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Over the last 3 weeks we have been taking a deep dive into the Distribution Revolution. In a series of 3 webinars, we’ve looked at the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the changes we’re seeing in the B2B market.
It’s clear that when it comes to customer experience, consumers now expect the same service from B2B interactions as they currently get from their B2C engagements. From product personalisation to seamless check out processes, B2B companies need to focus on customer centric approaches that make doing business with them as easy as possible.
In this episode, we’re talking about ‘how’ to respond to these pressures and, more importantly, the changes you can make in the coming weeks to make sure you’re fit for the future.
Hosted by Steffie Veen Vroonmen digital strategist at Valtech with guests Dirk Lassig Director, Transformation Consulting at Valtech and Pascal Lagarde VP, Commerce at Valtech, this session looks into the technology sets ups you need to know about to meet your objectives as well as how to adapt your organisation to make sure you’re delivering the best experience to your customers whilst also getting the best results for your business.
Listen to the full webinar here or if you want the quick round up, here are the team’s top insights.
1. How to transform with Composable Architectures:
“The world is in motion. The challenges that organisations are trying to resolve (and the user expectations they are trying to meet) are constantly changing are becoming even more complex. The bar is being continuously raised. That means that you need to organise your technology stack in such a way that it’s flexible and responsive to change if you want to continue to compete”, Pascal Lagarde
Here’s Pascal’s advice on how to create the right set up for your business:
Focus on flexible and scalable best-of-breed technologies and architectures: the number of channels and touchpoints in a customer journey is growing. As a result, the technology behind it all is become more complex. You need a technology landscape that is easy to modify and quick to react.
It’s time to take a modular and decoupled approach. Companies need nimble and agile systems that can allow them to make those flexible and scalable changes at the flip of a coin. Consider moving away from the large enterprise suites and look at the potential offered by composable architectures. ‘MACH’ (Microservices, API first, Cloud Native and Headless) technologies have grown in recognition in recent times – these modular and decoupled approaches allow for quick updates rather than major overhauls. Vital if your offering stops being relevant.
It’s a gradual and iterative process: the great thing about creating a composable architecture is that you are saved from major re-platforming work, which is costly and disruptive. But, it will take time to get the set up right. Again, a decoupled approach gives you the freedom to test, learn and adapt. MACH technologies can help you to create the best and most relevant solution for your business over time.
The benefits are really exciting: working with new technologies can decrease time to value with increased speed to market of changed/new features. You can also create unique business models by efficiently combining products and subscriptions and by introducing new revenue models.
When it comes to headless techs you can deliver excellent mobile experiences thanks to flexible touchpoints levering shared business logic. Lastly, you can create a truly connected eco-system; one that opens up new possibilities for optimization and replenishment. Essentially, this approach gives you options… and lots of them!
2. How to Transform your Organisation
“Organisations are facing a crisis in the 21st century. That’s because they are operating more and more in uncertain, volatile, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. Agility is a trait for an organisation to survive in that VUCA world – being agile means you are able to change quickly and improve time to market. It’s also a foundation for customer centricity and continuous delivery.” Dirk Lassig.
Things to consider if you want to become an agile organisation:
Identify the business driver for change: often organisations come to us and say they want to become agile or be ‘better’, but with no clear reasoning or objectives. You must be clear on why you want to become agile and what you are trying to achieve by undergoing a transformation of this scale before taking any next steps. An agile transformation can’t be done in isolation. AS well as changes at the leadership level, you will also need to work with a multi-faceted transformation team to help to define the overall vision, outline the roll out and make it communicable to the wider organisation. This is a culture change, but culture cannot be built, it can only emerge.
Agile is a mindset: becoming an agile organisation isn’t an easy or fast process. It requires a paradigm shift in the way or working, how the organisation is organised, how processes work and how people think about their work.
Often agile transformations can take years: (eg with BMW we started on our agile journey 15 years ago and we’re still working with them on that process). This isn’t just about a process change or the adoption of new tools; your teams will have to learn new capabilities and adopt new skills and organisational structures to facilitate change. To help build momentum, think about quick wins and make the results of your agility visible early on. To find out more about agile transformations download our transformation consulting whitepaper.
To compete in the digital age, B2B businesses must evolve by introducing modern and composable architectures and more agile ways of working to deliver exceptional experiences for their customers.
It’s time to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and to make sure you’re fit for the future.
To talk to our experts about your own transformation plans, why not get in touch with the team at Valtech and start the ball rolling today?