Impactful digital transformation within B2B sales models requires a holistic look at customer demands, sales team needs, business processes, systems capabilities, innovation opportunities, and consideration of new technologies.
As consumer products companies prioritize digital strategies, it’s important to avoid pitfalls and build a strong digital foundation to enable transformation holistically.
In many instances, brands fail to launch into digital B2B commerce due to a misconception that it is only fit for simple, commoditized products and not those that are complex or configurable. Yet many B2B customers prefer no human interaction at all when reordering products—they crave self-service and prefer digital standards set through consumer experiences, and are left with frustrating, disjointed B2B customer experiences.
To embrace digital standards set by B2C buying experiences and set a strong digital foundation to meet changing business landscapes and customer demands, B2B consumer products firms need to focus on these strategies:
In a remote business environment, B2B sales employees require offline functionality, digital training, and precise data and insights to meet rising customer expectations.
Adopting an operating model that centralizes digital capabilities and expertise in a digital center of excellence (CoE) allows B2B employees to adopt new digital systems, processes, and tools efficiently across regions and brands.
A typical structure might look like this:
Better B2B buying experiences begin with the underlying organizational model and the employees using new digital tools to drive business growth.
B2B customers expect sophisticated products and experiences that make their interactions faster and easier and help proactively fulfill their consumers’ needs.
Real-time access to customer and consumer data to evaluate products, services, and experiences provides employees with the intelligence to drive more personalized customer engagement, greater lifetime value, and introduce new products to the most profitable channels.
Building a direct relationship with consumers through a D2C offering allows consumer products firms to get first-party data, but a robust data architecture is required to match first-party, second-party, and third-party data back to its source, gain valuable insights, and drive action.
CPG organizations that adopted digital customer service solutions prior to 2020 have outperformed those that did not by 25% sales growth (Salesforce).
B2B firms tend to lag in customer and associate experience, hindered by reliance on outdated technology. At the same time, cost-to-serve has become an increasingly urgent problem, due to the labor force and cost of goods sold (COGs), putting more importance on digital self-service tools like mobile apps, websites, and other customer service solutions.
To create new digital sales solutions with high ROI, B2B companies need to evaluate experiences holistically as an end-to-end journey across the enterprise that involves both customer and employee touchpoints.
Customer & Employee Experiences
Organization and Operations
Drive customer relevance.
Reduce cost to serve customers.
Digital commerce is a necessity not only for B2C companies but B2B companies as well. B2B brands need to create a strategy and a roadmap to turn self-service from a threat into an opportunity.
Establishing a digital channel for B2B commerce allows consumer products companies to fulfill the growing expectation for self-service options, so sales representatives can spend more time on relationship building and business optimization.
Companies that have embraced digital commerce can explore new avenues for growth by leveraging B2B marketplaces. Through the creation of their own B2B marketplaces, companies can maintain full control over customer experiences and data, while also generating additional revenue streams through commissions, without disrupting their existing sales channels.
Marketplace Opportunity
Embrace the best of B2C and consumer-first journeys, transformed for your B2B customers.
Learn more about where Publicis Sapient has done this before and how our unique SPEED formula can fuel your B2B transformation.
Kendra Koder
B2B Consumer Products Lead at Publicis Sapient & Senior Client Partner
Kendra.koder@publicissapient.com
Publicis Sapient is a digital transformation partner helping consumer products & retail organizations like Nestlé, Bang & Olufsen, and Adidas. As digital pioneers with 20,000 people and 50+ offices around the globe, our experience in technology, data sciences, consulting, and customer obsession enables us to evolve our clients’ businesses with products and services that put shoppers first.