"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
John Kelly has spent over 25 years navigating the realities of FMCG and Food and Beverage, an environment defined by operational discipline, complex routes to market and a low tolerance for risk.
In this episode, John reflects on his 15‑year journey at Heineken, where he helped scale a B2B digital ecosystem from three pilot markets to more than 30 countries, generating over €2.5 billion in digital revenue and fundamentally reshaping how the business goes to market.
John shares honest stories from the frontline of transformation, from failed big‑bet initiatives to the power of incremental innovation, agile ways of working and building belief market by market. He explains why early pilots should focus on adoption, not ROI, how to balance annual planning with sprint‑based delivery, and why customer centricity must come before technology.
The conversation also explores practical AI use cases, including dynamic sales routing and next‑best‑action models, alongside John’s framework for scaling digital capability through distinct growth phases without moving too fast.
Grounded, pragmatic and deeply experienced, John’s perspective is a reminder that successful transformation in FMCG is rarely about disruption for its own sake, it’s about patience, proof and bringing people with you.
Chris Monery entered food wholesale from the fast, unforgiving world of online retail, where technology, data and constant optimisation are the norm. What he found was an industry shaped by relationships, routines and workarounds, where businesses could operate successfully without the systems and digital discipline he took for granted.
In this episode, Chris talks openly about what it means to bring a digital mindset into a traditionally low‑tech B2B environment. He reflects on the early realities of the sector, the gaps he saw immediately, and why fundamentals such as forecasting, stable platforms and clear processes became the foundation for change. He also discusses the practical work of scaling in a protected market, from building trust with suppliers to persuading independent van drivers to join him, to developing the tools he couldn’t find off the shelf.
For Chris, real transformation isn’t about disruption for its own sake. It’s about seeing where a system is fragile, strengthening the parts no one else wants to fix and proving that technology, relationships and execution can work together to build something better.
Özlem Özümer has spent her career navigating the world of global trade, first through banking and later through credit insurance, but she’s clear that her motivation has always been helping businesses grow with confidence.
In this episode, she reflects on launching a greenfield operation in Turkey, the realities of building trust in an emerging market, and why credit insurance sits quietly behind so much of the world’s commerce. She talks about the human side of risk, the importance of being close to buyers on the ground, and the role people play in guiding clients through uncertainty.
Özlem shares the story behind Allianz TradePay, from early experiments that didn’t land to the breakthrough moment when co‑creation with a major client shaped the product’s future. She explains the challenge of innovating inside a large, established organisation, the resistance faced by a small new team, and why sponsorship, alignment and constant communication matter more than any single idea.
Her perspective is thoughtful and practical, a reminder that real innovation in B2B comes from patience, proximity to customers and the determination to keep going when the easy answers run out.
