Stop for a second and answer these questions: - How many devices in your home are now connected to the internet? Your phone? Tablet? DVR? TV? Refrigerator? How about a wireless bathroom scale? (Yes, it exists!)
- How often do you see a post on Facebook that resembles this; “Johnny Bravo is reading ‘The Elf on the Shelf’ on his Nook”?
- When purchasing products online how often do you read peer reviews and pay attention to rankings?
- Do you sometimes make purchases on your mobile device because you are too lazy to walk to the other room where your laptop happens to be? (I’m guilty as charged!)
Forrester Research predicts in 2012 that the current channel approach to B2C-B2B will evolve. We are now in an “era of agile commerce” which is being driven by an explosion of consumer touch points.
Think about it – social networking, cloud services and mobile touch points have turned B2C on its ear over the past couple of years. This trend requires some thought and consideration as we begin to see more importance on the CaaS (Consumer as a Service) platform. Commerce APIs that enable contextual commerce experiences across touch points will be a focus in 2012.
This will layer on and directly impact existing B2B platforms.
As a result, B2B sites will continue to evolve to match the growth of mobile UI, personalization, improved self-service, guided navigation and user-generated content. Social media integration, along with an explosion of cloud-based services, will continue to stretch the B2B platform.
There will be a resurgence of companies investing again and upgrading their B2B platforms. Companies will look for new products and services, both on-premise and in-the-cloud, in order to improve their ability to match this need for agility.
Key drivers will include:
- Improving operational efficiency
- Improve availability, responsiveness and self-service capabilities
- Improve ability to rapidly add new touch points
- Invest in both mobile and cloud strategies
A new wave of consumers interacting with B2B services via B2C touch points where no traditional batch oriented EDI processes exist in the channel will drive continued growth; demanding real-time processing all the way from consumer to backend system (and back again).
Buying patterns have changed. Business process orchestration will need to evolve to accommodate. These changes are happening more rapidly. This means for businesses to succeed on the B2B front that their platforms will need to be more extensible. They will also have to be able to add new partners, new processes and new ways of processing in a shorter period of time – i.e. agility.
When it comes to both on-premise and in-the-cloud solution providers, it will be this need for agility that determines who will successful, and who will become legacy.