Dr. Marc Beise is usually not very fond of receiving articles from consulting companies: “Unsolicited advice sent by management consultants” aggravates him often. This is why we are all the more delighted that the head of economic department at Süddeutsche Zeitung picked up our ideas regarding digitization of B2B sales as impetus for his current column “Das deutsche Valley” (The German Valley) all by himself.
Essentially, it concerns the following topic:
Digital retail and end-customer sales have once again seen significant developments due to pressure from the corona pandemic. Digital sales to business customers (B2B), on the other hand, often appear to be behind the times. This is because in the mid-market (Mittelstand), engineer-dominated industry in particular, digitization is primarily equated with technology and efficiency gains. The focus is rarely on customers or internal users. Johannes Ihringer of TTE Strategy describes the most common mistakes that he has seen in digitization initiatives for B2B sales – and what companies can do to avoid them in future.
Journalist Marc Beise interprets it like this: “Many companies organize digitization top down. This is due to a lack of team skills on the part of many bosses – as well as the influence of software companies. They are pleased about this most of all. A different flow would work better.”
This is certainly one possible interpretation. Our intention is that it shouldn’t be about working against one another, but rather together. Not above versus below. Suppliers versus industry. We promote keeping all relevant stakeholders in mind throughout any digitization initiative. Making communication ongoing rather than justifying things after the fact (request, commissioning, approval). And considering the implementation of digitization in a fully integrative way – in line with our consultancy approach: Creating Results Together.
You can find Marc Beise’s full article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung online here:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/digitalisierung-fuehrung-kunden-1.5270266
Our article on digitization of B2B sales has also been picked up by the leading industry portal Industrie.de:
TTE Strategy