The Blueprint of eCommerce Winners 🧬

Welcome back, data lovers! The latest Profitero report shows that eCommerce’s winners don’t have bigger budgets—they’ve built smarter systems. This week, we unpack the DNA of digital leadership and how brands are merging structure, data, and speed to grow while others stall.

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- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder

The 2025 Profitero Benchmark Study surveyed 460 eCommerce leaders worldwide to uncover what separates top-performing brands from the rest. The research shows how leaders integrate eCommerce across the business, link pay to performance, and build Centers of Excellence that drive collaboration. The result isn’t just better organization… it’s a cultural rewiring of how digital commerce creates growth.

Winning brands turn incentives into strategy. 72% of leaders tie bonuses to sales growth and 55% to share of search, proving that pay drives focus. When teams are rewarded for digital shelf results, they stop chasing impressions and start chasing outcomes. Linking compensation to market share, availability, and visibility ensures every decision moves the revenue needle.

Leaders don’t treat eCommerce as a side project—they embed it. 41% now run integrated structures, compared with just 26% of others, and 87% have a Center of Excellence. These CoEs connect marketing, category, and supply chain, creating a single view of the shopper. Integration turns digital from a cost center into a shared growth engine across functions.

The old “embedded” model is fading fast. Once dominant at 54% in 2021, it’s fallen to 36% by 2025. Integrated setups nearly doubled to 29%, and side-car teams are catching up at 33%. The direction is clear: successful brands are flattening hierarchies and merging digital expertise into the core business. Integration has become the default operating model for eCommerce growth.

Leaders are broadening the role of their CoEs beyond data and dashboards. 62% include account and category management, 57% manage content and supply chain, and 44% cover learning and retail media. This mix builds muscle across the value chain. CoEs are no longer about governance—they’re engines of enablement driving execution at scale.

Who owns eCommerce? Everyone. 58% of leaders give the P&L to Sales, while 42% assign it to Marketing. The split works because both functions align on shared KPIs and data. It’s not a turf war—it’s a tag team. When marketing fuels demand and sales closes it, the business wins. Leadership in eCommerce now means integration, not isolation.

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The 2025 Profitero eCommerce Organizational Benchmark shows what separates the fastest-growing brands from the pack: structure, focus, and tech. The report studied 460 global manufacturers and found that the winners don’t spend more—they integrate smarter. They fuse eCommerce and retail operations, connect data across silos, and invest in automation. The result: tighter teams, quicker calls, and fewer missed sales.

Category leadership today isn’t about silos. The best brands are 1.5x more likely to merge eCommerce with brick-and-mortar management, creating shared ownership of digital and physical shelves. That means sales, CatMan, and account teams collaborate under one growth target. Leaders move faster because their teams see one shopper, not two channels—and that alignment cuts politics and boosts execution where it matters most.

Leaders are twice as likely to set eCommerce goals and budgets in Joint Business Planning with retailers. That’s a big shift from treating digital as an afterthought to making it part of core negotiations. Three in ten leading brands now embed clear targets in JBP discussions, creating accountability on both sides. When retailers and suppliers share digital KPIs, they turn partnership meetings from trade talks into performance reviews.

Automation is the new edge. Leaders are three times more likely to run AI-driven workflows for content, shelf analytics, and performance tracking. One in five already uses AI at scale to automate repeat work, freeing people to act on insights instead of gathering them. Meanwhile, most others are still testing or planning limited use. That maturity gap is widening fast, separating those who run real-time commerce from those still writing reports.

Omnichannel speed demands a single version of truth. Sixty-one percent of leaders use data lakes and 57% share reporting across eCommerce and store teams. The laggards? Barely a third. Unified KPIs let teams react to trends faster, cut wasted media, and fix stock gaps before shoppers click away. Data isn’t just information—it’s a playbook for faster decisions and shared accountability across the business.

Dropship is the new battleground. 77% of leaders already have the capability, 35% more than others. It’s not just about logistics… it’s about owning availability. When retailers run out, leaders can still fulfill orders directly, keeping baskets and loyalty intact. As commerce becomes more agentic and predictive, that flexibility will define who wins the last mile and who’s left waiting at the curb.

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