AI Promises the Output Without the Work with Aaron Sheehan of OroCommerce
Isaac Morey sat down with Aaron Sheehan at Shoptalk Fall in Nashville, and the conversation ran four minutes and covered a lot of ground. Aaron is the VP of Strategy and Partnerships at OroCommerce, and he has been a Talk Commerce guest before, in Why B2B E-commerce Needs Friction and in Adobe Commerce Business Practitioners.
An Ecommerce Platform for Manufacturers and Distributors
Isaac asked what OroCommerce does and what sets it apart. Aaron said the platform is built for manufacturers and distributors, and he named the work that comes with B2B sales.
“A lot of the complexity that comes with B2B sales. So things like complicated customer entitlement pricing, requests for quote workflows, a lot of business back office automation,” he says.
He said the aim is for sellers and buyers to move together through a purchasing process that reflects what buyers need.
A New B2B Focus at Shoptalk
This was Aaron’s first Shoptalk with Oro, and he has been to Shoptalk before. He saw a change this year.
“There is a new B2B focus this year. A lot of brand manufacturers and people are starting to come to these events, and we’re having some really great conversations,” he says.
AI Has Not Solved Much for B2B Yet
Isaac asked about the talk of the town. Aaron said vendors on the floor describe AI as a solution to many problems, and the picture in B2B looks different.
“It appears to have not solved very many problems yet for a lot of people in B2B because their challenges are still the same ones they’ve had for 20 years, which is legacy tech debt, buyers that want to do things a specific way, the way they’ve always done it,” he says.
He gave an example that shows how far some buyers sit from agents.
“People are still getting faxes. Okay? Faxes are real. It’s 2026. I hate to say it. The fax machine is not dead,” he says.
Agents Point Inward First
Isaac asked whether AI can clear the tech debt or digs a deeper hole. Aaron said he moderated tables the day before, and the answers followed a pattern. B2B companies use agents on their own paperwork and workflows, and they have not pointed them at customers.
The reason is that B2B transactions are governed by rules, workflows and permissions, and the order values run high.
“Whether three pallets of tools get to the right job site on time makes a massive difference,” he says.
That makes a hallucination or an unknown exception costly, which keeps people in the loop of those relationships.
AI Slop and the Work Behind the Output
Isaac asked for his definition of AI slop. Aaron started with the Shopify CEO’s phrase, “slop grenades,” from a recent podcast interview, and then made what he called a philosophical point.
“I think a lot of us in business sometimes confuse the work with the output. And so AI promises immediate output without doing the work,” he says.
He said skipping the work means skipping the learning, and he gave the example of a board deck.
“I’ve got my end of quarter deck for my board. I just dumped a bunch of documents in there. I’ve got a deck. It’s great. What happens when I have to defend that deck to the board? Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t write it. Claude did, right?” he says.
He said AI slop lowers the barrier for producing long white papers, and he sees the effect beyond B2B.
“They say much and signify little. And I think this is not only in B2B. We see this in art. We see this in media. We’re seeing this in interpersonal relationships,” he says.
His prediction is that tastes will adapt.
“We will see a penalty for AI slop in a lot of realms right now,” he says.
