What should companies understand about digitization?
- Why the B2B industry should embrace digitization
- How B2B suppliers can successfully digitize their companies
Both B2B and B2C companies have entered the digital era. The digitization of businesses has dramatically restructured how they operate, both internally and externally. For B2B companies to succeed, they must fully embrace digitization, such as sales force automation, and make it an integral aspect of their company identity.
Why the B2B Industry Should Embrace Digitization
For many B2B suppliers, the process of digitizing a company can be daunting. It’s a process that requires a significant amount of investment in terms of money and time. Additionally, much of the B2B experience is already rooted in either face-to-face interactions, connections such as emails, bids that do not require complex sales engineering or a significant digital infrastructure.
These aspects of the B2B industry can entice B2B suppliers into viewing digitization as an ineffective investment that qualifies more as a luxury than a necessity. This perspective couldn’t be further from the truth.
The B2C industry has already recognized the potential benefits of digitization, and to great effect. Just look at the success of major B2C digital retailers such as Amazon and Alibaba, or the many B2C service-providers such as GrubHub and Uber, that have used digitization to catapult themselves over their more traditional counterparts.
And while B2B suppliers might initially think that the benefits are isolated to B2C companies only, that assumption is largely fallacious in nature. B2B suppliers tend to lag behind B2C retailers in how well they are digitized by a significant margin.
However, digitizing a B2B company successfully can result in an 8%increase in shareholder returns, as well as a 500% increase in CAGR growth rate when compared to non-digitized B2B companies.
If these figures don’t illustrate just how great the return for digitizing a B2B supplier can potentially be when done correctly, then not much will.
How B2B Suppliers can Successfully Digitize their Companies
So, let’s assume that the previous part brought to light just how important it is for B2B suppliers to digitize successfully. The next question you probably have is “How can I ensure that my B2B company approaches digitization with maximum efficiency?”
It’s a fair question. There are multiple aspects of that you’ll need to understand before it can be answered. So, to help you out, our team here at Consensus has compiled their best suggestions for how B2B companies can digitize correctly.
- Make sure your website is an accurate reflection of your business. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to be hooked by a sales rep and then back down from an offer because your product or service page looked different from what your representative described in a face-to-face conversation. Digitizing a website can be a hassle that requires monetary investment in new software developers, but it can go a long way towards securing more deals.
- Improve your website’s mobile view. Most potential customers will check your website at some point before investing in what you offer. Considering that mobile searches make up for roughly half of all searches on Google, maintaining a well-optimized mobile view of your website is more important than ever! You can even consider developing an app for your product or service that demonstrates its uses to a potential customer if you have the budget.
- Invest in digitization aggressively. Research shows that B2B companies that invest at least 8% of their revenue in digitizing their sales capabilities see the greatest return on investment. It’s better to undergo a significant restructuring and hire a team of IT experts and Software engineers than to do it slowly and inaccurately. Go all in if you’re in a position to do get sales engineering and you won’t regret it.
- Use technology to your advantage. Are you taking full advantage of digital marketing approaches such as programmatic advertising? Are you using analytics to see how many customers spend time on your emails or viewing your ads? Have you cleaned up the administrative back-end of your business by automating it? Digitization goes further than pretty websites and cloud computing services, and its only by fully realizing all aspects of digitization that your company will reach its full potential.
Key Takeaway
And there you have it folks, a compilation of some major reasons your B2B company should invest in digitization. Are you looking to digitize your business, but don’t quite know where to start? If you want to know when a customer opened an email, how long they spent reading it, and what action they took afterward but just don’t quite understand how to get there, our team at Consensus can help. Our specialized B2B software package, Consensus Enterprise, can help provide you with in-depth insights and illuminating analytics, It provides powerful sales force automation that you’ll definitely want for your business!.
This information can help marketing and sales teams to gain a complete picture of the customer, which, in turn, can clarify exactly what offers, content, and advice is ideal for that customer and when that content should be delivered. To learn more about what Consensus Enterprise can do for you, click here.