For Brillio’s enterprise AI and digital transformation consulting practice, this data validated what we were already seeing with clients across retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, and B2B: the companies that moved from reactive to deliberate, building integrated digital platforms, investing in first-party data, and rethinking the sales role entirely, captured disproportionate value. The full findings show precisely where that gap widened, industry by industry, region by region. That’s the conversation worth having.
The state of B2C commerce
Something shifted in 2020 that most companies hadn’t planned for. Ecommerce went from a growth channel to the primary channel, almost overnight. Revenue jumped 75% year over year in Q2 alone, and consumers weren’t just browsing at record rates, they were converting. The store, historically the center of product discovery, quietly became a fulfillment hub.
What does that mean for enterprise strategy? Quite a bit. High-performing companies understood early that digital transformation with AI isn’t a future investment, it’s the present operating model. Sixty-six percent of them accelerated their shift from in-store to digital experiences, while underperformers held steady. That gap compounds. Companies investing in digital product engineering services, customer data platforms, and contextual commerce are building the muscle that will define the next decade of consumer relationships.
Three signals stand out. First, direct-to-consumer grew by 200% for essential goods between March 2019 and March 2020, manufacturers who’d treated DTC as a side channel suddenly found it central to growth planning. Second, social referral orders climbed 104% year over year, making social presence a genuine revenue line, not a brand exercise. Third, 68% of consumers said they’d keep buying essentials online after the pandemic, so the behavioral shift isn’t temporary.
For Brillio, this confirms what our digital transformation consulting practice has been built around: enterprises that treat commerce as an integrated experience, not a standalone channel, are the ones capturing lasting value. The data doesn’t suggest a trend. It describes a new baseline.
The state of B2B commerce
B2B is often cast as the cautious sibling of consumer commerce. Slower to adopt digital, slower to change. But the data tells a different story. By mid-2020, B2B orders placed through digital channels had jumped 44% compared to the start of that year, and 83% of B2B organizations were already selling online. That’s not hesitation. That’s a structural shift happening in real time.
What’s striking isn’t just the growth. It’s where the growth is coming from. High-performing B2B companies weren’t retreating from their sales teams as ecommerce expanded. Seventy percent reported managing remote sales extremely well, and 52% were actively planning to grow those teams. Ecommerce didn’t replace the enterprise sales motion. It gave reps room to become genuine advisors rather than order processors, which is a distinction that matters enormously when buyers show up to conversations already informed.
For organizations navigating digital transformation consulting decisions today, the B2B findings surface a useful tension: self-service channels drive volume, but in-person or consultative selling still drives average order value. The two models aren’t in competition. They’re complementary, and the enterprises that treat them that way are consistently outperforming peers who force a choice between them.
And then there’s the data problem. High-performing B2B companies track customer purchase history at 2.4 times the rate of underperformers, and competitor activity at nearly three times the rate. Enterprise AI solutions are increasingly what separates organizations that act on that insight from those still collecting it in disconnected systems. The opportunity isn’t access to information. It’s the engineering to make that information move.
