Commerce operations are broken. Not struggling. Not challenging. Broken.
I can text anyone through SMS. I can load any website through HTTP. I can send money to anyone in the world through SWIFT. Yet when an order comes through Shopify, Amazon, or a point-of-sale system, every handoff to fulfillment, logistics and systems such as ERPs requires custom integration work, fragile code, and ongoing maintenance that drains budgets and slows growth.
At Pipe17, we’ve built a very successful business solving this problem. We connect commerce platforms, marketplaces, point of sale systems, ERPs, and fulfillment partners so brands and 3PLs can actually operate at scale. Our customers reduce operational costs by up to 85% and onboard new channels in days instead of months.
But here’s what keeps me up at night: we’re building solutions on top of a fundamentally flawed foundation. Online commerce lacks the basic standards that every other mature industry takes for granted.
That’s why Pipe17 co-founded the Commerce Operations Foundation and co-created the Order Network eXchange (onX). Not as a Pipe17 product, but as an open, vendor-neutral body and protocol that serves the entire online commerce industry.
Read our latest update on how Pipe17 has implemented the onX standard and what it means for customers.
Our view is that to accelerate online commerce, including agentic commerce, operations need to become 100x simpler. The best way to do that is to agree on a common language.
Table of Contents
The Problem: Commerce Without Standards
Every system in commerce speaks its own language. Shopify orders look different from Amazon orders. TikTok Shop uses a different format than Walmart Marketplace. Your ERP expects data one way, your order management system another, your 3PL another, your warehouse management system yet another.
There is no standard. No common protocol. No shared format.
The result: every channel-to-fulfillment connection requires custom integration work and data transformation. A brand selling on 10 channels needs 10 different integrations to each fulfillment partner. A 3PL serving 100 customers, who each sell on 10 channels, needs 1,000 custom connections. Add a new channel? Start another integration project. Switch 3PLs? Rebuild everything.
This fragmentation has real costs. Mid-market brands typically spend millions annually maintaining integrations across 10-20 channels. Enterprise retailers manage even more complexity across global operations. For 3PLs, client onboarding averages 30-90 days with integration costs ranging from $2,500 to $125,000 for a single connection.
This isn’t a vendor problem. It’s a structural problem. Commerce operations are fragmented at the protocol level, and no amount of better execution fixes that. The reality today is:
- Complexity that compounds with every channel added
- Brittle integrations that break without warning
- Operations teams spending more time firefighting than optimizing
Why Standards Matter More Than Solutions
Here’s the thing about standards: they only work when everyone trusts them.
Pipe17 could create our own proprietary standard (we open sourced our data model and donated it to the MACH alliance last year). We have the technical expertise, customer base, and operational data. But that would just add another proprietary format to an already fragmented landscape. Customers would rightfully question whether adopting a vendor-controlled standard creates dependency and lock-in.
That’s why we co-founded the Commerce Operations Foundation as an independent nonprofit standards body, similar to how the W3C governs web standards. The Foundation operates outside any single vendor’s control, creating and governing standards like onX for the benefit of the entire commerce ecosystem. Any vendor can implement onX. Any business can adopt it. No single company controls its evolution.
This approach has precedent. HTTP didn’t kill web servers; it made them more valuable. SMTP didn’t eliminate email providers; it enabled Gmail and Outlook to compete on features instead of basic connectivity. SWIFT didn’t commoditize banking; it standardized money movement so banks could focus on services.
Standards shift value capture up the stack, from basic connectivity to intelligent orchestration. That’s exactly where Pipe17 operates.
What onX Actually Does for Every Stakeholder
The Order Network eXchange establishes a universal language for order operations data. It standardizes how orders, inventory, fulfillments, returns and related objects can move between systems with precision, transparency, and at the speed of AI. onX delivers:
- Faster implementations
- Dramatically lower costs
- Operations that actually scale
Want to understand how onX works under the hood? Pipe17 CTO John Shao shares a technical deep dive in Building the Open Standard for Commerce Operations: The Technical Architecture of onX, including: the adapter pattern, MCP server implementation, and the open-source model.
Commerce Platforms and Marketplaces
Build one standard integration instead of maintaining custom connectors to hundreds of fulfillment providers. When Shopify, BigCommerce or Amazon implement onX, every order management system, 3PL and logistics provider that supports the standard becomes instantly compatible. This eliminates the ongoing maintenance burden of API changes and reduces merchant support tickets related to fulfillment connectivity. Platforms can focus on merchant experience instead of integration maintenance.
3PLs and Logistics Providers
Client onboarding drops from months to minutes. Instead of building custom integrations for every brand’s unique tech stack, 3PLs implement onX once and connect to any commerce platform that supports the standard. 3PLs can handle complex brand requirements with ease and say yes to servicing more modern brands.
Brands and Retailers
Deloitte’s 2025 retail outlook reports that omnichannel shoppers spend 50% more per month than single-channel buyers. Yet most brands struggle to expand channels because each new marketplace or sales channel requires months of integration work. With onX, adding new fulfillment partners or sales channels takes minutes instead of months. Store fulfillment (ship-from-store and BOPIS) becomes practical becomes practical. Real-time inventory visibility across warehouses, 3PLs, and retail locations shifts from aspiration to standard capability. Integration budgets shrink by 60-80%, freeing capital for growth initiatives.
ERP and Back-Office Systems
ERP vendors (or system integrators) currently maintain custom connectors to dozens of commerce platforms, marketplaces, and fulfillment systems. Each partner API change creates support tickets and emergency patches. With onX, NetSuite, SAP, or Microsoft implement one standard integration that works with any onX-compatible system. Order data, inventory updates, and fulfillment confirmations flow in consistent formats. Support costs decrease. Data quality improves. IT teams spend less time troubleshooting integration failures and more time on strategic initiatives.
How onX Makes Pipe17 Stronger
You might wonder: if onX simplifies integration, doesn’t that commoditize a key differentiator for Pipe17?
The opposite is true.
Standards don’t eliminate value. They concentrate it at layers where real differentiation exists.
The Order Network eXchange handles the protocol layer, the common language for data exchange. It makes basic commerce connectivity easier. Pipe17 operates at the orchestration layer, making that data actually work in production at scale.
Consider what unified commerce operations requires beyond basic data exchange:
- Intelligent order routing based on hundreds of real-time conditions (inventory levels, carrier capacity, delivery promises, cost optimization)
- Multi-location inventory allocation across warehouses, 3PLs, and retail locations
- Exception handling for address validation failures, inventory shortages, carrier issues
- Returns processing as well as exchange, modification and cancellation workflows
- Business rules enforcement and compliance management
- Audit trails and SLA monitoring with real-time visibility
These capabilities require operational infrastructure, not just data exchange standards. You need 99.99% uptime. Guaranteed delivery. Transactional integrity. Business logic orchestration. AI-powered optimization.
Our value increases as onX adoption grows because more standardized data means more opportunities for intelligent orchestration.
The Agentic Commerce Catalyst
What is strategically critical is that AI is reshaping how commerce operations work faster than most people expect.
According to Edgar, Dunn & Company’s analysis, agentic commerce (transactions initiated by AI agents) could reach $136 billion by 2025 and grow to $1.7 trillion by 2030, reflecting a CAGR of 67%. BCG research shows more than half of consumers anticipate using AI assistants for shopping by the end of 2025, and traffic to US retail sites from generative AI browsers increased 4,700% year-over-year in July 2025.
AI agents are already handling customer service. Soon they’ll manage complex operational workflows: configuring omnichannel data flows, optimizing fulfillment routing and orchestrating returns. Agentic commerce isn’t coming. It’s here.
But AI agents need a common language to coordinate across systems. Without the Order Network eXchange, every AI implementation requires custom integrations to dozens of different OMS, fulfillment, logistics and back-office systems, schemas and APIs. This would repeat the fragmentation problem at the AI layer, creating exactly the kind of technical debt that’s strangling commerce operations today.
onX provides the foundation that makes agentic commerce practical. A ChatGPT plugin, Claude integration, Gemini CLI, or Pippen agent can use standard protocols to turn a captured order into a successful delivery. When order data has a shared language it flows seamlessly across the post-checkout process, whether initiated by a human or an AI agent.
The window for establishing order operations standards is narrow. Once fragmentation reaches critical mass at the AI layer, coordination becomes nearly impossible. This is why onX is built AI-native from day one, supporting agentic workflows and intelligent orchestration as first-class capabilities, not afterthoughts.
Why This Moment Matters
Ecommerce is multiplying faster than operations can scale. Commerce is at the inflection point right now.
- Global retail ecommerce sales exceeded $6 trillion in 2024 and will surpass $7 trillion by 2027.
- B2B ecommerce grew 10.5% year-over-year to reach $2.3 trillion.
- Mobile commerce accounted for $2.07 trillion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $3.35 trillion by 2028.
- Social commerce is projected to exceed $80 billion in 2025 in just the US.
Those that cling to legacy tech and siloed solutions will sink under the weight of complexity. The gap between winners and losers is widening, driven by: AI adoption, channel proliferation, and customer expectations that only keep rising.
Pipe17 is a founding member of the Commerce Operations Foundation and a co-creator of the Order Network eXchange because waiting means accepting permanent fragmentation. We’re not doing this because it directly drives Pipe17’s revenue this quarter, but because it creates the foundation for commerce operations that actually work together.
Conclusion: An onX Enabled Future
We built Pipe17 to unify commerce after the buy button. But the industry needs more than point solutions. It needs foundational infrastructure. Standards that benefit everyone, not just individual vendors.
That’s the future the Order Network eXchange enables: operations that scale without breaking, integrations that work without custom code, and teams that focus on customers instead of operational complexity.
Just as TCP/IP unified the internet and HTTP enabled the web, onX will standardize how commerce operates. It will make effortless commerce operations possible for every brand, 3PL, platform and AI client.
And yes, Pipe17 will be one of the best onX reference implementations in production. But the standard itself belongs to the industry, not to us. Because when commerce works together, everyone wins.
Book a demo and see how we’re already delivering the AI-native capabilities that the Order Network eXchange will standardize across the industry, including our Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, Pippen AI agent, and dynamic order routing.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Order Network eXchange
The Order Network eXchange (onX) is an open, vendor-neutral protocol that standardizes how orders, inventory, fulfillments, and related objects move between commerce systems. Similar to how SMTP standardizes email or SWIFT standardizes banking transactions, onX establishes a common language for commerce operations data across platforms, marketplaces, ERPs, and fulfillment providers. Built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), onX unifies today’s commerce ecosystem and ensures interoperability with the agentic commerce networks of the future. onX is governed by the Commerce Operations Foundation. Learn more at commerceopsfoundation.org/onx/
The Commerce Operations Foundation is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to unifying commerce operations through open standards. Its first specification, onX (Order Network eXchange), establishes a common framework for how orders, inventory, and fulfillment data move across systems. Similar to how the W3C manages web standards, the Foundation ensures onX remains vendor-neutral and accessible to the entire commerce ecosystem. Learn more at commerceopsfoundation.org
No. The Order Network eXchange is a data exchange protocol, not an operational system. Order management systems will implement onX to handle connectivity, then compete on orchestration capabilities like intelligent routing, exception handling, workflow automation, and AI-powered optimization. The standard handles what the data looks like, while OMS vendors compete on what you can do with that data. This is similar to how HTTP standardized web communication without eliminating the need for web servers. Instead, it enabled servers to focus on performance, features, and user experience.
Agentic commerce and AI agents need a common language to coordinate across the multitude of systems commerce businesses rely on. Without the Order Network eXchange, every AI implementation requires custom integrations to dozens of proprietary formats, repeating today’s fragmentation problem at the AI layer. With onX, AI clients and agents can initiate orders, check inventory, manage fulfillment, and process returns using standard protocols across any system that implements the standard. This makes agentic commerce practical at scale, supporting the projected $1.7 trillion market by 2030. Built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), onX is AI-native from day one, with support for autonomous workflows, intelligent decision-making, and real-time coordination built into the protocol specification.
