"B2B deserves better than spreadsheets and hope": Ashley Nguyen on the self-service revolution in B2B commerce

Can you tell us a bit about your background and what you do at Qikify?

Ashley:

I started in eCommerce as a junior sales assistant, so I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of broken processes.

Not in theory. I lived it.

The manual workarounds, the back-and-forth, the time lost doing things that should have taken seconds. That frustration actually became the thing that pushed me forward.

From there, I moved into Product Marketing at Qikify, where I got to work closely with thousands of Shopify Plus merchants, really understanding the problems they were trying to solve at the storefront and conversion level.

And now, as B2B Product Owner, I get to channel all of that into building something better for B2B buyers and the businesses that serve them. The hands-on experience, the merchant conversations, the pattern recognition. It all feeds into the work.

My perspective has always been that B2B commerce deserves better than spreadsheets and hope. There's so much potential being left on the table.

What drew you to focus specifically on B2B self-service for this webinar?

Ashley:

Honestly, it chose me more than I chose it.

The further I got into my work with Shopify Plus merchants, the more I kept running into the same story: smart, growth-focused businesses still running their B2B operations the hard way.

Not because they wanted to, but because B2B comes with a different level of operational complexity compared to B2C or DTC. The demands are different, the systems are different, and the blockers are different for every business.

That also means optimization in B2B is one of those topics that doesn't get talked about enough. Because every business is so unique, it's hard to speak about it in general terms, and a lot of teams end up figuring things out in isolation rather than learning from each other.

But that's exactly why our team feels strongly about having this conversation. We believe there's real value in bringing people together, sharing what we've seen work, and helping B2B merchants find the right path for their own situation.

And when the opportunity came to plan this with the Shopify B2B team, it felt like the right moment to do that at scale.

A lot is changing on the platform. A lot is changing in what buyers expect. And the merchants who understand what's possible right now are the ones who are going to be in the strongest position.

Let's take a deeper dive into what you have mentioned about the B2B market. You said a lot is changing, both on the platform and from the buyers' side.

So what's really happening in B2B eCommerce right now that makes self-service such a pressing conversation?

Ashley:

The buyers themselves have changed, and that's the core of it.

The people making purchasing decisions at companies today are the same people who buy everything else online without thinking twice. They book travel on their phone, manage subscriptions without ever talking to anyone, and track their deliveries in real time. And they bring all of those expectations with them when they're buying on behalf of their company.

Research shows that the overwhelming majority of B2B buyers today actually prefer to place orders through digital channels rather than working through a sales rep.

That's no longer a niche preference. It's mainstream. And when a buying experience doesn't meet those expectations, buyers don't just get frustrated and push through. They find a supplier who makes it easier.

The stakes are higher in B2B than in B2C precisely because the order values are larger and the relationships are supposed to be stickier. Losing a B2B buyer to a better experience isn't just losing a transaction. It's losing a relationship that was meant to compound over time.

From your experience working with real businesses, how are they actually responding to this shift?

Ashley:

It's a wide spectrum. Some merchants, usually the ones who've been doing serious B2B volume for a few years, have been proactive. They've built proper buyer portals, set up customer-specific pricing, and created company account structures.

They've done the work.

But there's a large middle group that's aware something needs to change, but hasn't made the move yet.

They know their B2B buyers are frustrated. They know their team is spending too much time on things that should be automated. They just haven't found the right starting point, or it feels like too big a lift to tackle alongside everything else.

What's shifted recently is that the tools available on Shopify, especially on Plus, have matured significantly. The conversation has moved from "is this even possible on Shopify?" to "what's the best way to do it?" That's a meaningful change, and it's part of why this moment feels important.

Shopify has made a lot of updates to their native B2B capabilities. How does that factor into all of this?

Ashley:

It's a big part of the picture. Company profiles, customer-specific pricing catalogs, payment terms, and draft order management.

The native B2B foundation on Shopify Plus is genuinely strong now.

That's part of why we wanted to bring the Shopify B2B team into this webinar directly, because there are features and capabilities that merchants aren't fully using yet. Not because they don't want to, but because they don't know what's available.

You've seen B2B setups across a huge range of merchants. What are the pain points you keep coming back to?

Ashley:

To keep this focused, I won't go through the entire B2B process. I'll zero in on the pain points I see most consistently when merchants are trying to build a new self-service experience.

After working across as many B2B setups as we have, when you flip it to the buyer side, the pain is a little different. It's not that they don't want to go digital. It's about trust, effort, and whether the portal actually fits how their company buys.

The biggest one is trust. No inventory status, compatibility info, or certifications aren't there, wrong prices that don't match what's actually seen in the PDP, checkout, or gets invoiced, one bad experience like that and the buyer goes straight back to their rep or WhatsApp where they feel like they're getting "the real answer."

The second thing is effort. If buying from the portal takes more steps than sending a PO by email, buyers will just not use it. Bad SKU search, too many steps,... it all adds up to "this is more work than just calling someone."

Even when the portal exists, a weak buyer experience kills adoption fast. Corporate buying is multi-stakeholder — there are approvals, budget controls, multiple ship-to locations, and payment terms. If the portal doesn't reflect how their company actually buys internally, it gets used as a catalog at best and ignored at worst.

Because B2B isn't like one person buying. In most cases, you've got a whole procurement & purchasing team on the other side of that order. They might have a procurement admin, a warehouse manager, a purchasing staff — they all touch the buying process but in different ways.

And somebody has to manage all of that.

Right now, that 'somebody' is usually the merchant. It all creates a whole category of support requests that eat up a lot of time for merchants and the sales team.

For a merchant who hears all this and thinks "we need to fix our B2B experience," where do you tell them to start?

Ashley:

Start with an honest look at what your buyers actually go through. Not the internal process map. The buyer's experience.

When one of your business accounts needs to reorder, what does their journey look like?

How many steps does it take?

How many people on your side get pulled in?

Where do they have to contact you when, ideally, they shouldn't have to?

That exercise almost always surfaces a handful of quick wins, friction points you can remove without a major overhaul. And it gives you a much clearer picture of where a deeper investment in self-service infrastructure will actually move the needle.

The worst thing merchants do is try to boil the ocean. You don't need to rebuild everything at once. You need to find the highest-friction point in your B2B buyer's journey and start there.

Last question: What can someone expect if they sign up? What will you share during the webinar?

Ashley:

A practical session, not a theoretical one. We're not here to paint a picture of what great B2B self-service could look like someday. We're here to show what it actually looks like when it's working.

We'll walk through the solutions that address the pain points we've talked about, cover the most common places B2B operations break down, and bring in real case studies from businesses that have been through it.

The Shopify B2B team will be covering what's available natively on the platform and how to use it strategically. And from Qikify's side, we'll show how to extend and customize that foundation at the buying experience level, to build something that genuinely works for your business buyers.

If you're a Shopify Plus merchant doing any kind of wholesale or B2B selling, this will be directly relevant to you. We're leaving time for live Q&A, so come with your real questions.

"What's Next for B2B Commerce? The Self-Serve Experience"

A webinar hosted by Qikify x Shopify B2B

Format: Online webinar

Date: 20th, March 2026

Expected duration: 1h20'

Time: 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Registration Fee: FREE

Reserve your spot: https://luma.com/cafzlz2c