Digital Commerce: Delivering Optimal Digital Experiences Faster

Rapid innovation, the key characteristic of the hi-tech industry, often leads to market disruption driven by digital transformation. Companies that can disrupt their business models by adopting innovative digital solutions are stealing the show with operating cost competitiveness and new value propositions. Since competition is increasing in the manufacturing industry, organizations must optimize operating costs, improve customer experience, and increase profitability through digital channels. Businesses want more clarity into the volume and profitability of these channels to reduce complexity and optimize outcomes. Simultaneously, organizations are re-evaluating the value chain and redesigning routes to reconnect with changing buyer needs and drive sustainable long-term growth.

Visual-first experience

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdowns, we have seen significant changes in customer purchase journeys, behaviors, and expectations. Rapid acceleration in digital commerce has empowered brands to deliver visual-first experiences to engage with customers, leading them to identify digital commerce as a strategic growth opportunity. According to Gartner, “Digital commerce includes the people, processes, and technologies to execute the offering of development content, analytics, promotion, pricing, customer acquisition and retention, and customer experience at all touchpoints throughout the customer buying journey.”

Value creation with a digital-first approach    

Organizations have already started assessing their digital commerce maturity by realizing if they have the necessary digital commerce skills in terms of people, processes, and technologies. According to a Gartner survey, 86 percent of marketing leaders think digital commerce is the most important route to market these days, and they are aggressively increasing their focus on value creation with a digital-first approach.    

Traditional B2B buying and selling experiences do not satisfy what modern buyers expect. In this scenario, how can digital commerce help to expand profitable growth?

• Building an owned digital channel for growth: Creating a direct-to-customer channel to meet customers’ expectations for quicker responses, a more self-service approach, and the ability to complete entire purchases across multiple channels in their own time. Progressive web apps (viable alternatives to native apps) are trending for their native-like expertise with a very user-friendly opt-in installation flow.
   
• Enhancing customer experience to win the competition: Capturing and analyzing data to understand customer preferences and applying those insights to unlock new revenue streams. Digital commerce empowers organizations to personalize and plan for large catalogs with segmentation down to the product SKU level.
   
• Managing the complexity of direct channels: Launch platforms that integrate with and support digital and physical sales and commerce channels for around-the-clock availability and operational efficiency.
   
• Improving operational efficiency by streamlining processes: Accurate product data analysis can reduce procurement inefficiencies and help in customer profile identification and segmentation.
    
• Multi-layered security to safeguard from unauthorized access: Protecting data from unauthorized access, cyberattacks, and data breaches with a multiple-layered security strategy.  

Building a technology platform to move from monolithic eCommerce to digital commerce

Digital commerce solutions powered by the cloud deliver a seamless omnichannel customer experience. With B2B purchasing becoming more consumerized, customers have greater expectations for an Amazon-like experience that includes a full assortment of personalized catalog ordering, spare parts visibility, and reordering. This platform should enable businesses to reach and engage customers with customized recommendations by innovating interfaces optimized for transacting via social, mobile, and voice.

Maximizing growth opportunities

At Zensar, we balance the complexity of the sales and commerce ecosystem with the simplicity of agile business methods to help our clients sell everywhere. We have worked with a leading Japanese industrial manufacturer to transform its customer experience by reimagining its field service management and modernizing its consumer purchase journey. Reengineering and automating the internal processes and facilitating advanced analytics by consolidating multiple BI platforms resulted in 40 percent faster order processing, 45 percent increased efficiency, and 60 percent improved performance. 

We can integrate existing systems through APIs and customize them to business needs to maximize technology investment. We also leverage innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and the internet of things (IoT) to enable our clients to provide an enriched customer experience to gain an edge over the competition. We offer end-to-end B2B commerce solutions from product catalog to invoice, including offer and catalog management, deal/quote management, configuration management, order management, and invoice management.