In practice, modern B2B transformation is usually far less glamorous and far more operational. It begins with reducing friction inside the business itself. In this article, we’re unpacking what modernising B2B commerce actually looks like for the 125-year-old Dutch food-tools brand, BOSKA.
Modernisation often starts with operational pain
Before BOSKA’s digital transformation efforts began, the company’s B2B operations reflected the reality that many long-established wholesale brands still face today. Orders arrived through multiple disconnected channels, phone calls, emails, EDI, and even fax machines. Internal teams manually entered orders into backend systems while spending much of the day reacting to customer requests rather than proactively supporting growth initiatives.
These systems had evolved over time to support the company successfully for decades. But as BOSKA expanded internationally and customer demand increased, operational inefficiencies became increasingly difficult to scale. Adding more headcount to manually process orders was not a sustainable long-term growth strategy.
This is a common inflection point for many B2B organisations. Growth exposes operational friction that previously felt manageable and teams become overwhelmed by repetitive administrative work. In turn, customer response times slow down, and valuable internal expertise gets trapped inside fragmented systems and manual processes.
Building on Shopify Before Shopify B2B
When BOSKA first adopted Shopify for B2B commerce around 2016–2017, Shopify’s native B2B functionality was still relatively limited. The company knew it needed scalable digital infrastructure, but many of the workflows required for wholesale operations, including customer-specific pricing, account structures, tiered discounts, and ERP-connected business logic, had to be custom-built.
This allowed the business to move forward early, but it also introduced increasing technical complexity over time. BOSKA eventually found itself reliant on heavily customised integrations and institutional technical knowledge concentrated within a small number of individuals. Troubleshooting operational issues often became difficult because the ecosystem had evolved into a highly bespoke environment.
This pattern is increasingly familiar across larger-scale commerce. Customisation solves immediate business requirements, but excessive customisation can eventually create operational rigidity and technical debt that slows future growth. But customisation shouldn’t be avoided entirely, rather, it should be approached intentionally.
Why over-engineering has become one of modern commerce’s biggest risks
Looking back, BOSKA doesn’t regret the custom-built infrastructure developed earlier in its Shopify journey.
“When we look back, there are no regrets because at the time it was what we needed, but over the years that passed, it wasn't what we needed to grow.” - Denise van Mourik, Digital Improvement Lead at BOSKA
However, as Shopify’s native B2B capabilities matured, BOSKA recognised that maintaining increasingly bespoke systems was becoming less sustainable operationally.
That experience fundamentally changed how the business approaches commerce infrastructure today. Instead of immediately custom-building around every operational edge case, the focus shifted toward:
- understanding core business priorities first,
- maximising native platform functionality where possible,
- customising only where true differentiation is required,
- and ensuring long-term maintainability remains part of every technology decision.
This reflects a much broader shift happening across ecommerce architecture. Increasingly, brands are moving away from highly fragmented “everything custom” ecosystems toward more composable infrastructure models where scalability and adaptability become priorities alongside flexibility.
ERP-centric commerce is becoming increasingly critical
After migrating away from an older Navision environment, BOSKA implemented Microsoft Business Central as its ERP system, with Boomi acting as middleware orchestration between systems. Shopify now functions as a flexible commerce layer sitting on top of that operational foundation.
This architecture allows product data, inventory, customer information, pricing, and orders to move consistently between systems while maintaining the ERP as the single source of truth.
That structure becomes especially important when scaling internationally. Today, BOSKA operates across multiple Shopify Markets, including Germany, France, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and the rest of the world. Their next phase involves consolidating B2B operations into a more unified international setup capable of supporting localisation, market-specific pricing, and regional customer experiences within a single scalable ecosystem.
Build a sustainable B2B infrastructure
For many brands, this is where modern commerce infrastructure becomes transformational. International expansion no longer necessarily requires fragmented storefronts, disconnected operational systems, or entirely separate workflows by market. Modern platforms increasingly allow businesses to centralise operations while still delivering regionally relevant customer experiences.
