Eat more kale, phone your mum more often and digitally transform your business before your competitors leave you behind. These are all things you know you should be doing – so why aren’t you?
We can’t advise on the first two*, but we have helped many businesses overcome their fears around and resistance to the third. Although digital transformation is a must for many companies, each journey will be unique. Our universal tip: break your transformation journey into manageable parts. It reduces the risks and costs, and lets you carefully monitor the effects, one success at a time.
In our age of constant change and continuous innovation, you stand still at your peril. Yet digital transformation is fraught with major challenges and potential pitfalls. It’s expensive, fiddly, complicated and time consuming. Many companies struggle to get it right. But when they do, the rewards are great. According to McKinsey, turning your company into a top-quartile B2B digital player can increase revenue by 3.5%.
Given that 80% of B2B buyers make their purchase decision before contacting sales2, they are pretty much sold on you before they even get in touch. And where are they looking when they find and choose you? A staggering 80% of B2B decision makers prefer to source relevant purchasing information from content on websites rather than advertisements.
So digital is having a greater and greater influence on the way customers behave and how they buy. This isn’t just true for B2C – it’s becoming an increasingly important aspect of how B2B operates. Business buyers are looking for the same online and mobile experiences they expect as consumers. So it’s essential to think ‘digital first’ for B2B.
Successful disruptors in the B2B space are those who use technology to create effective and meaningful journey-based experiences for their customers. If you’re a well-established B2B organisation, this is your big opportunity to adapt your brand to enrich the digital experience and use it to interact with your users in a compelling way.
One of the most daunting challenges is knowing where to start. It’s important to have long-term view on your digital transformation programme and to build a clear roadmap. To do this, begin by setting out your vision and bringing your team members on board. You and your colleagues will need to work together, engaging and communicating effectively to agree and align common ways of working. This way, transformation will become rooted in your company.
Rather than looking inwards and taking an internal business-based approach, think about what will most benefit your customers – and focus on their experiential journey. Once your vision is clear, break the process into manageable parts for actioning. And if the parts are still intimidating, break them into yet smaller fragments.
Here are those tips again, in an at-a-glance checklist:
1. Pinpoint where to start
2. Identify your long-term goals
3. List your immediate priorities
4. Chart all this on a clear roadmap
5. Collaborate with your team to agree on your vision
6. Break your vision into manageable parts for actioning
7. If necessary, break those parts in to even smaller parts
8. Agree and align common ways of working, going forward
9. Work closely with your colleagues, continuously communicating
10. Gradually root the concept of transformation into your company’s ethos.
Change may feel risky when your customers trust your brand and are familiar with the status quo. But they are equally familiar with change – for it is everywhere – as is the world of digital. So perhaps transformation will go more smoothly than you think. And the smaller the chunks, the less bumpy the transition.
*Well actually, we can. Here’s a kale recipe we defy you not to love. Why not share it with your mum?
Easy kale salad
Wash and de-stalk 200 grams of organic kale (removing the hard stems.)
Dab dry with a kitchen towel and transfer to a large bowl.
Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil (about one dessert spoon) and sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt or Himalayan pink salt, then mix together so all the kale is coated.
With extra-clean hands, massage the oil and salt into the kale with your fingertips for a couple of minutes until the kale softens and changes to the texture of seaweed.
Add two cubed avocados and about 15 halved cherry tomatoes.
Squeeze the juice of half a large lemon over the avocados, then mix the tomatoes and avocados with the kale.
Add extra olive oil, lemon juice or sea salt to taste.