Guest: Rudy Abitbol, B2B E-Commerce and AI Expert
Host: Seth Earley, CEO at Earley Information Science
Published on: September 11, 2025
This episode of the Earley AI Podcast features Rudy Abitbol, a recognized expert in B2B commerce and AI. With years of hands-on experience helping global enterprises with digital transformation—especially around product information management, large-scale AI adoption, and making cutting-edge technology truly practical—Rudy brings a pragmatic view to how AI is revolutionizing B2B e-commerce. He’s passionate about making AI accessible and effective for tackling real-world business challenges.
Key Takeaways:
AI-Driven Transformation: AI is dramatically streamlining the content generation and management process in B2B commerce, especially when dealing with vast, complex product catalogs.
Platform Flexibility Matters: Tools like Shopify are lowering barriers for B2B companies by offering user-friendly interfaces and robust ecosystems that allow for rapid configurations—often with no coding required.
Vibe Coding & Rapid Prototyping: “Vibe coding” empowers product owners to quickly move from conversations and requirements to working wireframes and functional specs, tightening feedback loops and boosting innovation.
Balancing Efficiency & Differentiation: While AI tools help standardize processes, true competitive advantage comes from infusing proprietary business knowledge into digital solutions.
Data Readiness & Quality: AI can enrich incomplete or messy data, but organizations must still focus on good data structure and master data management to fully capitalize on AI and automation.
AI Adoption Hurdles: The most common blockers are cultural—resistance to change and undertraining. Hands-on learning, POCs, and fostering a culture of curiosity are essential.
Empowering Teams: True AI readiness isn’t just about tools but about giving teams the time, training, and encouragement to experiment—and even risk failure—as they integrate AI into daily workflows.
Avoiding Over-Reliance on AI: While AI enhances productivity, it can’t replace human judgment. Insightful, context-driven use of AI yields the biggest returns.
Building Core Competency: Don’t outsource the heart of your digital transformation; instead, build internal expertise and maturity to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Insightful Quotes:
"You can improve your data with AI. What do you need to have in place to do that? Because you still need a reference architecture, right? It's not necessarily going to know what your product data structure should look like, but you can, you can prompt it to build some of those things." - Seth Earley
"All the insight within the phrasing, within the way that it’s done...still needs to come from you. You still need to have someone that is a product owner with a great vision, because that's the sole person that is able to infuse [the business]." - Rudy Abitbol
"The core problem is you have those tools, you're not training properly your team to use it. There's a lot of departments that needs to use it very specifically, and that training needs to happen." - Rudy Abitbol
Tune in to learn how AI is fundamentally reshaping B2B commerce and how leaders can stay ahead of the digital curve.
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudyabitbol/
Website: https://www.trustinsights.ai
Ways to Tune In:
Earley AI Podcast: https://www.earley.com/earley-ai-podcast-home
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1586654770
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Buzzsprout: https://earleyai.buzzsprout.com/
Podcast Transcript: AI-Powered B2B Commerce and Vibe Coding
Transcript introduction
This transcript captures a conversation between Seth Earley and Rudy Abitbol on how AI is transforming B2B e-commerce, from content generation to platform selection. Topics include the rise of "vibe coding" for rapid prototyping, balancing efficiency with differentiation, overcoming organizational resistance to AI adoption, and the critical importance of proper training and data management.
Transcript
Seth Earley:
Welcome to the Earley AI Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Earley, and in this episode, we're going to explore how AI is impacting and reshaping the world of B2B commerce. From customization to replatforming to product data management and customer experience, AI is fundamentally changing how businesses operate. We'll dive into the challenges and the opportunities and the strategies that leaders need to stay ahead. Today, our guest is Rudy Abitbol. Did I get that right?
Rudy Abitbol:
Perfectly right.
Seth Earley:
Okay, who's a recognized expert in B2B commerce and AI. Rudy's worked with leading global companies to tackle some of the toughest problems in digital transformation, from product information management to large-scale adoption strategies. He's very passionate about making AI practical, accessible, and effective for real-world business challenges. Rudy, welcome to the show!
Rudy Abitbol:
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Seth Earley:
So, the world is changing quite a bit, and you've been in this space for a very long time, so let's start with kind of the big picture. From your perspective, how is AI transforming B2B e-commerce, and where are you seeing the most immediate impact on adoption, on customer engagement, on operations? So, what's your big picture perspective?
Rudy Abitbol:
Yeah, the impact is really being seen right now with the—probably the biggest pain point was for B2B e-commerce to produce content. You have tons of specs to consider, tons of elements to consider, and AI came, a bit saving the B2B world, because it was extremely tough when you have 100,000 SKUs and catalog to produce all that content, and the expertise that comes with it. Now, it's getting much, much better, much easier for B2B eCommerce Manager to produce such content. At the same time, it's about the tools that are joining there and integrating within the own digital ecosystem. So, we've seen tools that are meant for B2C come to B2B, and bringing that agility, bringing that flexibility of AI integration. Obviously, the biggest example is Shopify, and then you have other tools that are more meant to be able to centralize all that data in one place, and start building quickly POCs.
Seth Earley:
So, you mentioned Shopify, and what is it specifically about Shopify that you believe is kind of an exemplar, or give me your—dive into that a little more deeply?
Rudy Abitbol:
Yeah, it's about how you build it and the ecosystem. So, anyone in the B2B will say, well, Shopify is missing this, or Shopify is missing that. But the beauty of it is, it's not so much the platform as it is what you can do with it. The ecosystem around it, the apps, the integrations, the ability to customize. And what's really interesting now is the concept of vibe coding. Where I'm able to build standard, custom application, I'm able to integrate those custom applications that I've vibe-coded into a known network, so my possibility of optimization, which was the toughest point, is already reduced in cost. So I built my own solution, designed by my people, with our own kind of way and approach.
Seth Earley:
So, that's a really interesting point. It's in the old days of gathering requirements and going through numerous interviews and discussions and analysis, you would then turn something over to a team of people that might develop in just a UI-based system, something like a Figma, but it still took a lot of work, and it took a lot of cycles, and took a lot of time. And many times, you know, you want to iterate faster than that. You want to speed up the clock speed of the ability to do that kind of innovation and that adaptation. And many times, customers, they need to see something in order for them to really understand it, right? So it really does close down that cycle, or speed up that cycle of development and innovation. Even if you're still hiring a dev team to do the development, they're speeding up their cycles using these tools, but putting these in the hands of the business and the analyst is incredibly powerful.
Rudy Abitbol:
Yeah, and it's really the conclusion of design thinking right there, but even more is that you limit the amount of frustration. The AI is trained on the documentation of what's possible to do on the, let's say, Shopify API. So already I can flag from the get-go, oh, that's not feasible. It will require extra. So, just in terms of agile development, I can do my shirt sizing right away and say, this is a big one, maybe we'll do it a bit later, but this is at least where we're going. Less surprising, less frustration for everyone, and for the programmers, at least they have something documented so everyone is gaining from it, definitely.
Seth Earley:
Yeah, and so what you're saying is that the AI tools, when you specify the platform and the technology and the ecosystem, there's enough embedded knowledge that it understands what's possible, what's feasible, and to eliminate things that are going to be too costly and time-consuming right off the bat, right? Because it understands the parameters, understands what can and can't be done.
Rudy Abitbol:
Of course. Something a human couldn't have done without testing, implementing, because it's too much information.
Seth Earley:
Right, right. So, yeah, and I'm astounded every day when I use LLMs, when I'm giving complex interviews and discussions and inputs and so on, and asking very deep and detailed questions and getting very sophisticated responses. So, it is kind of amazing, and the ability to leverage those with specific company requirements and specific company information is really where it's coming from. And, you know, we talked about this before, you had talked about the idea of differentiation versus standardization, right? And you're going to be able to, if you do what everybody else does, you get some efficiency, and you can standardize, but you're not going to get competitive advantage from that, right? You need to differentiate based on your knowledge of the customers, your knowledge of the environment, your knowledge of your solutions, and so on. So how do you kind of balance that with the efficiencies that are coming from vibe coding and from AI with the need to be able to do things differently?
Rudy Abitbol:
The vibe coding is able to replace the work that you've done, maybe with some programmers or wireframing and all. But all the insight within the phrasing, within the way that it's done, it needs to come from you. You still need to have someone that is a product owner with a great vision, because that's the sole person that is able to infuse the business knowledge. The problem that we had before is that the person with the knowledge of the business didn't have the knowledge of the technical. So by the time we pass the information one to another, well, you get something even more generic or that doesn't work. Now, because it's coded by people internally that have that knowledge, they're able to quickly add more things that are very specific, and the way of working specific of the company.
Seth Earley:
Right, and that is—that essential way of doing business is unique. Even if two companies are selling to the same market and selling the same products, they still have different looks and feels and voice and tone, and value, and it's understanding what those differentiators are and understanding the very unique needs of your segment and your target customer, and how to serve them. So that's kind of an interesting thing when you think about it. You're getting all these efficiencies, but you still need to figure out what that unique relationship is, and what those unique differentiators are. So, it now seems that the time to differentiate is shorter. The ability to do that is easier, but what's holding companies back? What is it that—so the ability to do this is fantastic, and the ones who do it most effectively and most quickly are going to be able to win, but what is holding companies back? What are the things that are getting in the way of being able to realize that vision?
Rudy Abitbol:
It's always the same, right? It's the internal resistance, but even sometimes, in many companies, I see the employees using ChatGPT on a daily basis, but on a very basic level, right? The improve, correct my mistake, fix my email, or something like that. And many times, I'm telling teams that I'm meeting, but did you try going further with ChatGPT? You know, it can do that. You can upload a screenshot, you can upload your file in it. Yeah, I don't know, nobody told me. The core problem is you have those tools, you're not training properly your team to use it. And you're saying, oh, that's it, we have AI, we have a subscription of 20 bucks per month for ChatGPT. That's not it. There's a lot of departments that needs to use it very specifically, and that training needs to happen. And so what's missing today is, first of all, cut the noise. Like, make sure that the team stays focused on what exactly is your mission as a company. Don't say, oh, with AI, we can go there, because we're not competitive enough. Just stick to what you're doing right now, and what you're good at.
Seth Earley:
Right, so focus on your core competencies and how AI can enhance those, rather than trying to do everything.
Rudy Abitbol:
Exactly. And then, give your team the time to experiment. Give them the space to fail. Because that's how they're going to learn. If you just give them a tool and say, here, use this, but you don't give them the time to actually explore it and understand what it can do, they're never going to use it to its full potential.
Seth Earley:
That's a great point. And I think that's where a lot of organizations struggle, is they want immediate results, but they're not willing to invest in the learning curve. They're not willing to give people the time to experiment and fail and learn from those failures. And that's really critical for AI adoption.
Rudy Abitbol:
Absolutely. And I think another thing is data quality. You can have all the AI tools in the world, but if your data is a mess, you're not going to get good results. So organizations need to invest in cleaning up their data, structuring it properly, making sure it's accurate and complete. Because AI is only as good as the data you feed it.
Seth Earley:
Right, and we talked about this earlier, but you can improve your data with AI. What do you need to have in place to do that? Because you still need a reference architecture, right? It's not necessarily going to know what your product data structure should look like, but you can prompt it to build some of those things. So there's this interesting interplay between having good data and using AI to improve your data. But you need some foundational understanding of what good looks like.
Rudy Abitbol:
Exactly. And I think that's where a lot of companies get stuck. They think AI is going to magically fix all their data problems, but it can't do that without guidance. You need to have someone who understands the business, who understands what good data looks like, who can guide the AI in the right direction. And then the AI can help you scale that up, but you need that human expertise at the core.
Seth Earley:
Well, Rudy, this has been a great conversation. Any final thoughts for organizations that are embarking on this AI journey in B2B commerce?
Rudy Abitbol:
I would say, start small, focus on your core competencies, invest in training your team, and don't outsource the critical parts of your digital transformation. Build that expertise internally, because that's what's going to give you the competitive advantage in the long run.
Seth Earley:
Great advice. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Rudy. And for our listeners, you can find Rudy on LinkedIn and at trustinsights.ai. Thanks for tuning in to the Earley AI Podcast, and we'll see you next time.
Rudy Abitbol:
Thank you for having me.