There could not have been a better time than now for B2B ecommerce, with digitization on the racks. It has been responsible for transforming businesses and radically so in the past year. According to Gartner’s 2018-19 annual edition "Top Insights for the C-Suite", 87% of industry leaders see digitization as a top priority. 66% of CEOs see their business models changing in the next three years to suit these trends. However, what is all-too-desirable can only be achieved with considerable (yet attainable) levels of effort.
Why the Need?
With transactions spilling into mobile phones, B2B customers have come to expect a lot more. They demand nothing short of data-driven personalized experiences typical of B2C ecommerce. But relying on traditional sales forces and direct sales relationships has created tension between online and offline sales channels in B2B ecommerce. This leads to gaps in communication with customers and eventual rupture in the rapport. It is high time that B2B borrows the customer-centric approach and multi-stakeholder decision-making approaches of B2C for good.
Feeling apprehensive to embark on this great journey of transformation? The key to changing your business model is to re-organize every function in the direction of digitization. Here’s how:
Get New Digital Business Tools
Shifting to digital solutions is the first smart choice that you need to make. You can choose to make a cautious start by experimenting with one item for each category. Your digital toolkit will cater to different goals like financial and product information management, handling customer relations, great ecommerce visibility, and marketing via emails and social media. By making the best use of available resources, you can adopt an omnichannel experience. This is the buzz of the hour in B2B ecommerce.
Digitize Your Workflows
There are several benefits to be reaped from digitizing your company's workflows. For starters, you can save time by reducing the number of actions required to complete a task. This automatically cuts down the scope for errors and slack. Your employees keep motivated to be ultra-consistent and productive. If you have been looking to take an environment-friendly initiative, workflow digitization will also significantly reduce the usage of paper. As a B2B business, this is a great investment for managing inventories, sales activities, contracts, accounts, and bills.
Empower Your Employees Digitally
The big lift that is eluding most B2B businesses is a transformation of their traditional sales forces. It is crucial for employees to be well-armed to respond to ever-increasing customer requirements. For instance, digital abilities like call scheduling and sales forecast reporting greatly assist sales representatives in the personal profiling of clients. This will allow them to tap into what’s in demand and initiate consultative interaction over them. A digital self-service portal will also give your customer service team some much-needed support.
Shift to an Ecommerce Platform
Make the most of digitization by using it to utilize customers' data for personalized experiences. To keep track of this process, it is time to make the leap to an ecommerce platform and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. These will help you create tailor-made promotional strategies based on each customer’s purchase history. You will also be able to create specific product catalogs and price lists for each segment of your customers. In a time of cutthroat competition, this is what you need to excel in the B2B domain.
Have a Long-Term Commerce Program
The great transformation that B2B ecommerce should be aiming for involves a re-conceptualization of B2B commerce strategies. A recent survey by Forrester found that B2B businesses had web conversion rates of 8% triple that of B2C businesses. To capitalize on such facts, you must move your commerce operations to the digital space. While B2B companies have been typically averse to long-term commerce capabilities, you must now consider adapting to new geographies and lines of business. A digitized commerce program will allow you to have a unified storefront spanning across such diversities.
Persona Profiling and Customer Journey are the two things to keep in mind when reorienting your business functions in the 21st century. Personas refer to typical customer profiles. The road to digitization is about delivering according to the specific needs of these personas. Sound persona profiling leads to great customer journeys marked by easy interactions and self-service tools. Missing from the domain of B2B ecommerce for long, these objectives have now made the need for digitization all the more pertinent.
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