Overview

Yes to digitalization – but also internally, please

The customer is king – digitalization is giving this frequently used phrase a real meaning again. This is because companies are increasingly being forced to compete with competitors for the customers’ favor. The results of the current A.T. Kearney study “The Future of B2B Sales” indicate what is important here. Almost 65% of the more than 1,600 sales managers surveyed consider it essential to make offers and customer interaction simple, as complexity is increasingly acting as a brake on growth. This is understandable, as customers want to spend as little time as possible on the purchasing process, be informed about the current status at all times and be able to make adjustments as easily as possible. More than half of those surveyed are also convinced that there will be no B2B sales without online interaction in the future.

Sales channels are being digitized

The study “The digital future of B2B sales” by Roland Berger comes to similar conclusions. 60% of the almost 2,800 sales managers surveyed believe that the digitalization of the sales organization will be decisive for business success. It is fitting that only 11 percent of respondents state that they do not yet have a digital sales channel. In contrast, 47% say that it is not only possible to order online via their company’s website, but also to configure the product independently: The customer clicks through the product configurator for a while – which, thanks to a super user experience, is actually really fun in the best case – and then requests a quote from the sales department for the milling machine put together according to their specific requirements.

Internal processes are often bumpy

The expansion of digital sales channels is therefore in full swing. In contrast, this dynamic has by no means yet unfolded in internal processes. What happens after the customer clicks is often rather bumpy. For example, the sales department receives the inquiry about the milling machine via the configuration system integrated into the website (although the request for a quote via email is still the much more common method today). What follows, however, has little to do with consistency. In order to prepare the quotation, the sales department has to communicate with various specialist departments within the company. Production Engineering checks whether the milling machine can really be manufactured in this variant. Production determines the cost and a possible delivery date. And Purchasing obtains prices for the required parts from the suppliers. Only when everything has been compiled can the sales department prepare its offer and send it to the customer. It is unlikely that this will be accepted one-to-one. In the usual case, some adjustments have to be made – and therefore a lot of internal exchange again.

Local data storage is problematic

All these individual processes generate a large number of documents – e-mails, Word and Excel documents, CAD drawings and parts lists, SAP documents. In the worst case, there are also paper records. However, the problem is not so much the quantity. The problem is rather that all these documents are stored locally in different places: in the email inboxes of the employees involved, in the structures of a file manager – server-based or local – and isolated in stand-alone solutions. In addition, the documents are not networked with each other. This makes it difficult for the employees involved in a process to keep track of the current status – precisely because there is no access to all documents. Information often has to be laboriously retrieved first. This can put the sales employee in an unfavorable situation. For example, if the customer wants to know when he will receive his quotation or if he wants to make changes to the milling machine while the quotation is being prepared. In short: Simple and fast processing looks different.

File documents in a structured way

In order to get a grip on the unstructured flood of documents and fully digitize the internal sales process, it is advisable to use specialized software for document storage. The important thing here is that the IT solution must automatically structure all documents relating to a sales project in such a way that they are easy to find and are available across all departments. Once this has been achieved, the individual processes can be monitored and controlled. The sales employee can then see at a glance, for example, how far production engineering has progressed with the inspection or whether the purchasing department has already requested prices from suppliers. Feedback to the customer can then be provided quickly.

Of course, the main task for sales is to get potential customers interested in your products or services. But even if this is successful, the buying process is not yet complete. And an offer process that drags on for an exhaustingly long time can jeopardize a deal that was already thought to be certain. For this reason, sales teams are well advised not to neglect the digitalization of internal processes despite their commitment to the digitalization of external sales channels.