Shaped the digital customer strategy and assessed the global B2B eCommerce portal for Saint-Gobain Abrasives, across six regions

The digital landscape was heterogeneous: three different e-shops depending on the region, no e-shop at all in South America, and an internal PDF order-intake tool that had quietly grown to outweigh the official portal in North America. Getting a price on the portal could take five minutes because of SAP pricing complexity.

Before deciding where the future e-portal should go, the client needed an honest, factual answer to a simpler question: where does it actually stand today, and through which channels do customers really order?

• Global customer discovery, run by the consortium: 72 customer interviews completed out of 81 planned across six regions (Europe, North America, South America, Pacific, China, India), analyzed in Dovetail and completed by a quantitative survey translated into 10 languages. New Commerce contributed to the setup.
• Portal assessment, owned end to end: six analysis axes (product and services, eCommerce capabilities, UX/UI, omnichannel, data-driven growth, IT architecture), detailed scoring grids, and an executive summary with a clear verdict.
• Benchmark: feature-by-feature comparison against 3M and the leaders of industrial distribution: Grainger, Fastenal, MSC, Würth, Manutan.
• Channel mix analysis and KPI framework: sales decomposed by channel (EDI, order-intake tool, manual, portal) from data collected with the regional teams, and an eCommerce KPI framework by country.
• Strategy seminar: methodology and material for the strategic vision seminar, launched with a core team of 15 and an extended audience of 40 across five regions.

• A quantified, assumed verdict in the executive summary: without a significant step up in eCommerce capabilities, the current portal cannot support the business ambition.
• 72 customer interviews across six regions, a rare discovery material at this scale in industrial B2B.
• The channel mix analysis reframed the debate by showing that the portal's biggest internal competitor was the company's own PDF order-intake tool.

Key takeaway. The consortium model is what unlocked a global account of this size: the lead firm brought the frame contract and an interview network covering 17 countries, the partners brought complementary expertise, New Commerce brought B2B eCommerce depth.

The honest caveat: customer discovery in industrial B2B is logistically brutal. Some markets stopped at half the planned interviews, the survey required translations into 10 languages, and the strategy seminar slipped six weeks.