We Digitized the Enterprise. We Left Commerce Between Companies Behind.

We spent decades digitizing business.

Finance moved into ERP. Sales moved into CRM. Procurement, manufacturing, and logistics gained specialized platforms. Dashboards replaced reports. Cloud applications connected departments. AI is now finding its way into everyday work.

Then an order crosses the boundary between two companies.

It may arrive as an EDI message, a PDF attached to an email, a spreadsheet, or an entry in a customer portal. Someone translates it into the receiving company's language. Someone checks the product number, price, quantity, and delivery date. Someone investigates what changed since the last conversation.

The enterprise is digital. The relationship still depends on people piecing together what happened.

We have modernized the companies. We have much more work to do on the commerce between them.

Last-century habits in an AI economy

Much of the operating model for B2B commerce still follows a familiar pattern: generate a document, transmit it, interpret it in another system, and reconcile differences after the fact. The channels have evolved, but the burden of coordinating the relationship often remains with people.

The limitation is especially visible when a transaction changes. Systems designed to exchange individual documents must somehow preserve a common understanding across a sequence of commitments, amendments, deliveries, and payments.

A buyer sends an order through one channel. The supplier confirms a change through another. A shipment notice arrives through a logistics platform. Receipt information sits in the buyer's ERP. An invoice follows, carrying a different interpretation of what was delivered or agreed.

Each document can be digital while the overall process remains fragmented.

EDI has delivered enormous value and remains essential infrastructure. Modern APIs and integration platforms also solve important connectivity problems. The next step is to connect those investments to a consistent understanding of the commercial relationship.

A successfully transmitted message tells us that information moved. It does not, by itself, tell us whether both parties agree on the transaction's current state, whether the governing terms were honored, or who has authority to resolve a discrepancy.

Fragmentation creates a coordination cost

Consider a hypothetical order for 1,000 components.

The supplier can deliver only 800 by the requested date. An employee sends that information by email. The buyer's purchasing system still expects 1,000. The warehouse receives 800. The invoice reflects a price adjustment discussed in a separate conversation.

No single team has the complete picture.

Procurement investigates the quantity. Accounts payable holds the invoice. Sales operations searches for the price approval. Logistics checks whether the remaining units are still coming.

Employees at both companies spend time reconstructing a transaction they already conducted.

The cost has several forms: manual investigation, delayed payment, avoidable rework, uncertainty about supply, and decisions made against incomplete information. Some costs appear in departmental budgets. Others appear as inventory held for reassurance or cash that takes longer to collect.

This example illustrates a mechanism; it is not a measured industry case. Its lesson is straightforward: fragmented information can turn an ordinary commercial change into a cross-company reconciliation exercise.

The $1.7 trillion signal

The economic stakes extend well beyond administrative effort.

The Hackett Group's 2025 U.S. Working Capital Survey, released August 18, 2025, identified $1.7 trillion in excess working capital across the top 1,000 U.S. publicly traded nonfinancial companies. That represented 35% of gross working capital and 11% of aggregate revenue. Receivables accounted for the largest component, with an estimated $600 billion opportunity. [1]

These figures describe a working-capital improvement opportunity within that U.S. sample. They are not a global annual loss estimate, and the study does not attribute the full amount to outdated B2B technology. Payment terms, inventory decisions, commercial leverage, and operating conditions also matter.

Nevertheless, the figures establish the scale of capital tied up in business operations. Our argument is that better coordination between trading partners can address some of the friction affecting those operations.

An unresolved invoice discrepancy can delay collection. Uncertainty about an order can complicate inventory planning. Missing evidence of acceptance can slow approval or obscure an early-payment opportunity.

Across global trading networks, these mechanisms can affect the movement of goods and money. The U.S. benchmark gives us a substantial, documented signal of the opportunity without requiring an unsupported worldwide total.

Capital tied up has a cost

Working capital is a balance-sheet amount. Its financing cost is an annual expense or opportunity cost. Those two measures should remain distinct.

For a hypothetical business, releasing $10 million of avoidable working capital at an assumed 8% annual financing cost could represent $800,000 a year in financing-cost benefit, if that release reduces borrowing at the assumed rate.

This is an illustrative calculation, rather than a demonstrated technology outcome. Actual results depend on what capital is released, whether borrowing falls, and the company's financing arrangements.

But it explains why reducing friction matters beyond saving employee hours. Faster, more reliable resolution can affect the capital available for growth, resilience, and investment.

There is also a network consideration: extending a buyer's payment period can improve its cash position while increasing pressure on the supplier. A stronger system should help eliminate avoidable delays and support mutually agreed funding options, rather than simply shifting the financing burden from one business to another.

From document exchange to shared business understanding

The next stage of digital transformation requires a different unit of attention: the commercial relationship and its evolving commitments.

An order, an acknowledgment, and an invoice are views of a larger process. Their value increases when they can be connected to the same agreed terms, transaction history, and evidence of performance.

Connectivity brings information together. Business context explains how the pieces relate. Governance determines which actions are permitted. Orchestration coordinates what happens next.

A practical architecture must also accommodate disagreement. The buyer and supplier may have different records, permissions, and interpretations. A shared view should make those differences visible, preserve their provenance, and identify the decision needed to resolve them.

This requires clear ownership of data, approved commercial rules, and an auditable record of changes. It also requires selective disclosure: trading partners need access to the evidence relevant to their relationship while retaining control over confidential internal information.

These capabilities can develop through an ecosystem of enterprise applications, integration providers, and intelligence platforms. Companies should be able to build on their existing infrastructure as that ecosystem advances.

Digitizing the space between companies

Digitizing this space means making the relationship observable, governed, and capable of coordinated action.

See it. Observe transactions flowing through existing systems and networks. Connect orders, acknowledgments, changes, shipments, receipts, invoices, and payments into a coherent lifecycle. Use an intercompany Control Tower to reveal stalled processes, recurring exceptions, and potential financial opportunities.

Govern it. Connect that lifecycle to approved commercial rules. Validate the applicable terms, trading identities, and delegated authority. Flag discrepancies as soon as the relevant evidence becomes available; hold or escalate actions where the parties have granted that authority.

Orchestrate it. Coordinate resolution across company boundaries. Route approvals, reconcile changes, collect evidence, and help authorized people and agents move the transaction forward.

The aim is a shared, permissioned understanding of the transaction: what was agreed, what has happened, what remains unresolved, and what each participant may do next.

The agents are coming. The space between them needs to be ready.

An agent operating inside a company can be highly capable and still lack essential information about its trading partner.

Before it changes an order, accepts a delivery variation, or approves a payment, it needs to know which agreement applies, whether the action falls within delegated authority, and when human approval is required.

If those answers are scattered across documents and systems, faster automation can magnify the coordination problem.

The practical starting point is the commerce already taking place. Organizations can first observe where transaction records diverge, measure the resulting work and delays, and introduce controls where the evidence supports intervention.

We have spent years improving how companies operate internally. The next advance is improving how they operate together.

Because a digital economy needs more than digital companies. It needs intelligent commerce between them.

A different agenda for digital transformation

For business leaders, this changes the questions worth asking. How much employee time is spent reconciling partner records? Which discrepancies repeatedly delay acceptance or payment? Where does uncertainty drive additional inventory? Which commercial decisions lack a clear record of authority?

The answers should guide investment and establish a baseline for measuring results. Fewer unresolved discrepancies, shorter resolution times, and more predictable cash conversion are useful measures of progress. Faster document transmission alone cannot establish that the relationship works better.

The next frontier of enterprise technology is a coordinated commercial process spanning independent businesses. Its economic promise lies in reducing the effort, uncertainty, and capital required to conduct that process.

Supporting reference

[1] The Hackett Group, “2025 Working Capital Survey: Payables Rebound, but Receivables and Inventory Lag,” August 18, 2025. Primary research publisher's news release. Supports the $1.7 trillion, sample scope, 35%, 11%, and $600 billion figures. The release also identifies commercial and operating drivers beyond technology.

Read the primary source