Building a winning digital strategy in Asia: three steps for B2B technology companies

To know exactly what your current customer journey is, you need to ascertain what the pain points are and which activities or touchpoints can be moved online. By listening closely to your customer’s feedback and drawing out the customer journey, it will be easier to understand what needs to change.

Some of the feedback that DKSH has received from its technology-focused B2B customers during interviews and focus groups includes:

• Choice overload: technology products are complex. A major barrier for business buyers is to dig through the mountain of information and choose the right products, especially when there is a long list of products and models available across many paper brochures, online catalogues and websites
• Information flow: buyers often start with a problem statement and high-level needs for a solution. Despite the mountain of information available, the relevant articles or technical sheets are not always easy to find when needed and once found, do not link back to the places where the product can be ordered or requested for a quote
• Information transparency: many B2B customers have become used to high-quality order tracking and transparency in their B2C lives. As a result, multiple customers expressed a desire for improved order tracking and visibility of their credit terms and limits. Besides these, they also want to improve on the tracking of service requests and visibility of their service contract status
• Reordering inefficiency: today many B2B customers are required to go through sales teams to reissue purchase orders and recheck prices even for regular purchases or products previously bought. Customers want these simple and regular transactions to be automated and instant

Once you have drawn out the existing customer journey, laid out the activities of salespeople and customers and identified each pain point, you need to establish which touchpoints or processes could be automated or moved online. Some examples from our own experience include:

• Marketing: simple features like product comparisons on an eCommerce website can already help a lot to reduce choice. Once products have been narrowed down, the aim is to give customers the right information to help them make the final decision to buy. Supporting information can be in the form of solution-focused articles, application notes, on-demand demos, product videos and thought leadership articles; all of which need to link back to a product on an eCommerce or digital catalog with clear calls to action. For example, inserting a URL link at the end of each article and linking the reader to the right products or application can have a significant impact already
• Sales: aside from lead generation for all types of products, eCommerce platforms are effective in driving sales for consumable products or lower-cost items, in addition to subscription items or repeat orders. This allows sales to focus on high-value activities such as building solutions for customers and selling complex technology products
•  Services: as a way to retain customers, we have also seen the rise of dedicated customer portals to support after-sales services. These include checking or logging service requests and increasing transparency and visibility of service contracts and maintenance visits

By focusing on how each “digital touch” can solve each of the customer’s pain points and prioritizing low-hanging fruit, massive gains can be achieved with even the simplest of solutions.

Despite the massive growth in online business for B2B, to a large extent boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, both online and offline continue to play an important role. A survey by UPS found that buyers in Asia Pacific markets rely as much on traditional forms of procurement channels as they do on eCommerce and that offline relationships are as valuable as ever.

This shows that business relationships in this part of the world are not one-dimensional. It depends on the situation, product and the specific point in the customer journey. Businesses wanting to work in Asia must ensure that their eCommerce and bricks-and-mortar operations are both optimized and integrated while ensuring that post-sales services offer a seamless experience for buyers.

As a result, omni-channel has become the standard and not the exception for businesses involved in B2B sales. McKinsey & Company revealed that eight in ten B2B leaders say that omni-channel is as or more effective than traditional methods. Over 83 percent of respondents believed that omni-channel selling is a more successful way to prospect and secure new business than traditional, “face-to-face only” sales approaches.