Executive Summary
Driven by their online buying experiences, savvy business to business (B2B) buyers are demanding omni-channel capabilities when making work-related purchases. But for B2B sellers, in today’s rapidly changing world, building an effective omni-channel experience for buyers is not easy. It requires integrating world-class technology and transforming legacy organization structures and process, all at the same time.
In August 2014, Accenture and hybris software, an SAP company, commissioned a study by Forrester Consulting to explore how B2B buyer expectations are transforming how suppliers sell and deliver products and services. Forrester surveyed 526 B2B companies and 930 B2B buyers across Canada, France, Germany, the US, and the UK at organizations with at least 1,000 employees.
KEY FINDINGS
Forrester’s study yielded four key findings:
• High customer expectations have led B2B firms to shift toward rich omni-channel experiences. B2B buyers’ expectations have shifted. Expectations for work related purchases have been driven for several years by the simplicity and efficiency of online consumer sites that compete along the lines of price, various fulfillment capabilities, and transparency of content and information.
So, in essence, business-to consumer (B2C) customer experiences are driving B2B buyers to expect the same level of omni-channel service from their suppliers for work-related purchases.
• Providing a comprehensive omni-channel experience helps ensure customer loyalty. B2B organizations recognize that customers expect omni-channel capabilities to be offered as standard. Such an offering includes the combination of consistently low prices, excellent product service, and a broad product selection, combined with different delivery options regardless of the channel it is bought from. This can motivate B2B buyers to come back for repeat orders.
• Merchants will fall behind if they fail to adapt their technology to buyer needs. B2B sellers recognize that legacy systems and platforms are largely inadequate to support the omni-channel requirements of B2B buyers today. The majority of B2B sellers realize that technology investment decisions will be centered on their omni-channel strategy. In fact, the vast majority of organizations are either already implementing or upgrading their eCommerce platforms.
• Technology investment must be aligned with organizational and process change. B2B sellers must align organizational and process change with digital technology spending. B2B companies must balance their investments in both people and technology in order to ensure that legacy approaches do not hinder effective enterprise wide omni-channel adoption.
Key Recommendations
B2B companies would be well served to grow their investments in omni-channel capabilities by adopting buyer-centric technology, organization, and process change. To succeed in the evolving B2B omni-channel commerce space, online B2B companies must:
• Become intimate with the business buyer. B2B companies must respond to the demands of buyers for robust and sophisticated B2C-like shopping journeys. They must deliver personalized omni-channel experiences that are tailored to procurement and nonprocurement buyers and across multiple language, currency, payment, and fulfillment options.
• Weave digital into all aspects of your operations to fulfill the promise of omni-channel. For B2B sellers, digital initiatives need to be embedded into all aspects of their organization. They must think beyond the digital technology stack to fully embrace omni-channel capabilities. They must develop integrated management and collaboration capabilities around the core omni-channel initiatives.
• Improve lead-to-revenue management capabilities. Today, the majority of B2B sellers rely on inefficient lead-to-revenue capabilities where marketing generates the lead and hands it over to sales to generate the revenue. Online B2B sellers must adopt a more robust lead-to-revenue management process, where marketing and sales form part of a more holistic lead management function that integrates processes, goals, and metrics across marketing and sales, as well as service.
• Evaluate the partner ecosystem to support omni-channel commerce operations. Adopting omni-channel capabilities is not just about giving existing teams some new tools to go and capture more business. It requires significant investment and the right skills. To help manage the change, B2B sellers must augment internal skills with external knowledge to help overcome technical, process, and organizational challenges. B2B companies must consider teaming with leading edge technology vendors to quickly fill the technical gap in legacy systems and engage system integrators to support the quick adoption of new innovations across the business. 
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