What is the Commerce Operating Audit?

It is a fixed-scope, 4–6 week diagnostic of a B2B manufacturer's or distributor's commerce operation, run by one operator across six dimensions: vision and strategy, the numbers, the stack, the data, the organization, and the constraints. It ends in a prioritized 12–18 month roadmap you own.

How much does it cost?

It is a fixed fee, quoted once the scope is confirmed. The scope is fixed, so the fee is fixed. There is no day rate and no change-order mechanic. Send a message.

How is this different from a free agency assessment or a vendor demo?

A free assessment is a sales instrument. It ends in a proposal because that is what it is for. A vendor demo answers "can our product do this", which is a different question from "what is actually wrong here". The audit is paid, and that is the point: it answers to you, and its conclusion can legitimately be "keep what you have and fix the data".

Do we need Shopify Plus?

No. The audit is platform-agnostic. It reads whatever you run — Shopify Plus, Adobe Commerce, SAP, BigCommerce, or something built in-house. If the finding is that the platform is not the problem, that is the finding. Rudy does write about Shopify Plus for B2B specifically, but nothing in the audit presumes it.

Is it remote or on-site?

Mostly remote; an on-site day is available on request. Rudy is based in Montreal and Miami, and works across Canada, the United States, and France, in English and French. Send a message.

What access do you need?

Read-only access to analytics, ERP exports, the PIM, and the platform admin. Interview time with 8–12 people across leadership, sales, customer service, marketing, and IT, plus 2–3 customers who will speak candidly. Total client time is about 6–8 hours across the engagement. No write access is requested at any point.

Does it cover GEO and AI search?

Yes. A live generative-engine run is part of Discovery, and the AI-visibility read across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude is part of the deliverable. If you want a free preview before committing, run the AI Visibility Check, which is powered by the GEO audit tool at Human After All. Product data feeds directly into this, which is why the data dimension and the PIM work are read together.

Can we use the findings for a board case?

Yes, and that is a common reason to run it. The deliverable includes a board-ready summary deck carrying your logo. The findings are yours with no restrictions, and the roadmap prices the cost of doing nothing, which is usually the number a board needs to see.

What happens after the audit?

Three paths, and you pick. You execute the roadmap with your own team. Or Rudy stays on in a fractional leadership seat to drive it. Or Human After All implements it. None of the three is presumed by the audit, and the roadmap is written so that any of the three can run it.

Do you run the audit in French, and does it cover Law 96?

Yes. Rudy is based in Montréal, works in both languages, and delivers the report in either. For Quebec companies the data dimension includes a French-language pass: Law 96 makes bilingual product content a legal obligation, and an AI engine asked in French will answer from whatever French product data exists — or invent it. The same visibility test is run in both languages.

Before you rebuild anything, find the real problem.

The Commerce Operating Audit is Rudy Abitbol's fixed-scope, 4–6 week diagnostic of a B2B manufacturer's or distributor's commerce operation. Six dimensions — vision, numbers, stack, data, organization, constraints — read by one operator, ending in a prioritized roadmap you own. It exists because the most expensive mistake in B2B commerce isn't building the wrong feature. It's building the right solution to the wrong problem.

What The Commerce Operating Audit is

Practitioners say the same thing about their own operations. In the 2026 State of B2B eCommerce Research Report, Master B2B found that aligning business priorities with technology capabilities is now the most commonly cited purchasing challenge, at 52% — ahead of budget constraints at 47%. The same report names product data quality the top barrier to AI readiness, and reports that most practitioners grade their own data a B or a C.

Duration: 4–6 weeks · Scope: fixed · Fee: fixed fee, quoted once the scope is confirmed · Delivered by: Rudy Abitbol, one operator · Ownership: the findings are yours, with no strings to an implementation.

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Who it is for

The audit is built for a leader at a $20M–$500M manufacturer or distributor: the CEO, VP Sales, VP Digital, or CFO — the person who signs the replatform cheque.

Five situations fit:

Traffic is fine, revenue isn't. Conversion rates rose at 60% of organizations in 2025, up from 49% the year before (Master B2B, 2026). If yours did not, the cause is upstream of the storefront.
You are about to spend on a replatform or a PIM. PIM and product content management is the third-ranked technology investment priority for 2026, named by 37% of practitioners, behind AI tools at 55% and site search at 38% (Master B2B, 2026). A large budget is about to move. Name the problem first.
Vendors keep pitching solutions and nobody has named the problem. Only 14% of practitioners say their most senior leader has extensive digital experience, down from 24% a year earlier (Master B2B, 2026). That gap is where vendor framing wins by default.
AI search is starting to matter. Answer engines are already upstream of your website. Yoast reports that 42% of users now start their research with an LLM rather than a traditional search engine (cited here). If you cannot see what those engines say about you, you cannot manage it.
You inherited a stack you didn't build. You need to know what is worth keeping before you are asked to defend it.

Who it is not for

Pure DTC businesses with no B2B accounts. That is Level 0 on the B2B eCommerce maturity model, and the audit has nothing to diagnose.
Companies that have already chosen a vendor and want a document that justifies the decision.
Teams that want an SEO audit. This is not one.

The six dimensions

Vision and strategy. Most B2B commerce strategy is written against the wrong market. US B2B sales run to roughly $15 trillion, but the browseable slice — a buyer on a website, browsing and ordering — is about $2 trillion; around 75% of digital B2B is EDI, system to system (B2B Commerce Insights). Meanwhile B2B ecommerce now accounts for 16% of all manufacturing and distribution sales (Master B2B, The End of Channel Dependence). The first dimension establishes which of those numbers your plan is actually aimed at. Buyer appetite is not the limiting factor: in survey data Shopify presented from the stage at B2B Online Chicago in May 2026, fielded that April among manufacturers and distributors between $500M and $10B, 70% of buyers said they were ready to place orders over $50K online and 90% said they would switch suppliers for a better experience (reported here).
The numbers. The cannibalization objection — that the web steals from the reps — is the most common reason B2B digital stalls, and the operating evidence runs the other way. One $25 billion distributor analyzed more than 100,000 accounts and found that customers who adopted its B2B platform grew 20% faster than those who did not; at a large electrical distributor, online customers spent 5% more on average (B2B Commerce Insights — both figures are first-party and the companies are not named). In Rudy's own experience, moving a customer from phone orders to the web lifts average order value by around 10% (his observation, labelled as such). None of that matters if leadership will not read the metrics: nearly 40% of practitioners cite limited executive buy-in on digital-centric KPIs such as conversion rate and average order value as a top barrier to proving value (Master B2B, 2026).
The stack. Your operation is placed on the 0–10 B2B eCommerce maturity model, level by level, with the test written down for each one. Each test is the same shape: can a real buyer do this today, without calling you? The first test you fail is your ceiling, and your true level is the one just below it. The common failure is Level 4, customer-specific pricing: the storefront looks modern, but a logged-in buyer still cannot see the price they actually pay without calling a rep. That is a data and integration problem wearing a UI costume — and it is more common than the vendor conversation admits. Rudy's own estimate, from the operators he works with, is that maybe 10–15% of $50M–$200M distributors have a PIM connected to an ERP connected to a commerce platform with consistent data moving between all three. The platform is rarely the binding constraint: in that same 2026 ranking, where AI tools lead, the commerce platform itself fell to fifth, at 31% (Master B2B, 2026). The read is platform-agnostic — Shopify Plus for B2B is one answer among several, and "keep what you have" is a legitimate finding.
The data. Product data is where AI ambition meets reality. Employees can waste up to 12 hours a week hunting information across systems, and 66% of shoppers have abandoned a significant purchase because of missing or inaccurate product information (B2B Commerce Insights, summarizing Akeneo's 2026 product-data report). Most teams grade their own data a B or a C (Master B2B, 2026). Meanwhile the money has already moved: 81% of practitioners say they are actively spending on AI in the next 12 months, up from 68% in 2025, and 15% report they have already embedded AI into their core eCommerce operations (Master B2B, 2026). Master B2B invited Rudy onto their webcast to react to that finding; his write-up afterwards is the short version of this dimension — the industry has correctly identified the data problem and funded something else. GEO starts in the PIM, not in prompts. This dimension scores data health on your top 20% of SKUs by revenue and connects it to PIM architecture and to what answer engines can actually retrieve — the same read behind the AI Visibility Check and the GEO audit.
The organization. A rep gets roughly 13 minutes of face time with the right person at a customer account per visit. If most of those minutes go to order details — confirming stock, discussing pricing, placing transactions by hand — the rep never becomes a trusted advisor (B2B Commerce Insights). So this dimension reads the comp plan: whether web orders inside a rep's territory are commissioned, and who owns the customer after the first online order. It also reads the alignment problem directly — 37% of practitioners still struggle to get leadership and cross-functional buy-in for digital (Master B2B, 2026).
The constraints. Budget, timeline, team, and politics decide what a roadmap can survive. AI is the sharpest current example: MIT put a figure on it this year — 95% of enterprise AI pilots show no measurable P&L impact (cited here). Distribution is not exempt: the American Supply Association found 74% of distributors already experimenting with AI, but only 19% who had implemented it across any meaningful part of their operations (reported here). A roadmap that ignores what your organization can absorb produces the same result. This dimension names the constraints out loud so the sequence is one you can actually execute.

How it runs

Weeks 1–2 · Discovery. 8–12 structured interviews across leadership, sales, customer service, marketing, and IT, plus 2–3 of your customers. Read-only access to analytics, ERP exports, the PIM, and the platform admin. A walk-through of the stack as it actually runs. A live GEO run against the answer engines. Client time: about 6–8 hours total.
Weeks 3–4 · Analysis. Operator-led synthesis. No template deck. Your operation is placed on the maturity model, digital adoption is segmented by customer and by rep, product-data health is scored on the top 20% of SKUs by revenue, and the real constraints are mapped.
Week 5 · Findings. A two-hour working session with leadership to pressure-test the conclusions before they go to a board or a vendor. Disagreement in this session is useful; it is cheaper here than in a steering committee.
Weeks 5–6 · Roadmap. A prioritized sequence. Each item carries an owner, a dependency, a rough cost, and the cost of doing nothing. You own it. There is no obligation to build it with Rudy or with Human After All.

What you get

A written findings report covering all six dimensions, in English or French.
Your placement on the maturity model, with the test result recorded per level.
A digital-adoption analysis: which customers and which reps have moved, and which have not.
A product-data health score, and an AI-visibility read across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
A 12–18 month roadmap with owners, dependencies, rough costs, and the cost of doing nothing.
A board-ready summary deck carrying your logo, not Rudy's.

What it is not

It is not a vendor RFP. It is not an SEO audit. It is not a replatform pitch. And it is not a free assessment that ends in a proposal — the fee is the point, because a paid diagnostic answers to the client, not to the implementation it might sell.

Who runs it

Rudy Abitbol has 18+ years in B2B eCommerce, on both the distributor side and the manufacturer side.

He was Director of Digital Channels at Lumen (Sonepar) from 2018 to 2022, running a C$8 million digital budget and delivering four consecutive years of double-digit online growth.

He ran a digital maturity assessment for Tapestry (Kate Spade, Coach) between December 2025 and January 2026.

In 2025–2026 he served as an Akeneo implementation consultant for Goodyear during a six-month engagement.

He is a Master B2B Nexus Expert Advisor and an Akeneo Product Experience Advisor. He is a former Forbes Agency Council member and Forbes contributor. He was named Québec eCommerce Personality of the Year 2022 by the Communauté eCommerce du Québec. He writes B2B Commerce Insights.

Full track record

Frequently asked questions

What is the Commerce Operating Audit?: It is a fixed-scope, 4–6 week diagnostic of a B2B manufacturer's or distributor's commerce operation, run by one operator across six dimensions: vision and strategy, the numbers, the stack, the data, the organization, and the constraints. It ends in a prioritized 12–18 month roadmap you own.
How much does it cost?: It is a fixed fee, quoted once the scope is confirmed. The scope is fixed, so the fee is fixed. There is no day rate and no change-order mechanic. Send a message.
How is this different from a free agency assessment or a vendor demo?: A free assessment is a sales instrument. It ends in a proposal because that is what it is for. A vendor demo answers "can our product do this", which is a different question from "what is actually wrong here". The audit is paid, and that is the point: it answers to you, and its conclusion can legitimately be "keep what you have and fix the data".
Do we need Shopify Plus?: No. The audit is platform-agnostic. It reads whatever you run — Shopify Plus, Adobe Commerce, SAP, BigCommerce, or something built in-house. If the finding is that the platform is not the problem, that is the finding. Rudy does write about Shopify Plus for B2B specifically, but nothing in the audit presumes it.
Is it remote or on-site?: Mostly remote; an on-site day is available on request. Rudy is based in Montreal and Miami, and works across Canada, the United States, and France, in English and French. Send a message.
What access do you need?: Read-only access to analytics, ERP exports, the PIM, and the platform admin. Interview time with 8–12 people across leadership, sales, customer service, marketing, and IT, plus 2–3 customers who will speak candidly. Total client time is about 6–8 hours across the engagement. No write access is requested at any point.
Does it cover GEO and AI search?: Yes. A live generative-engine run is part of Discovery, and the AI-visibility read across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude is part of the deliverable. If you want a free preview before committing, run the AI Visibility Check, which is powered by the GEO audit tool at Human After All. Product data feeds directly into this, which is why the data dimension and the PIM work are read together.
Can we use the findings for a board case?: Yes, and that is a common reason to run it. The deliverable includes a board-ready summary deck carrying your logo. The findings are yours with no restrictions, and the roadmap prices the cost of doing nothing, which is usually the number a board needs to see.
What happens after the audit?: Three paths, and you pick. You execute the roadmap with your own team. Or Rudy stays on in a fractional leadership seat to drive it. Or Human After All implements it. None of the three is presumed by the audit, and the roadmap is written so that any of the three can run it.
Do you run the audit in French, and does it cover Law 96?: Yes. Rudy is based in Montréal, works in both languages, and delivers the report in either. For Quebec companies the data dimension includes a French-language pass: Law 96 makes bilingual product content a legal obligation, and an AI engine asked in French will answer from whatever French product data exists — or invent it. The same visibility test is run in both languages.

Next step

There is no pitch deck. Tell me what you are dealing with through the contact form, and I will tell you whether the audit is the right first step for you, or whether something smaller is.

Send a message

When it is time to build, implementation runs through Human After All — or whoever you choose.