The Software Pattern That Solves B2B's AI Paralysis

InnovationThe Software Pattern That Solves B2B's AI ParalysisByYoav Kutner,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)Jun 05, 2026, 07:45am EDTYoav Kutner is the Co-Founder and CEO of OroCommerce, a B2B-focused commerce platform for manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors. getty​A CIO at a $2 billion distributor is sitting on a board mandate to deploy AI. She also manages four different ERPs acquired through years of M&A, a green-screen order system from 2003 and a software vendor promising her that the next massive ERP upgrade will include AI natively.So, she is waiting. This is the most expensive decision she will make this year, and she doesn't know it yet.Everyone knows artificial intelligence (AI) is the future of B2B commerce, but nobody knows how to plug an advanced large language model into a 20-year-old AS/400 system.Waiting for the ERP vendor is the rational call. It's also how two years disappear. According to IDC, 21.4% of companies plan to renew with their current ERP provider specifically because generative AI is included in the next release. By the time that upgrade ships, the AI features are often shallow and the window has closed. A standard enterprise ERP replacement takes two to five years. Advanced AI capabilities are moving on six-month cycles. Pause for the migration, and your AI strategy is five generations obsolete before the project closes. This timeline mismatch leaves IT leaders feeling as if they have only two options. They can tape a fragile AI chatbot onto the outside of their legacy stack, creating security risks and data hallucinations. Or they conclude that the ERP itself is the problem, and commit to a full replacement—a project that absorbs IT resources for years and pushes every other initiative, including AI, to the back of the queue.Neither works. And the...