Chris Gee has spent over a decade helping businesses navigate the complexities of e‑commerce. 

Across Scotland, a quiet but decisive shift is underway. 

Manufacturers, wholesalers, and even long-established service providers are re-examining how they sell, scale and serve customers in a digital-first world. 

For years, e-commerce was treated as the preserve of retail – now it’s the growth engine of the entire economy. 

Yet as the tools multiply and the jargon deepens – headless, composable, omnichannel – many organisations are finding that transformation is easier to talk about than to execute.

That tension sits at the heart of this year’s eCommerce & Digital Trade Symposium, part of DIGIT Expo 2025 in partnership with Scottish Enterprise, being held on November 27 at the EICC in Edinburgh. 

The event aims to help Scottish businesses navigate a rapidly changing landscape: where international markets are only a click away, but getting there demands new skills, sharper strategy, and a clearer definition of what success looks like.

To unpack how organisations can bridge that gap between ambition and delivery, we spoke with Chris Gee, Founder of Rixxo and CTO & Global Director at the B2B eCommerce Association. 

Drawing on more than a decade of digital consultancy and industry collaboration, Gee argues that true transformation begins not with technology, but with intent. 

His insights – from platform selection and process alignment to AI readiness and performance metrics – offer a grounded roadmap for Scottish firms ready to compete, locally and globally, in the new era of digital trade.

B2B E‑Commerce Comes Out of the Shadows

Long treated as the less glamorous cousin of B2C retail, B2B online sales are now impossible to ignore. 

With this newfound visibility comes a flood of technology solutions. 

“I’ve got 96 B2B e-commerce platforms on my list – by the time we get to DIGIT Expo, I’ll probably have 100,” Gee laughs. 

From enterprise giants like SAP and Microsoft to niche startups, platform options have proliferated. And that’s just the foundation – add in all the composable services (AI-powered search, personalisation engines, configure-price-quote tools, etc.) and today’s e-commerce leaders face an overwhelming amount of choice.

For businesses – especially mid-sized manufacturers or distributors in Scotland – this raises the question: How do you “eat the elephant” of digital transformation when faced with limitless choice? 

Gee observes that while Fortune 500 case studies (Amazon Business, Coca-Cola, Schneider Electric and the like) get all the press, mid-market firms often struggle to find relatable guidance. 

This is where communities like the B2B eCommerce Association and events such as the symposium come in – to provide education, share real-life experiences, and amplify the voices of practitioners solving these challenges on the ground.

Needs Before Features: How to Choose the Right Platform

With technology evolving so rapidly, many firms get caught in “shiny object” syndrome – chasing features, trends, and buzzwords (headless! composable! AI-driven!) without a clear plan. 

Gee’s core message is to start with your business needs and vision, not the technology features. 

“Technology is a tool, and code is a language,” he says. 

“If you want to tell a good joke, it’ll be funny in any language. The language (or platform) doesn’t matter – the power is in the story you’re telling.”.

It’s a sage and relatively universal take: your vision and strategy should determine what tech you use – not the other way around

Too often, companies let a flashy platform or an overeager IT team dictate the direction, rather than focusing on the business outcome. 

“We put far too much emphasis on the code or platform,” Gee argues. 

“If you don’t have a strong transformation vision – why you’re doing it and how you’ll know when you’ve arrived – you’ll end up feeling like technology is a pain in the ass, always costly and never finished.”

So how should a company select the best e-commerce platform for them? 

Gee advocates a methodology he’ll be sharing in detail at the symposium, one he mnemonically dubs SPIN APE. It’s a two-part framework:

• SPIN (Situation, Problem, Impact, Need): Start by analysing your current situation and pinpointing the core problem or challenge you need to solve. What is the business impact of solving it (or not solving it)? Finally, articulate the need in terms of capabilities – essentially, define what “good” looks like when the problem is solved. This forces you to focus on outcomes instead of a wish-list of features. As Gee notes, “a piece of technology only has features to solve your problems, but if you haven’t defined the problem, every feature just looks like a shiny nice-to-have.”
• APE (Align, Propose, Evaluate): Armed with a clear definition of needs, you can engage with solution providers in a structured way. Align those needs with potential platforms (does this option solve more of our prioritised problems than that one?). Have vendors propose how their product would meet the needs (essentially your RFP process), and then evaluate against your original criteria. The focus stays on which platform makes my business better, not which has the longest feature checklist.
  

This needs-first approach prevents the common trap of buying a platform because of impressive features that never end up used. 

E-commerce teams often fall victim to this “feature bloat” – investing in a fancy all-in-one solution and using only a fraction of its capabilities. By zeroing in on the features that truly solve your specific pain points, you not only save cost but also avoid unnecessary complexity.

Defining “Good” and Iterating Toward It

A major theme in Gee’s advice is defining what “good” looks like – at every level – and communicating that clearly across your team. 

“I use ‘good’ all the time. What does good look like?” he says. 

Whether you’re aligning with a single developer or multiple departments and vendors, a shared understanding of “good” (i.e. the acceptance criteria or definition of done) is critical. The real magic in successful projects often happens before any code is written, during the business discovery and alignment phase.

Crucially, good does not mean “perfect.” 

Gee encourages companies to ditch the all-or-nothing mindset. Launching a new e-commerce capability is not a one-time project that must be flawless from day one – it’s an ongoing program that will continually evolve.

For example, your first milestone might be getting an initial online ordering system live for a subset of products or customers. 

What does success for that phase look like? Perhaps it’s that 100% of your existing customers can log in, see their contract pricing, and place orders successfully. That is “good” for phase one – even if the UX is basic. 

Phase two’s definition of good might expand to adding advanced search and recommendations, and so on. By iterating in this way, you deliver tangible value sooner and learn along the way.

This approach also acts as a safeguard against technology-led decisions. When every milestone has clearly defined business outcomes, it’s harder for the project to be hijacked by, say, an enthusiastic architect pushing a fancy microservices architecture that doesn’t actually serve the immediate needs.

Avoiding Pitfalls: The Power of Checklists and Communication

Digital transformation projects are notoriously risky –  a Gartner survey from October 2024 found that only 48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed their business-outcome targets. 

One reason, as Gee highlights, is the plethora of small details and assumptions that can derail a project if not addressed early. 

For instance, consider launching a new e-commerce site. The development team might declare “launch complete” as soon as the site is live on the production domain. 

But the next morning, the business is upset: “We can’t find ourselves on Google!” In the developers’ mind, activities like submitting sitemaps to search engines or setting up Google Shopping feeds are marketing’s job, not part of the launch. 

Conversely, the business assumed the agency would handle it. Such misunderstandings are common – and they can sour the relationship if not preempted.

Gee’s team surfaces these expectations at the start. “We actually begin projects by walking clients through the launch checklist,” he says.

It might be unconventional, but it forces the conversation: Who is responsible for SEO submissions? How will product data be enriched? Do we have four images per product ready, or only one? By visualising the end-game on day one, you uncover hidden requirements and avoid last-minute surprises. 

This also ties back to defining “good” – essentially the checklist is an expansive definition of what a “good launch” entails so that nothing important is left to chance.

Another useful tool Rixxo uses is a feature discussion list. Gee notes that in B2B e-commerce especially, clients have been “programmed” by decades of software marketing to focus on features. (We’ve all seen how tech products boast about myriad capabilities – more megapixels, more plugins, more whatever – because it sells.) 

Rather than fight this instinct, Gee presents a list of ~25 common B2B e-commerce features as conversation starters. But for each, the question is: do we actually need this, and if so, what problem does it solve? 

This flips the script from “nice-to-have features” to problem-solving. It ensures every feature in the project roadmap has a purpose tied to the business needs identified earlier (SPIN).

In summary, the practical checklist mentality – whether literal checklists or structured templates – can be a lifesaver. It brings rigor to the process and reassurance to teams stepping out of their comfort zone.

Preparing for AI Agents in Your Business

No conversation in 2025 would be complete without touching on AI. With generative AI and chatbots making headlines, every company is wondering how AI agents can drive efficiency or open new channels. 

Gee’s take on AI is refreshingly grounded: treat your AI like a new employee.

What does that mean in practice? First, remember that AI, at its core, intersects people, process, and technology. It doesn’t neatly fit into one bucket – an AI agent might take over tasks a person used to do, it might execute a defined process, and it is of course a piece of technology. 

To get value from AI, you must integrate it as you would a skilled staff member: give it context, training, rules, and time to learn.

 “AI works best when treated like a person. It requires training, it requires rules, context and structure… and then time,” Gee says. 

“If you couldn’t train a person to do it or explain the process, the AI isn’t going to magically do it either.”

This addresses a common misperception: many firms install a chatbot or AI tool expecting a silver bullet, only to be disappointed. The ones actually succeeding with AI have adopted a different mindset. They don’t see AI as a plug-and-play tool, but as an extremely smart new hire that needs proper onboarding.

For a business leader, a practical first step is to get your house in order with documentation and processes. Many legacy businesses run on institutional knowledge (“tribal knowledge”) that lives in people’s heads or scattered emails.

 An AI can’t learn from that. 

Gee gives an example from the B2B eCommerce Association: they invested in documenting their internal handbook, coding standards, support procedures, etc., in a structured repository. 

They then connected an AI (Claude, in this case) to that knowledge base. The result is an AI assistant that can answer team questions or help make decisions based on the organisation’s actual practices and policies. 

So, if you’re a Scottish manufacturer or distributor eyeing AI, ask yourself: do we have our SOPs, product info, customer service scripts, and other critical knowledge documented in a way an AI can digest? 

If not, that’s the homework to tackle now. See AI as an augmentation of your team – perhaps your first chatbot will act as a tier-1 customer service rep, or an AI tool might assist your salespeople with quoting. Identify a role where AI can add value, then “hire” it and train it like you would a junior employee in that role. 

Set performance metrics, monitor output (AI can hallucinate or make mistakes just like an overconfident junior staffer), and iteratively improve its training. 

Treated this way, AI is poised to be a powerful ally in your e-commerce journey rather than a disappointing gimmick.

Metrics That Matter in Year 1 and 2

When embarking on a digital sales transformation, leaders can get overwhelmed by data. 

Website analytics alone can produce a firehose of metrics – bounce rates, session durations, conversion funnels, etc. 

But which numbers really prove you’re on the right track? According to Gee, the first two years should centre on a few core adoption and value metrics.

The primary metric Gee suggests is customer adoption of the digital channel. 

If one of the main business cases for e-commerce is to enable growth without commensurate growth in headcount (or to improve efficiency for customers), then you need to measure how many customers are actually embracing the new system. 

For example, you might set a goal that 10% of all customers will be ordering online within six months. That figure will be different for every business, but the point is to define it up front. It then guides both your design (build the features those customers need in order to self-serve) and your outreach (perhaps personally invite or onboard those first adopters). 

Track the mix of orders or revenue coming via the new e-commerce portal versus traditional channels (phone, email, sales reps). If it’s inching up month by month, adoption is growing. If not, dig into why – do users need more training? Is something missing on the site?

According to Gee, another critical metric is Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), or at least account retention/expansion trends. In B2C e-commerce, success is often measured per transaction or by short-term conversion rates. B2B, however, is about relationships and repeat business. 

Gee says that when a customer places their first online order, it’s not just a one-off win – it’s the beginning of a longer journey. 

“In B2B, if they place the first order on their own, they’ve essentially raised their hand and said, ‘I’m interested in doing long-term business with you digitally,’” Gee explains. 

So measure how those accounts evolve: do they order again? Do they increase spend over 12 months? Lifetime value captures these nuances of growth. It also informs your strategy – if you know an average digital customer is worth, say, £50k annually, you can justify investing more in acquisition or in tailoring the experience for them. 

This steers you toward an account-based marketing mindset, focusing on nurturing each account, rather than just pumping money into PPC ads blindly.

Finally, ensure the KPIs tie back to your original goals (remember that vision you set?). 

If your goal was, for instance, improving customer experience or reducing order errors, find a way to quantify it – customer satisfaction scores, or error rates in orders. 

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By defining these success metrics early, you essentially write the script for what your dashboards and reports should show. 

According to Gee, this also helps get buy-in from stakeholders, because you can demonstrate progress in terms they care about (e.g. “online orders now make up 15% of total orders, up from 0% six months ago” or “we’ve doubled the average revenue per customer by moving routine orders online”).

Gee points out that this approach of baking the KPIs into the plan from the start is often missing. 

“Executives ask for insight and data, but they’re not really sure what insight they want,” he says. By contrast, if you say at the outset “Our aim is to migrate 10% of customers to online purchasing,” you’ve implicitly defined the key metric of success. 

With this, your team can then focus on delivering that and reporting on it, rather than drowning in miscellaneous analytics.

Discover More at the eCommerce & Digital Trade Symposium

At the upcoming eCommerce & Digital Trade Symposium – part of this year’s DIGIT Expo at the Edinburgh EICC on October 27 – Gee will expand on these ideas, particularly with his keynote on the best B2B e-commerce platform for your business. 

Attendees can expect to learn more about frameworks like SPIN APE and hear case studies and discussions on everything from cross-border e-commerce to omnichannel strategies. 

It’s a unique opportunity for business leaders and practitioners to get concrete advice and network with peers facing similar challenges.