After many years working in sales and now as a vice president leading an enterprise sales team, I know it can take weeks, months, and sometimes even years to win a customer and a single lousy transaction to lose one. This is true now more than ever.
Do not underestimate the value of being where your customers are. Being visible and available in every buying and product/service phase and delivering the expected experience is crucial to ongoing business success. Today, customers are savvier and more empowered – they have added methods and channels available at their fingertips to make purchases, regardless of B2B or B2C market, irrespective of sector or geo-location.
Customer experience is the center of the business world. It is what should be at the forefront, leading strategies, teams, products, and execution. Gartner defines customer experience as the customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels, or products. This definition resonates with me as it reinforces my own learning that “experience” has an element of emotion, and that experience is with people AND systems.
We are in an age of redefining the IT and OT industries and reinventing go-to-market strategies to keep pace with customer demand and drive value. It’s all happening against an accelerated backdrop of significant investment in digital infrastructure.
Every step in the buying process gets reassessed and compared with the “Amazon experience” phenomenon. Fast, easy yet customized/personalized buying experience and complete visibility of accurate cost, availability, and delivery from the initial ordering phases. But as we know, the buying experience stretches beyond purchase and delivery to the setup and installation to post-sales services and warranty.
This movement is leading hardware/software organizations to scrutinize their go-to-market strategies and explore new ways to differentiate, create value and grow to meet evolving customer demands. The emerging trend is seeing many organizations migrate to a software-centric business model as a byproduct of this phenomenon. Many independent software vendors (ISVs) and software-focused original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are transferring the hardware management and related financial responsibility to specialized solutions providers. This transition provides companies with benefits and opportunities to focus purely on their software solution and sharpen their customer experience.
Deciding to transition hardware management to a specialized provider brings a wealth of considerations and various phases that require close attention to detail to ensure success and guarantee customers the experience they expect while building businesses for profitability. Some fundamental areas to concentrate on during such a transition include order processes and fulfillment, supply chain, and logistics.
The supply chain is the foundation on which the go-to-market process arguably hinges. Successful, efficient supply chain and order fulfillment should always center around the customer experience. Understanding target markets, channel participants, and logistics is vital when expanding operations globally.
Central to achieving supply chain success is understanding the physical and financial journey of hardware and software until it lands in the hands of the end-user. At each step of the process, there needs to be an interaction with the customer (remember the “Amazon experience”). The robustness of the process will be instrumental in determining the customer experience. That rapid ease of purchase and regular communication answers customer-critical questions like where is my order? Has it departed the warehouse? When is it scheduled to arrive? It gives the customer transparency and assurance that the products and services will come as expected.
In the B2B, enterprise, and channel business worlds, for a software company, knowing when to expect product delivery can be the difference between meeting or missing quarterly revenue targets. For the systems integrator, this level of certainty builds confidence and loyalty, which impacts profitability and long-term sales success.
Like the supply chain, the order process is also an essential step to delivering a comprehensive customer experience. It is one of the first phases of customer contact. Here customers are looking for ease of ordering, transparent and accurate order information that includes system details for software activation and licensing, and complete visibility for themselves, integrators, and end-users.
Arrow has guided many customers on their journey to becoming software-centric businesses, assisting in developing business models to suit their growing needs and achieve a seamless customer experience. The Arrow global supply chain, logistics, compliance, finance, and accounting teams, as well as our product and engineering experts, are all involved in providing support and guidance to ensure full integration and transition to a successful software-centric business model.
Learn more about how Arrow enables seamless customer experiences, scaling your business, keeping your channel strategies, and maximizing margin goals.
