"Volunteering taught me how to engage people who don’t have to listen to you".
This episode of The B2B Experience is created in partnership with IRX and supports the IR B2B eComm Conference 2026, where Przemek Kotecki sits on the advisory board. Learn more about the conference here.
Przemek’s professional journey provides a broad foundation for understanding digital transformation in B2B. While still at university, he co-founded a startup in the alternative energy space. Although the business did not ultimately secure sufficient funding, the experience provided early exposure to execution under uncertainty and to the operational realities of building systems from scratch.
He entered the corporate world through Thomson Reuters, working in technology M&A integration. This role involved integrating newly acquired companies into an existing enterprise architecture, aligning technology stacks, rationalising systems, and addressing early-stage data integration challenges. It provided first-hand experience of how fragmented systems landscapes emerge and how difficult enterprise systems integration can be in practice.
He later relocated to Dubai to work within a digital incubation environment, building and testing new digital products using existing corporate data assets. This phase reinforced the importance of disciplined experimentation in digital innovation, including the willingness to sunset initiatives that do not demonstrate value.
Returning to Poland, he joined Netguru, a fast-scaling digital consultancy, where he led delivery across a growing portfolio of digital programmes. Improvements in customer satisfaction were achieved not simply through technical implementation but through structured processes, CRM optimisation, and clearer alignment between delivery teams and client expectations.
At Allegro, Europe’s largest-origin e-commerce marketplace, Przemek took on transformation governance responsibilities. This involved defining which initiatives should be prioritised, structuring transformation programmes, and ensuring alignment between business objectives and technology execution. It reinforced the principle that digital transformation strategy must be anchored in measurable business outcomes rather than technology adoption alone.
Today, at Brenntag, he operates within a global distribution business shaped by decades of acquisition. Multiple ERP systems, varied CRM deployments, and inconsistent master data create structural complexity. In this environment, digital transformation cannot be reduced to system replacement. It requires structured governance, cross-functional coordination, and a clear transformation roadmap.
The conversation explores the realities of enterprise digital transformation in distribution businesses, the persistent challenge of master data management, why new systems do not fix poor data governance, and what transformation offices must do to align business outcomes with technology investment.
The discussion also explores the role of a transformation office in complex B2B organisations. Rather than acting as a central command function, it must serve as a bridge between business ambition and technology capability. Clear business outcomes must anchor digital transformation strategy; otherwise, technology programmes risk becoming expensive experiments disconnected from measurable impact.
What differentiates Przemek’s perspective, however, is the influence of volunteering on his management style. Long before leading enterprise transformation programmes, he led volunteers — individuals who could not be compelled through hierarchy or compensation. In those environments, engagement was earned through purpose, trust, and clarity.
Those early lessons now shape how he approaches stakeholder alignment in digital transformation. Influencing senior leaders requires commercial framing and outcome clarity. Aligning peers requires shared ownership. Supporting more junior team members requires reassurance and transparency. Enterprise transformation, particularly in B2B distribution, succeeds when individuals understand how change connects to their role and to the organisation’s broader objectives.
After more than twenty years working across digital initiatives, integrations, and governance programmes, Przemek reflects on what he has learned. Earlier in his career, he focused heavily on execution and systems delivery. Over time, he has come to invest more energy upfront in alignment and expectation setting. Incremental progress, visible wins, and consistent communication sustain transformation momentum far more effectively than ambitious multi-year plans detached from daily reality.
The episode closes with B2B Buzzword Bingo, offering a moment of candour about the language that dominates boardroom conversations and why clarity matters more than trend-driven terminology.
Synopsis
This episode explores digital transformation in B2B distribution, including enterprise ERP and CRM modernisation in acquisition-led organisations. It addresses master data management, data governance, and the practical realities of aligning business objectives with technology programmes.
The discussion examines the role of a transformation office, enterprise systems integration, and the incremental execution of digital transformation strategy. It also considers how leadership shaped outside corporate environments can influence stakeholder engagement and sustainable organisational change.
Navigating legacy systems and complexity in global B2B organisations
Why motivation and trust matter more than mandates in transformation
Lessons from volunteering that strengthen leadership and collaboration
Managing up, influencing stakeholders and sustaining momentum
Building bridges between business and technology for long‑term value
The crisis moment when a financial hub went down with no backups
How volunteering taught Przemek to lead without authority
“Do not negotiate with yourself” the advice that changed his mindset
Why Brenntag’s acquisition‑driven structure creates unique digital challenges
How gamification and engagement initiatives transformed team culture
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She talks openly about the gaps she discovered when moving from B2C into B2B, the absence of customer research in large enterprises and the over rotation on technology instead of customer insight. She reflects on the relationship between sales and marketing, the need for marketing teams to raise their ambition and why proving value internally is just as important as storytelling externally. Tejal also explores how to use AI with purpose, not hype, and why human judgement can never be removed from the process.
A clear reminder that before you chase new technologies, you must understand your customers, simplify your marketing and get the basics right.
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In this episode, Abdul talks about finding his superpower, how contracting compressed decades of learning into a few intense years, and why emotional intelligence became the skill that unlocked his leadership style.
He explains how thought leadership can shift the perception of an entire brand when it is rooted in real change rather than rhetoric, and why organisations must prove disruption instead of simply claiming it. Abdul shares stories from energy, fintech and beyond, showing how authentic ideas, delivered through action, build trust at scale and create opportunities no strategy document could predict.
This is a conversation about confidence, contribution and momentum, and about why the future belongs to leaders who look forward, not back.
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Tim reflects on lessons from Trainline, River Island, Hobbycraft and Magnet Kitchens, and how working with Biglight helped him challenge assumptions and bring the outside view into the organisation. He talks about how to anticipate customer needs, how to break through organisational bias and why culture is often the deciding factor in whether change lands or fails.
Practical, grounded and full of lived experience, Tim offers a clear view of how to stay one step ahead of customers and competition by understanding motivation, removing friction and creating teams that keep moving forward.
