The future of B2B commerce isn't just Online. It's about Turning Offline On. In Episode 2 of Turning Offline On, Tim Pope and Frankie Marafioti are joined by Tim Reid, CTO of BioPak, to explore what happens when online and offline B2B commerce finally come together. For many businesses, digital transformation has simplified online order processing. Automating the long tail of Offline Orders at scale with Zero-Touch at scale is the next frontier. Portalink's focus is on eliminating manual data entry behind orders arriving through channels such as email, PDF, and spreadsheets, while bringing those transactions into the same commerce environment as Online and EDI orders. For BioPak, that opportunity is significant. 30,000 to 40,000 orders are processed each month with 50% to 60% arriving through Offline channels. The opportunity is to create one connected customer experience for all orders, regardless if it is Online, Offline or EDI. As Tim Reid explains in this episode: "Everyone becomes a first-class digital citizen." In this episode: 🔹 What Turning Offline On means for BioPak 🔹 Why Unified Commerce is the next evolution of B2B 🔹 Why BioPak chose Shopify after evaluating more than 15 platforms 🔹 How Portalink brings Offline Orders into the Shopify commerce environment 🔹 The journey towards Zero-Touch Order Processing 🔹 Why accuracy and trusted data are critical when automating Offline B2B orders 🔹 How customer-specific pricing, freight and fulfilment make B2B uniquely complex 🔹 BioPak's international Unified Commerce rollout 🔹 How AI is transforming business intelligence at BioPak 🔹 The emergence of Agentic AI 🔹 Why the future of automation still needs humans in the loop One platform. Every order. The goal isn't to force every B2B buyer online. It's to meet customers wherever they choose to order and turn those offline transactions into connected digital commerce. That's central to the Shopify X Portalink proposition, which brings email, PDF, Excel, EDI and other order formats into a unified Online B2B Commerce environment. For BioPak, Shopify X Portalink creates the opportunity to reduce manual intervention, improve accuracy and give customer service teams more time to focus on customers instead of data entry. Customers benefit from having access to order status, invoices and cross-sell promotions at a single information hub, regardless of how they placed their order. And beyond commerce, Tim shares how BioPak is already exploring the next transformation: using data from AI and AI agents to accelerate decision-making, automate repetitive work and augment human teams. The takeaway? Offline isn't going away. But manual processing can. Welcome to Turning Offline ON!. 🎙️ Guest: Tim Reid, CTO, BioPak 🎙️ Hosts: Tim Pope & Frankie Marafioti 🎧 Turning Offline On, Episode 2 ⚡ Presented by Portalink Subscribe for more conversations with the people transforming B2B commerce, automation and customer experience. Learn more about Portalink: ⁠https://portalink.com ⁠#TurningOfflineOn #Portalink #BioPak #Shopify #ShopifyB2B #B2BCommerce #UnifiedCommerce #OrderAutomation #ZeroTouch #DigitalTransformation #AgenticAI

Turning Offline On | Portalink

There's a part of B2B commerce that somehow still remains remarkably offline orders arriving through email, PDFs, spreadsheets, phone calls, and everything in between. The Portalink Podcast exists to talk about it. 

Hosted by Tim Pope, Founder & CEO of Portalink, and co-host Frankie, this show sits down with merchants, systems integrators, Shopify partners, and B2B industry leaders to unpack why these processes are still so hard to change, what they're costing businesses, and what organizations are actually doing about it.

These are open, straight-talking conversations built to share ideas, real experiences, and lessons the whole industry can learn from  because there's a huge opportunity to make B2B commerce work better. 

The Portalink Podcast runs across a few different series, each with its own focus: 

Turning Offline On, the flagship series exploring the people, processes, and technology transforming B2B ordering, and what it takes to turn offline processes into connected, trusted systems of work. 

Shopify x Portalink, a look at what happens when online and offline B2B commerce finally connect, with real implementations, practical lessons, and the changing role Shopify plays in B2B. 

What's New @ Portalink, a behind-the-scenes look at what we're building, testing, and learning at Portalink, from new product releases to partner stories and the ideas shaping what comes next. 

Across every series, expect proof over hype: real outcomes, real trade-offs, and practical paths forward  not just buzzwords. Whether you're evaluating automation for the first time or refining a strategy already underway, the Portalink Podcast is here to help you make sense of where B2B commerce is headed. 

New episodes drop regularly. Follow or subscribe to stay ahead of the shift from offline to connected.