For years, B2B companies have treated e-commerce like a construction project: gather requirements, hire a systems integrator, build the platform, cut the ribbon, and call it done. Then they wonder why adoption stalls, revenue plateaus, and the competitive advantage they expected never materializes.

The fundamental problem is treating e-commerce as a finish line rather than what it actually is: a platform that requires continuous discovery, iteration, and improvement.

When organizations approach e-commerce as a project, they operate with a completion mentality. Success is measured by whether the shopping cart works and orders flow through, not by whether customers actually want to use it or if it’s driving measurable business outcomes.

This mindset creates predictable patterns. Companies invest heavily upfront in a “big bang” launch, often hiring a systems integrator to handle the heavy lifting. After go-live, the integrator rolls off, leaving a skeleton crew to “maintain” the platform. Without dedicated resources focused on continuous improvement, the platform slowly becomes outdated as customer expectations evolve.

The disconnect becomes obvious within months. Sales teams complain that customers still prefer to call or email. Marketing struggles to implement campaigns without engineering support. The platform you spent millions building becomes a source of frustration rather than competitive advantage.

Even when working with a systems integrator, the core team that drives your e-commerce strategy must be internal. External partners bring valuable expertise in platform capabilities and implementation best practices. But they cannot own your strategy, understand your customers’ unique needs, or make the daily trade-offs required to drive business outcomes.

Internal ownership ensures institutional knowledge stays within your organization. When your product manager understands not just what features exist but why they were built that way, they make better decisions about improvements. When your merchant knows your catalog intimately, they spot opportunities and problems that external consultants never would.

Most importantly, internal teams live with the consequences of their decisions. They hear directly from frustrated customers and excited sales teams. This feedback loop drives better decision-making and faster iteration.

Building an internal e-commerce team doesn’t mean you need dozens of people. But you do need specific capabilities represented, even if individuals wear multiple hats in smaller organizations.

At a minimum, successful e-commerce platforms have dedicated internal owners for:

• Product strategy and roadmap – Someone who balances competing priorities and makes evidence-based decisions about what to build next
• User experience design – Someone who ensures the platform works intuitively for your specific customers and workflows
• Product content and merchandising – Someone who manages how your catalog is presented, organized, and enriched
• Search and discovery – Someone who owns the quality of on-site search and filtering
• Technical architecture – Someone who ensures the platform can evolve sustainably and integrations stay healthy
• Data and analytics – Someone who transforms platform activity into actionable insights

These aren’t just job descriptions—they’re the capabilities that enable continuous improvement and customer-focused iteration. Without them, you’re dependent on external partners for every decision and change.

The shift from project thinking to ownership thinking is cultural as much as operational. It requires acknowledging that e-commerce platforms are never “done” and that ongoing investment in internal capability delivers better returns than periodic project spending.

Companies with strong internal ownership ship features faster, make better decisions, and achieve higher adoption and revenue. They’re not waiting for the next project budget cycle to make improvements—they’re continuously evolving their platform based on what they’re learning.

In Part 2, we’ll explore each of these six essential roles in detail: what they do, why they matter for customer experience, and how they work together to create platforms that customers actually want to use. We’ll also cover how to build this capability pragmatically, even if you’re starting from scratch.

For now, the most important question to ask yourself is: Does your e-commerce platform have owners, or just builders who’ve moved on?