The B2B wholesale distribution industry is weathering a quick shift in customer expectations. As technology progresses to meet the needs of an on-demand economy, the customers of B2B wholesale distribution are hoping to receive the same degree of service they receive with B2C businesses. It’s quite possible that businesses that don’t do well in terms of effectiveness, sales assistance, and customer experiences risk the loss of customers and drop in revenue.

Why do industrial equipment manufacturers often have to allocate a huge chunk of their sales budget as overtime to their field agents? The right way to come out of this sticky situation is by enhancing field service and sales strategies in order to cut down on the overtime costs and offer work-life balance to service reps. And all this has to happen while taking care that superior service standards are maintained and customer commitments are satisfied.

Leveraging a solution such as configure, price, and quote (CPQ) today positions brands on par with their competitors. CPQ is frequently used by businesses and sales teams that deal in complex products, from high-tech machinery to automobiles.

Software implementations fall flat across varied industries and markets, but chiefly due to manual errors as opposed to software-related issues. Field service businesses have to face their distinctive challenges involving layers of intricacy, remote access, and capabilities; however, these are workable with the appropriate planning and partners.

Today’s advanced technology users are demanding single login capabilities, also known as single sign-on (SSO), to access multiple applications throughout the customer landscape. To achieve this, most leading cloud applications such as SAP C/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP CPI (Cloud Platform Integration), and SAP CPQ (Configure Price & Quote) store user credentials on the cloud portal.

SAP implementations are usually complex and involve a lot of customizations and configurations in order to meet the client’s expectations. In the initial project preparation phase, a decision is taken about the tenant architecture, i.e. the number to tenants required during the time span of the project. This decision is based on the SAP C/4HANA product fitment.

There is a saying that “Time is money,” and this is especially true for businesses where closing deals faster is of paramount importance to their revenue. In this era where information is easily available on the internet, customers are more informed than ever, they expect a quick response time. Even companies that have been very successful in the past are struggling to stay in the race as the business ecosystem has become highly competitive.

We aim for and take action based on (even though subconsciously) social proof in all spheres of life—inclusive of how we function and the buying decisions we make on the internet. That social proof holds more value when it comes from industry experts and analysts. And that’s why we need to take the latest analyst study — that states that CPQ, based on its potential benefits to customers, will dominate the business world in the future — seriously.

If you belong to the companies of today that believe in keeping things “current” and automate most processes and systems, you would have learnt that – despite the company’s best efforts – the most important transactions end on paper. A large percentage of companies still rely on time-consuming devices such as scanners, printers, and fax machines to get that last bit of paperwork signed off.

In what usually is a rather uneventful month for challenging projects the world over, December proved to be pretty challenging for my team. We had to help a firm overcome a number of pain points they experienced with the SAP CRM, particularly those associated with the Service Equipment and Install Base functionalities. While helping the customer out, I thought I could list down these pain points and how we countered them, as I believe they could work as a crystal ball for other firms as we make all the difference in 2020. So, here goes!

For every successful marketing campaign, the right audience needs to be defined to ensure customer-oriented interactions. This can be achieved by defining the right target groups that share similar attributes (for example, address, age, hobbies, purchasing habits, geo-coding, etc.) and adapting your marketing activities. You can achieve half the success by just focusing on the right audience, even before the start of the campaign.

In marketing, the strings of success are held by your target audience. And if that isn’t tricky enough, most campaigns being executed have multiple touchpoints and necessitate analysis-based follow-up. While many marketers keep their eye on these touchpoints, they miss out on checking up on the follow-ups. This disconnect leads to gross inefficiencies in the campaign management process and increases the marketing cost of course, there are solutions now designed to help people get particularly good at managing such pain points.