Omnichannel at the Fulcrum Point
It’s not breaking news that a popular, Silicon Valley-based company is now selling their products online. What is unusual, however, is that the company — Tesla — is famous for selling electric cars in a brick-and-mortar store, not in a digital marketplace. The shift to digital sales is everywhere. Whether it’s an automotive company like Tesla closing some of their showrooms, or a retail corporation like Walmart acquiring smaller digital brands, the trend is clear: companies are increasingly focused on their online sales strategy.
Just like Tesla, Walmart and thousands of other companies, SAP is planning for a digital future, too. Our customers demand their B2B purchasing journey equal their best B2C experiences, and desire transparent, quick and simple self-service options as a natural extension to field and inside sales. So that’s why SAP re-imagined the customer journey, how we interact with them and how we sell to them.
The company built an omnichannel, e-commerce platform where our customers can easily discover products and solutions they need, test them out, purchase them and start using them all within a few hours, rather than weeks. For SAP, all in on digital means embracing an omnichannel approach to business.
The Next Stage of Omnichannel
How’d we get here? First came the multichannel revolution and the ability for customers to interact and purchase across multiple platforms. Multichannel evolved into omnichannel, and companies are now obsessed with providing customers a seamless shopping experience — whether they’re browsing online from a mobile device or desktop, by telephone, and even in a brick-and-mortar store.
Every company has a different type of omnichannel story to tell, however. Tesla announced they wanted to eliminate most brick-and-mortar stores, yet they’re still executing a modified omnichannel strategy. Tesla is moving from the traditional car showroom to online purchases and one-click returns.
SAP offers our customers a traditional way of purchasing through an Account Executive (AE) and now, through a variety of new digital channels. However, because enterprise software runs entire businesses — and sometimes entire markets, purchases can be complex and are sometimes not fit for digital purchase. But at the same time, digital strategies, can still be used to drive out complexity and help customers. Both Tesla and SAP offer different types of customer journeys, yet still push an omnichannel strategy.
To move beyond omnichannel, companies must first correct these three common mistakes:
1. Oversaturation. Brands are seemingly everywhere and nowhere. Companies strive for ubiquity instead of focusing on differentiation and a unique market proposition.
2. Customers Don’t Care About Channels. Your customers don’t care about the “omnichannel” revolution, they just want to make a simple purchase. Make it easy for your customers, forget the marketing buzzwords, and focus on the core part of your business. In some industries, an undecided customer may test out a product in a brick-and-mortar store, but the actual purchase is completed digitally. Or for some customers it might be the other way around Listen to and watch your customers. Experiment!
3. Don’t Forget What Got You There. Companies often go too far the other way. Traditional ways of doing business aren’t going away; they’re just changing. Phasing in one new way of selling a product does not mean ignoring an old sales method. Adapt — but don’t abandon your roots. In fact, Tesla just made this course correction. They publicized plans to shutter stores, but later announced the company would, in fact, keep some open. Companies like Tesla can’t forget their roots as they embrace their digital future.
So, what’s next for omnichannel? Companies will merge channels, so instead of “pairing” a mobile device to, say, a live chat, the two will be seamlessly integrated into one. There is no mobile experience and there is no chat experience; it’s now just one experience for the customer. This eliminates knowledge silos and allows different teams to share information.
This Forbes article also argues that as analytics and machine learning continue to develop, real-time integration between channels will grow. This means a customer could chat on the phone with an AE, use a chat bot, and order a product at the same time, all seamlessly integrated, all updated in real time. It also means continuing the buying process when customers move across channels. Integration and seamless customer hand-offs are essential to success.
Omnichannel Enables New Business Models
The evolving omnichannel experience means new business models for companies. As customers tastes change, businesses will adapt. For example, take SAP’s consumption-based model. This is the type of digital strategy SAP is using to eliminate complexity and assist our customers.
What was once a rigid, inflexible payment system is now adaptable, customizable and beneficial for customers. I’ve also written about this before, but our consumption-based model allows a customer to provision their services and get billed only for what they actually consume. That’s customer-friendly, right?
In the software world, a customer acquires cloud credits via a prepaid contract (from any channel), which they can use to activate any available service or capability via the digital channel (e.g. user experience, data storage), as necessary.
The customer has the option of then activating the service or capability via a self-service cockpit that controls provisioning of the functionalities requested with real-time transparency. With our consumption-based model, we are widening the possibilities for types of purchase and thus removing previous channel fit issues.
Tesla and Walmart are hoping to upend the traditional car and retail models with new digital sales strategies. SAP is creating a new way of doing B2B eCommerce with a sound omnichannel strategy and new digital business models that benefit field sales and customers. But this is not the end of the digital journey, merely the start of something new.
