How Boston Scientific is Reimagining B2B Product Discovery With Coveo

Five years ago, Boston Scientific customers ordered from a paper catalog. Today, the $17 billion medical technology leader is on track to more than triple its incremental digital revenue goal. The turning point wasn’t the ecommerce launch itself, but fixing product discovery through AI by partnering with Coveo. For SAP commerce leaders, digital experience directors, and customer experience teams, the Boston Scientific story offers a rare, numbers-backed look at what happens when AI-powered search is layered onto an SAP commerce foundation.

From Paper Catalogs to a Digital Growth Engine

Boston Scientific serves more than 20,000 hospitals globally, with 53,000 employees and commercial representation in 127 countries. However, until recently, its B2B buying experience was manual. The company brought in Deirdre Peters, now Director of Digital Experience, to lead a digital overhaul, an effort that began with launching an online ordering experience on SAP Commerce Cloud. The team built a product information management (PIM) system, digitized product data and imagery, and launched self-service ordering.

However, the transformation became more ambitious than digitizing transactions. As Peters said, “We didn’t just want to digitize transactions. We wanted to rethink what buying should feel like in B2B. Fast, intuitive, and relevant. If AI could help us get there, we were all in.”

Search That Missed the Mark

Even after a successful ecommerce launch, one theme kept surfacing in customer feedback: “I can’t find what I need.” The root cause was a mismatch between the catalog and its users, who consisted of procurement staff, materials managers, nurses, and administrators without clinical vocabulary, navigating a catalog historically optimized for physicians. As a result, search returned too many or irrelevant results, pushing frustrated buyers back to sales reps and undermining digital adoption.

The organizational constraints compounded the problem. With only two merchandisers and competing IT priorities, there was no bandwidth to fine-tune relevance, curate listings, or personalize experiences. All 20,000+ hospital customers saw the same one-size-fits-all site.

“Search was the bottleneck,” said Peters. “Fixing it was the fastest path to better CX and real ROI.” That urgency built the business case for partnering with Coveo.

Results That Reset the Business Case

Boston Scientific deployed Coveo AI-search on top of its SAP commerce stack, delivering relevance ranking, dynamic facets, product previews, availability, and search suggestions that learn from buyer behavior. Less than a year after launch, the results reset expectations for what search could deliver:

• 3.3x the incremental revenue goal: the team projected $3 million in year-one revenue uplift and is now tracking toward $10 million
• 18% increase in search conversion rate and 21% rise in search engagement
• 16% revenue growth across all channels, including fax, phone, email, and EDI
• 15% increase in customer retention

The impact extended to Boston Scientific’s 5,000+ sales reps, each managing hundreds of accounts. With customers self-serving, routine support calls dropped sharply, letting sales reps focus on strategic selling and high-value conversations.

The Next Phase

Boston Scientific is now evolving search into what Peters calls an intent engine. Rather than launching a chatbot, which can confuse or disrupt the buying flow, the team is doubling down on the search bar as the primary interface, rolling out generative product discovery that answers complex questions such as “Is this product compatible with my capital equipment?” It also surfaces documentation and recommends products in real time.

To go deeper into the Boston Scientific journey, join the upcoming SAPinsider webinar, where Deirdre Peters, Director of Digital Experience at Boston Scientific, will be joined by Peter Curran, Chief Product Officer at Coveo, and Winnie Albornoz, Senior Director of Product Marketing at SAP. The session will cover Boston Scientific’s path from catalogs to intent-driven search, the real results behind the numbers, why most AI initiatives stall and how commerce leaders break through, and perspectives from Coveo and SAP on scaling AI-powered commerce across the buying journey.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Search is the highest-ROI entry point for AI in commerce. SAP Commerce Cloud customers do not need a full-stack AI program to see returns. Fixing discovery first delivered measurable gains in conversion, retention, and revenue within a year.

AI relevance solves the merchandising capacity gap. Teams with lean merchandising resources can use behavior-driven ranking and personalization to serve thousands of accounts without manual curation.

Digital self-service is a sales productivity strategy. When buyers find answers themselves, field reps shift from order support to strategic selling, multiplying the value of every deflected inquiry.