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Kedar Gharpure shares an article on the full range of digital technology benefits for B2B.

Covid19 lockdown is forcing business leaders to reflect on future-proofing their businesses so they can continue to serve their customers more effectively now, and even if another disruption were to occur.

Digital capabilities are an important enabler of such future proofing. Digital was important for B2B even before, the COVID disruption has only created a greater urgency for Digital. But what exactly is ‘Digital for B2B’?

Do these comments or questions about ‘Digital for B2B’ sound familiar?

This article was triggered by some common comments and questions that we hear from our B2B clients. We have paraphrased a few of them over here. Do you relate with any of these?

“I have heard and read a lot about Digital. We are quite behind as a company on Digital, where do we start?”

“Digital in B2B about analytics. But our data quality is so poor. We need to fix our data before we can think of Digital”

“Yes, we have a Digital strategy. We now have Salesforce and are upgrading our website”

“We are not Amazon or a tech company. What are the realistic digital opportunities for us?”

Ask 10 people and you may get 20 answers on what is Digital for B2B!

Yes 10 people may give you 20 answers! No there is no typo here.

We make this point to highlight that Digital is a polysemy i.e. a phrase with many different meanings. There is genuine ambiguity on what constitutes Digital especially for B2B. This is because many B2B companies do not have a digital strategy and a roadmap. Among the rest, many have a scattered and a bottom-up approach towards digital initiatives. For example, a company’s digital initiative may include a cloud-based CRM tool, a SaaS based reporting tool or even something as basic as making their product information available on their website.

Key points include:

• Accessing new customers

• Improving commercial outcomes

• Delivering business strategy

Read the full article, Digital for B2B – Don’t miss the forest for the trees, on LinkedIn.