If you look closely at a distributor’s tech stack, you rarely see a master plan. You see a geological record: an old ERP, layers of custom scripts from people who’ve left, and SaaS tools bolted on to patch gaps.

Each decision made sense on its own. Taken together, they now decide how fast the business can move.

That’s the thread running through a new report OroCommerce developed with MDM. Instead of asking, “What is technical debt in theory?” the report asks, “What does it feel like inside the companies living with it?”

How “Good Enough for Now” Piles Up

One theme that came up in the interviews is how easy it is to add tools and how hard it is to retire them.

A distributor needs better product data for a new line, so a PIM goes in. A key account needs a special way to submit orders, so a connector appears. Sales wants a better way to quote, so a standalone module joins the mix. 

None of these moves looks risky at the moment. Problems start when each tool carries its own view of customers or products, and nothing pulls those views back together.

The same pattern shows up with vendor choices. John Wiborg, CEO of Stellar Industrial Supply, put it this way in the report:

“There’s a tendency to see a shiny new thing and say, ‘Well, that solves a problem.’ But as things evolve, you can end up with two or three different flavors of the technology that’s trying to address one type of problem.”

Leaders also talked about value. One described a stack where overlapping solutions delivered “only 10 to 30% of their contracted value.” The rest was lost in duplication, underuse, or workarounds needed to keep everything in sync.

What Leaders Are Changing First

The report doesn’t present a magic pattern. It does show a consistent starting point.

Leaders who made progress talked about getting their commerce foundation under control. They focused on a single place to manage how products are structured and how pricing is decided. They worked toward one model for how an order should behave, no matter which channel it comes from or which ERP sits behind it.

Some called this unified commerce. Others didn’t use a label at all. What mattered was the shift away from copying the same logic into several systems and hoping they would stay aligned.

Once that foundation was clearer, other decisions became easier. Acquisitions had a defined target model. New tools had to plug into it instead of inventing their own view of the customer. Digital projects stopped competing with integration repairs for time and budget.

What the Full Report Digs Into

The MDM report spends less time on definitions and more on lived experience. Inside, you’ll:

• See why distributors accumulate tech debt faster than B2C firms
• Follow what happened when one distributor tried to grow while running many ERPs at once
• Hear how leaders described the point where scattered systems started blocking basic plans
• Learn which early adjustments created enough stability to tackle bigger changes

It’s not a promise that everything can be fixed quickly. It’s a set of stories from operators who are already doing the work.

Download the full report from MDM to read the interviews and see how distributors are rethinking the systems behind their commerce.