Agentic vs. Autonomous Commerce: The Industry is Tackling the Wrong Problem
The most powerful levers in everyday publishing are often the smallest ones. And yet, they’re almost never what anyone pays attention to. They’re too unassuming for strategy papers, too mundane for grandannouncements, and too effective to continue ignoring. Those who recognize them don’t just change processes — they suddenly transform the quality of everything that comes out of them.
AI agents are taking over commerce. At least, that’s the promise. Thousands of providers today use the term “agentic” in their marketing. According to Gartner, very few of them deliver on their promises. The rest are engaging in “agent washing”: rebranded chatbots, RPA tools and existing automation solutions under new names.
The real problem lies elsewhere.
Agentic Commerce optimizes the path to purchase. Discovery, search, shopping assistants and conversational shopping experiences — that’s what the industry is talking about. That’s what most platforms arebuilding — and it solves maybe ten percent of the problem.
What comes next — supplier selection, dynamic pricing, fulfillment routing, exception handling — remains manual. Yet that is precisely where 90 percent of the complexity in B2B commerce lies.
This presentation draws a clear line between Agentic and Autonomous Commerce, based on current analyst frameworks from Gartner and Forrester. Agentic Commerce solves ten percent of the problem. Anyone who wants to remain competitive in B2B commerce must understand the other 90 percent.
Frank Schoutissen
Frank Schoutissen is the Head of Ecosystem at Emporix, where he is responsible for global growth, internationalization and channel strategy. He brings over 30 years of experience in building and scalingpartner ecosystems in the B2B software and commerce industries. He previously served as Global Head of Channel and Alliances at SAP and expanded the partner ecosystem at hybris from 15 to over 500 partners.
Frank also serves on several advisory boards and is considered one of the most experienced channel and ecosystem experts in the European commerce sector.
