How Accelerated Digital Transformation Changed B2B Buying Behavior

Alex Cvetkovski

Much of enterprise IT investment saw substantial cuts amid the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s apparent that spending on strategic digital transformation solutions is the glaring exception.

Circumstances compelled companies to focus on new approaches for adapting and optimizing their operating models. Global expenditure on the technologies and services that enable businesses to make the digital move is estimated to have grown 10% in 2020. Direct investment in digital transformation, meanwhile, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17.5% to reach $7 trillion within three years.

Just like almost every other aspect of the economy, the business-to-business sector was transformed in the wake of COVID-19, with traditional face-to-face meetings disrupted and the use of e-commerce and online marketplaces vastly accelerated. McKinsey reports that 90% of B2B decision makers expect the digital and remote model to persist, and more than half find it equally or more effective than sales models used before the pandemic.

In light of these prospects, software vendors and technology service providers need to constantly keep tabs on the ever-changing expectations of their end customers and apply best practices to succeed in the fiercely competitive business environment of the 2020s.

Changing B2B Buyer Expectations

Here are three of the most critical ways in which B2B buyers’ expectations are changing how channel partners need to operate.

1. B2B customers want a simplified purchasing journey. Lockdowns meant more people than ever were reliant on e-commerce and online purchases for their every-day consumer needs. This greatly accelerated a growing trend that analysts had already recognized in recent years: B2B buyers are increasingly in search of a buying experience that mirrors that of B2C sales.

Now that 70% of B2B decision makers are open to making new, fully self-serve or remote purchases in excess of $50,000, vendors and service providers are best advised to shift their sales approach and mimic B2C in its simplicity to keep current customers and win new ones. Studies show brands that highly simplify the purchase-decision journey are 86% more likely than those with very low decision-simplicity scores to be purchased by the consumers considering them. What’s more, they’re 9% more likely to be re-purchased and 115% more likely to be recommended to others.

To this end, software vendors and service providers who wish to stay ahead of the curve should invest in technology tools that offer functions such as omnichannel experiences on the customer side.

Marketplaces are another area where software vendors and service providers should look to invest to improve the customer purchasing journey. No matter if it’s larger ISVs or MSPs launching their own digital marketplaces, or smaller vendors and providers incorporating their products and services within bigger marketplaces, B2B buyers are increasingly expecting the same convenience and expediency they get when buying their consumer goods on Amazon or Alibaba.

Whether it be live chat or chatbots, automated subscription or billing management or digital marketplaces, tech is redefining the customer journey. Likewise, it should be considered whether these tools allow for unification of ecosystem operations — where channel partners can manage all their vendors, partners, resellers and products from one place.

2. B2B customers want holistic solutions. Gone are the days of break/fix service models where IT services were provided and billed on an as-needed basis. Customers no longer ask their service providers for one-off software, but prefer holistic solutions that shape the overall business experience. For instance, a recent challenge for service providers has been to make the remote work experience mirror that of the office, which requires supporting different customers across different platforms. The demand for holistic solutions will only intensify as the role of IT service providers is shifting from trusted technology adviser to major strategic business partner and adviser.

MSPs are now required to support customers in different steps of the process, such as using the cloud vs. on-premises data centers to allow SaaS apps to function fast, installing software such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom to enable communication, implementing …