listen to is why are customers saying this? They’re obviously not happy how it went the last like 10 years. And if we are looking back and how much like customer success involvement we had in those projects. Yes, there’s a couple of hiccups in those projects because on the SI side we had the same problem. Like on the vendor side, no specialization.

Alexander Graf:
So many SI said we can do it, we can do B2C, we can do B2B, we can do construction, we can do automotive, we can do retail, we can do furniture, we can do fashion. And within those different industries, we have solutions in commerce from five different commerce vendors. We have solutions in PIM from five different. So they wanted to do it all, plus consultancy. So no specialization at all. So and we, we see more success on the SI side with specialized SIS, like specialized B2B SIS, for example. But I don’t have a solution here. But it’s definitely something our industry needs to, needs to manage better.

Alexander Graf:
This whole, like this whole triangle. Because going forward there can only be this kind of, this kind of triangle. You need vendors doing product, you need SI’s doing the project, you need customers. But customers, from what I’ve Learned last Like 2 or 3 years are not happy with the triangle anymore. Not happy the way how our industry was using this kind of triangle. So we don’t want to do projects ourselves. That doesn’t make sense from a financing perspective.

Justin King:
You know, in the distribution world there’s this concept of vendor managed inventory, vmi, you know, kind of there’s vending applications and then actually managing inventory at the location of a customer. As you were saying that this idea of vendor managed commerce comes to mind. So you still need that, you still need the triangle. Like you said, you’ve got all three parties but how do you closer align strategy and relationships and technology and then services with the customer? I think that’s a, I think that’s a really interesting point. How you guys thinking about AI? So we’ve watched Shopify, you know, put out their MCP offering commerce tools, did something similar, not the same level. You know, as you kind of think about agents shopping and MCP and things like that. How are you guys kind of thinking about AI or with your customers?

Alexander Graf:
So we are doing what, what, whatever, whatever is needed by our customers. And some customers need like better tools to like manage data, like, like inventory management stuff. And then we are usually like connecting either to AI providers that are doing this stuff or opening up our, our data room for, for the existing LLMs. We are not developing our, the own LLM. I don’t believe that like there’s like too much value in that. So the stuff I’ve seen so far, so I have like my perspective on this. Usually the AI tools that we’re seeing today are optimizing the existing value chain. They’re saying okay, you have fucked up like inventory management, let’s use an AI tool to make it better.

Alexander Graf:
In the next AI generation of like businesses that are driven by AI, you most likely don’t need this AI tool anymore because the way how you’re like importing product data or inventory management or how are you doing inventory management don’t require any tool that is like cleaning up data. So right now we are finding a lot of tools that are like working on the existing value chain, but very, very little tools that are like focusing on the new value chain which is also like coming in, which is also coming in B2B. Like from a platform perspective, we believe we need to be open for as many relevant tools as there are out there. From a strategic perspective, we want to be the single point of truth because the system that holds the data for this system, it doesn’t matter what kind of AI tool is using this kind of data because eventually it will be increased in value in the system. So and second point is if we are very, very honest about like customer feedback, like missing AI tools was not on the top 10.

Justin King:
Right.

Alexander Graf:
So and as, as AI interested I am myself, I’m using all this kind of stuff all the time. And like I’m really bullishing. I’m, I’m, I’m annoying my colleagues with it like every day. That’s not what we are getting as a feedback from like customer service. And I think the customers are eventually the ones that are like paying our invoices, therefore we should do what they want and not what we find cool.

Justin King:
I think there’s too, there’s a lack of fundamentals in the B2B world. Not because of not trying, but because it’s so complex. Things like product content.

Alexander Graf:
Yeah.

Justin King:
Is a is such an incredibly hard problem to solve. Really. Very few companies or anybody’s really solved this ability to get product content from manufacturer to distributor, to display it online, to differentiate it, to make sure it’s filled out, to get fill rates. It’s such like that’s just one of many kind of fundamental things. And there are very few companies in the world that have actually figured out how to do that and do that efficiently at some decent level of cost. And so then when we think about AI, it’s like, well, we’ve got these fundamental things to figure out first before we get there. I completely agree with your approach there.

Alexander Graf:
Yeah. And like I just give you an example in B2C. So in Europe I was involved like many discussions around like Shein versus old E commerce models. Shein is, I know it’s like, it’s like deprioritizing us right now, but they have a very, very interesting way of like finding relevant products for you, producing them, shipping them to you. But especially the feed, how this selection was tailored for you, how this feed was built was very interesting. If you’re like talking to Zalando or like Walmart today, they’re saying, you know what, we are using AI in finding better, maybe even tailored headlines for our newsletter. And they say, yeah, but maybe, maybe the newsletter is not a channel where you have to create like demand anymore. You have to like, you have to create an app where people are voluntarily logging in every day, spending like 20 minutes and not finding better headlines for the newsletter.

Alexander Graf:
And I think that’s a very good picture on how AI is deployed today. The newsletter is without any value in the future, but still people are buying headline optimizing AI tools for retail newsletter these days. And that’s actually when I’m listening to even competitors AI announcement. That’s what I’m seeing. I see like headline tools, not so much like tools that are working on a new value chain, but again so nobody knows what’s coming. So maybe I’m wrong here, but I’m not getting this as a feedback from customers so far and we have learned that we should do what our customers want.

Justin King:
Yeah. What are the type of like for the people out there that are kind of thinking through replatforming or maybe platforming for the same time for the first time. Which type of companies or problems should be the ones that are reaching out to Spryker?

Alexander Graf:
Companies that are not happy with SAP, Microsoft, Navision, ATG anymore should reach out because those companies are sophisticated enough to run a to run like a decent organization. Usually they are like employing like people handling SAP updates without any value for customers or product or like the business model. People working on those problems definitely can work with Spryker whenever they have like a customer journey value chain where they do like new transactional business, new customers, existing customers, new geographies, existing geographies, new domains, existing domains they can reach out. But like a good, a good, good filter is if you can afford your SAP Navision team, you definitely can afford Spryker.

Justin King:
Got it. Well, amazing conversation, Alex. Really appreciate it learning about you individually and the Spryker platform and just just your vast knowledge about this manufacturing distribution world. I appreciate you being on.

Alexander Graf:
Yeah, thank you for having me. And thank you for also being like a fanboy of like B2B and construction and the stuff. We definitely should meet in person. Thank you for having me on the podcast.

Justin King:
Absolute.