I help B2B companies connect business strategy to the systems that actually run the business.
I'm an enterprise architect and digital strategy leader focused on B2B distribution. The work sits at the intersection of commerce, enterprise systems, data, APIs, and applied AI, and it moves between altitudes: framing the problem with executives, mapping the real workflow with operations, engaging technical teams on the architecture, and staying close enough to implementation that the strategy becomes usable.
Distribution is where I've spent most of my career because none of it is simple: contract pricing, deep assortments, ERPs older than the internet, and organizations that cannot stop operating just because a transformation program says they should. Hard problems at scale, where getting the foundation right is the whole job.
Before any of this, I spent about a decade running a private investigations firm: computer forensics, penetration testing, live casework. I started building systems for clients in distribution and never left.
Focus
Commerce architecture. Platform decisions, composability, search, and the system boundaries that make B2B complexity manageable.
Enterprise systems strategy. ERP boundaries, integration patterns, build versus buy, and the organizational realities around long-lived systems.
APIs and integration. API strategy and governance with product thinking behind them, so integration programs end up usable rather than just connected.
Product and pricing data. The data discipline behind catalogs, customer-specific pricing, enrichment, and the workflows that keep them usable.
Applied AI. Practical uses of AI for search, classification, and operational leverage, grounded in real business processes rather than demos.
How I work
I bias toward clarity, operating detail, and decisions that survive contact with the business. Make the problem legible, make the tradeoffs explicit, and do not pretend consumer playbooks map onto distribution.
- Architecture is a business tool. Good architecture clarifies ownership, reduces unnecessary complexity, and gives everyone a shared map of how systems, data, and people connect.
- Embedded, not detached. I work best close to the messy parts: the workarounds, the edge cases, the places where a clean diagram does not match what actually happens.
- Platform-aware, platform-independent. The tool is not the strategy. Packaged software earns its place on commodity capability; where the business actually differentiates, building to suit usually beats fighting a platform that was never designed for it.
- Practical over impressive. Transformation fails on translation, not ambition. The job is turning broad goals into executable increments with clear owners.
- Talent is the throughline. Strong people who build and operate well are what make the next decade of automation safe in production.
Contact
Email is the best path: jason@jcapshaw.com. I'm also on LinkedIn.
For advisory and embedded architecture work, the advisory page is the best summary of fit. For talks and workshops, see speaking.