Baidu E-procurement Reconstructs B2B Business Model with AI: A "Digital and Intelligent Evolution" Crucial for Survival
“It costs thousands of yuan to hire a designer to renovate a store, and if you do it yourself, you'll end up with an ugly result after three days of hard work. Is it possible to create a high - end page in just 10 seconds at zero cost?” “Even with 10 customer service staff, you still get overwhelmed by inquiries. If you give wrong answers to professional questions and get complaints, is it possible to automatically provide professional responses to all customers in just 1 second?”...
These soul - searching questions are from the “Report on the Buyer Profiles of Eight Industries in 2025” recently released by “AicaiGou”, a one - stop procurement and sales platform under Baidu. This report poses the most pressing questions that need answers to the majority of B2B practitioners, especially the owners of small and medium - sized enterprises engaged in B - end business.
Three years ago, when faced with similar questions, whether it was B2B business owners, employees, B2B platforms, or enterprise service practitioners in various fields, the only answer they could give was “impossible”.
However, with the advent of the large - model era and the enhanced capabilities of AI, the business models of enterprises are being reshaped. The same is true for the B2B industry. The digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises brought about by AI has entered the deep - water zone - AI has changed from an “optional item” to a “must - have item”.
Just like any new thing at its birth, AI brings not only opportunities but also challenges to the B2B industry. In the past, business owners faced a yes - or - no question of “whether to carry out AI transformation”; now, they are faced with an essay question of “how to transform with the help of AI”.
The story between the B2B industry and AI is entering a new chapter.
01
From “What Can AI Do” to “How to Make Good Use of AI”
What can AI do in the B2B industry?
By learning product documents and manuals, AI can sort out the key information of products. The product detail pages generated by AI are close to professional standards in terms of information completeness and visual norms. In response to customer inquiries, AI customer service responds faster, and the accuracy of the information is no less than that of human customer service.
These are just a small display of AI's capabilities. At this stage, what B2B industry practitioners need most is the determination to carry out AI transformation. However, in the stage from 1 to 10 and from 10 to 100, determination alone is not enough. How to make good use of AI has become the key to success for practitioners.
So, how should B2B practitioners make good use of AI? To answer this question, we still need to start from the needs of various roles in the B2B industry to find the root of the problem.
First, from the perspective of the procurement end, that is, the buyer's perspective:
Nowadays, enterprise procurement decisions are becoming more and more scientific. In the traditional procurement model, the situation of “expanding customers through relationships and enjoying long - term benefits once selected as a supplier” no longer exists. In addition, with the intensification of industry competition, enterprises are constantly adjusting their own business models. The procurement needs are becoming more and more changeable, and the demand for customized products and agile delivery is increasing day by day.
At the same time, the behavior patterns of procurement parties are also changing. The highly developed C - end e - commerce in China has made the public accustomed to the “conversational customer service” communication method, which provides instant feedback and strong interactivity. This also makes enterprise procurement more inclined to communicate directly with suppliers when sourcing, rather than using the less time - efficient email inquiry method. Procurement parties hope to understand products from more diverse dimensions before offline contact - traditional pictures and texts can no longer meet the needs of procurement parties, and video and even VR forms are more persuasive.
The above two trends put forward new requirements for suppliers (sellers):
1. The product information of suppliers should be accurate and rich enough. Product documents and manuals can no longer meet the needs of procurement parties. Suppliers should at least build a product detail page similar to that of e - commerce products, and it is best to present products in video or VR forms.
2. The needs of procurement parties are constantly adjusting. Old customers may leave at any time, and new customers may come at any time. Suppliers must improve their customer acquisition ability.
3. The service response speed of suppliers should be improved. The traditional email model can no longer meet the needs of procurement parties. It is best to have 7 * 24 - hour customer service to respond to customer needs in real - time.
Therefore, AI has become the most powerful weapon for suppliers. As mentioned above, AI can help suppliers generate promotional materials such as pictures, texts, and videos, and can also provide AI customer service to liberate productivity. However, this single - point service model, although improving efficiency, still requires a lot of manual operations. This model can no longer meet the enterprise's application needs for AI.
“Our research on Chinese B2B enterprises found that nearly 60% of enterprises are troubled by rising labor costs and low marketing efficiency,” Xie Tian, the general manager of Baidu's industry search and intelligent agent business, told 36Kr. “These problems run through the entire online business process, and it is difficult to solve them all at once with a single isolated tool.”
In his opinion, what the B2B industry needs most is an integrated, one - stop solution. This is also Baidu AicaiGou's problem - solving idea for the B2B industry.
Xie Tian, the general manager of Baidu's industry search and intelligent agent business
02
The Intelligent Agent Ecosystem Becomes the Key to Breaking the Deadlock in the B2B Industry
On June 11, the 4th Baidu AicaiGou Digital Intelligence Conference was held in Hangzhou. Baidu AicaiGou gathered many experts, scholars, and representatives of more than a thousand enterprises to jointly explore the transformation path of the B2B industry. At this conference, the word “ecosystem” was mentioned many times.
“We hope to build a more open and inclusive B2B ecosystem,” Xie Tian told 36Kr. What Baidu AicaiGou provides is not one or several single - point products or solutions, but a one - stop service platform.
At the conference, Baidu AicaiGou released the “Blue Book on Making Good Use of AI in the B2B Industry in 7 Days”. The blue book covers seven dimensions, including intelligent product listing optimization, store design, VR factory tour, intelligent customer service reception, intelligent agent sourcing and customer expansion, intelligent customer expansion, and marketing videos, and elaborates in detail on the whole process of B2B enterprises accessing AI.
The release ceremony of the “Blue Book on Making Good Use of AI in the B2B Industry in 7 Days”
Specifically, a B2B enterprise only needs to provide basic product documents and photos, and Baidu AicaiGou can generate product pages through AI and publish them, while completing store design. After learning product information, AI can automatically receive customers, even generate marketing videos, and actively source and expand customers. At the same time, suppliers can also present their factories in VR form on the platform through Baidu AicaiGou's solutions, allowing customers to complete a “factory tour” without leaving home.
“We believe that the B2B industry needs an integrated, one - stop solution. We use the intelligent agent as the service center and combine digital human technology to achieve the batch production of multi - modal content such as digital human short videos and VR factory tours. Then, in more diverse online scenarios, we display the content in forms such as notes and videos to help merchants reach more potential customers,” Xie Tian said.
The B2B industry intelligent agent of Baidu AicaiGou
The solutions represented by Baidu AicaiGou's B2B intelligent agent already have rich AI capabilities. For example, Baidu AicaiGou's digital human content generation supports more than 20 languages, covering major countries and regions in Europe, America, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, and can directly serve foreign trade enterprises. For foreign languages such as English, it can even output different accents such as British English and American English to deeply match overseas customers.
“We promote enterprises to achieve intelligent leapfrog development and efficient operation by building the B2B industry intelligent agent and reshaping the new B2B industry ecosystem,” Cui Yan, the deputy general manager of Baidu AicaiGou, said.
Cui Yan, the deputy general manager of Baidu AicaiGou
It is worth noting that the AI tools provided by Baidu AicaiGou not only serve suppliers but also serve procurement parties. Procurement parties can provide their own needs to Baidu AicaiGou's B2B industry intelligent agent, and the intelligent agent will automatically search for products, find manufacturers, check information, match suppliers, and conduct online VR factory tours.
In the view of Baidu AicaiGou, they hope to build a more open and inclusive B2B ecosystem based on AI:
For merchants, on the one hand, Baidu AicaiGou lowers the usage threshold of products, making it easier for merchants to get started; on the other hand, Baidu AicaiGou improves the business effectiveness, and the products and solutions meet the needs of merchants.
For sourcing parties, Baidu AicaiGou provides more diversified scenario displays to help them find the required supplies and merchants faster and achieve the matching between buyers and sellers.
According to the data officially disclosed by Baidu AicaiGou, after a machinery technology company in Shandong Province launched the B2B industry intelligent agent, the overall store exposure increased by 36.4%, the number of leads increased by 55.6%, and the whole - network marketing ability was significantly enhanced. Xie Tian revealed that as of now, the number of activations of Baidu AicaiGou's B2B industry intelligent agent has exceeded 10,000.
03
AI Has Become a Must - Answer Question for B2B Enterprises
Nowadays, there is an industry consensus in the B2B industry: in the next 1 - 3 years, the industry will face a new watershed - AI cannot be avoided, and the degree of AI deployment will determine the survival of enterprises.
In Xie Tian's view, using AI to do business better has become a must - answer question for enterprises. At the site of the 4th Baidu AicaiGou Digital Intelligence Conference, Shen Yang, a dual - appointed professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University and the School of Artificial Intelligence of Tsinghua University, also said: “How the B2B industry can achieve new growth in the AI era with the help of leading applications such as large models and intelligent agents has become a compulsory course for every entrepreneur.”
Shen Yang, a professor at Tsinghua University
In April this year, iResearch released the “Research Report on the Chinese Foreign Trade B2B SaaS Industry”, which took foreign trade B2B enterprises as samples to analyze the current situation and challenges of the digital transformation of the Chinese B2B industry.
The research found that the digitalization degree of B2B enterprises is directly proportional to the number of SKUs and the processing depth, and inversely proportional to the position in the supply chain and the establishment time.
Specifically, the more high - tech the products produced by an enterprise are, the higher the degree of digitalization is, which is also in line with the outside world's perception of the industry. The two inverse - proportional data are a bit more complicated - the younger the enterprise and the closer it is to consumers, the deeper the degree of digitalization. This means that a large number of enterprises with a long establishment time and enterprises in the upper part of the industry chain still have great room for improvement in digital transformation.
At the same time, this report from iResearch also shows an optimistic trend - most B2B merchants are willing to invest 3 - 5% of their net profit in digital construction, which is not a small amount in the B2B field with low profit margins. At the same time, in the next 2 - 3 years, the annual growth rate of AI investment by B2B SaaS service providers will also reach more than 10%. Both enterprises and service providers hope to move towards each other.
However, at the same time, B2B enterprises also face a major problem: how to choose a suitable AI service provider. This service provider not only needs to have leading AI technology but also be able to provide a complete solution. Finally, it must understand the industry well, be willing to do down - to - earth service, and grow together with the vast number of small and medium - sized enterprises in the B2B industry.
At the 4th Baidu AicaiGou Digital Intelligence Conference, Wang Shasha, the market leader of Baidu AicaiGou, Huang Jiaqi, the person in charge of Lenovo's Beyond Plan, Zhou Jinxiong, an expert in procurement and supply chain management practice, and Chen Zhenyu, the founder of Suzhou Fermi Instrument Automation Technology Co., Ltd., jointly launched the “Beyond Plan”. Baidu AicaiGou will help enterprises on the platform outperform the market from five dimensions: brand positioning, AI empowerment, star enterprises, ecological win - win, and business opportunity insight, and achieve the leap from “participants” to “star enterprises”.
Growing together with small and medium - sized enterprises is also the work that Baidu AicaiGou has been striving to practice. In the past few years, Baidu AicaiGou has continuously gone deep into the front line of the industry. They even produced a program called “Hello! Factory Director” to record the real stories of the B2B industry and the role of the “factory director”, which is quite characteristic of China.
In the past, in the transformation dilemmas of many large enterprises, “transformation” itself meant the redistribution of