B2B Online Virtual Event

The start of the year is an ideal time to connect and idea share with industry peers as you review key successes in 2020 and start to action your 2021 strategies. Open to manufacturers and distributors only, this is your chance to connect and learn from your peers in a moderated interactive discussion. Join us to kick start your experience at B2B Online in our lively interactive roundtables. Interested in showcasing your thought leadership as a roundtable discussion host? Contact Vince Esposito at vince.esposito@wbresearch.com  

1.) Architecting an Omnichannel Solution for CPQ and eCommerce

·        Xenith's bottlenecks/challenges

·        Reasons for choosing the solution

·        Implementation strategy

·        Benefits of digital selling

Steve Stessman, Vice President, Business Development, KBMax

Jonathon Pop, Vice President, Digital & Technology, Xenith

2.) Unlocking Revenue and a Superior Customer Experience

Manufacturers struggle to implement a comprehensive digital-order strategy for good reason: customer adoption. Customers buy products in the way that’s most convenient for them. Some purchase through eCommerce sites, some order through EDI, even fax, and—the #1 ordering method—email. Instead of trying to force your customers to the latest eCommerce rollout, meet them where they're at.

Ricardo Craft, EVP, Product Management and Product Marketing, Conexiom

3.) How to Stand Up, and Stand Out, with Marketplaces

Join this interactive roundtable discussion to hear about the benefits and pitfalls for selling your products on other marketplaces, as well as the challenges and opportunities of having your own marketplace and selling other people’s products. Find out how to build a roadmap for marketplace success as well as:

·        Choosing the right Marketplace(s) for your company

·        Building a team to implement and manage

·        Marketplace specific tools

·        Avoiding Channel conflict

James Urbati, General Manager, Commerce, Pivotree

B2B buyer behavior started evolving long before the impact of the pandemic. In recent years we’ve seen a demand for more B2C like experiences, and the transition to meet this demand has been fast-tracked over the last 8 months. Manufacturers and distributors have an opportunity to capitalize on this change and behavior and Ajay Kamble, Chief Information Officer, Turtle and Hughes will discuss how he is leading this change across the enterprise, including:

·        Understanding changes in B2B buyer behavior and customer demands

·        Consolidating and unifying the user experience for greater ease

·        Creating a hybrid experience that balances Amazon-like convenience with the personalized white glove experience of traditional B2B manufacturing and distribution

·        Xenith's bottlenecks/challenges

·        Reasons for choosing the solution

·        Implementation strategy

·        Benefits of digital selling

The disruption of the pandemic has pushed more and more buyers to use marketplaces. As B2B buyers come to expect purchasing experiences similar to those in B2C, manufacturers and distributors must develop the right marketplace strategy, or risk losing market share. Find out how to determine a marketplace approach to expand your business, including:

·        Understanding the opportunities and challenges of different B2B marketplace strategies to accelerate digital maturity

·        Leveraging the marketplace model to help create a more scalable digital business, reach new customers, and gain valuable customer data

·        Selecting the right partners and determining when to build your own versus joining an existing marketplace

Investment in B2B digital ordering is surging. Sales teams are transforming. How does your business compare?

Join Salesforce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in a discussion about relevant trends and insights on the evolution of digital commerce. Learn how to apply these insights in your 2021 digital planning, and how to use B2B commerce to modernize your business and adapt to the realities of the all-digital world.

Tune in to discover:

·        2020 B2B trends and how they impact your 2021

·        How manufacturers can think about digital transformation

·        Your first 5 steps to launching a digital portal

Customer data is a goldmine for improving CX, but centralizing and defining the customer record is very difficult in B2B. Paul Bates, Director of Digital for Master Electronics has been focused on customer centricity and leveraging data to create a great omni-channel experience for the customer. Hear lessons learned, including:

• Defining a curriculum to teach the definition of a customer
• Key success factors to centralizing customer records
• Pulling data from multiple sources to develop a holistic view of the customer
• Using customer data to identify how to deliver more business value to them
• Determining what your digital strategy should look like across different channels to connect the experience for the customer

If you sell AI solutions or want to increase AI adoption in your company, then there are key characteristics of buyers and users of AI technology that you will want to know. Join Jill Steinhour, Director Industry Strategy at Adobe for an in-depth view of new research on needs, attitudes and expectations of purchasers and users of AI.

In this session you will discover:

·        Level of awareness of AI across key target audiences

·        Messaging needs to go beyond IT and Marketing personas

·        AI capabilities that are available today

You know your customers are buying elsewhere, especially given the rise in eCommerce sales over the last year. The rise of eCommerce and marketplaces have provided more options than ever before to easily make purchases, and customer retention has become a top priority as B2B businesses work to retain market share. Panelists will discussed tried and tested strategies to deliver value to the customer and prevent them from leaving, including:

·        Engaging and re-engaging customers across the full-lifecycle for a 360 view of the customer

·        Providing a seamless purchasing experience: understanding what customers need to serve their business needs and have a frictionless transaction

·        Connecting CX to analytics to anticipate customer needs

·        Linking CRM to marketing automation to facilitate customer communication post-purchase

·        Identifying methods to overcome the hurdles of having one-time buyers and increasing your retention rates

·        Modernizing the post-sale experience, looking at mimicking B2C buyer expectations

Discover the framework and real-life examples to move fast as a team and accelerate buyers through their journey.

In the last year, more than ever, we’ve realized the opportunity created or lost through our ability to move fast as a marketing and sales organization. As priorities and market demands change on the fly, our ability to hit a launch target keeps us on track and even alive. On the other hand, missing our campaign dates or that timely sales reply creates a Launch Gap and further impacts our ability to remain relevant. Sourcing the right content at the right time and delivering it in a personalized experience is often the biggest impediment to success. Randy shares how to stay on track as a team and how to increase funnel velocity by looking at the right scope, controls, and technology for your business. This talk is geared to demand, digital, and content marketers with products and services that are complex yet timely, who are looking to embrace personalization and strategies like ABM.

Key takeaways:

·        Discover the three key components to successfully launching marketing campaigns in half the time it takes you now

·        Find out the marketecture you need to meet your ever-evolving customers’ expectations

·        Learn how you can use the Content Experience Framework to create and scale a personalized buyer journey

Innovation is the lifeblood of every business. 2020 challenged us all to quickly innovate and pivot, underscoring the importance of agility. Hear how one manufacturer leveraged innovation to maintain and grow market share during turbulent times. Hear lessons learned, including:

• Maintaining a customer centric focus to keep up with shifts in customer behavior and priorities
• Gathering and analyzing data to identify opportunities for new products or efficiencies
• Developing digital solutions to better serve customers
• Leveraging technology integration to drive efficiencies and lower operating costs

The goal of Frictionless commerce is to shorten the distance, time and hassle between customers and the products and services they want and need. Customers experience begins where the products are designed and created, well before the actual consumer interface. Frictionless experiences provide delight along the customer journey while transparency around data use and data/financial security create a foundation of trust. While the focus in ecommerce is often on the end customer, smart organizations apply frictionless thinking throughout their entire value chain.

This session will help customers:

·        Identify main friction points along the entire value chain

·        Think of possible solutions on how to remove friction points for all the key stakeholders - (employees/customers/suppliers) to operate more smoothly, reduce costs/waste/carbon footprint, improve performance and create competitive advantage

·        Have a defined path on how to be more productive, more profitable and more competitive

Change management can take up to two years to take hold in an organization. Digital transformation requires large scale change across the business, including significant investment in technology, while heavily reliant on people and processes. Hear success stories about how to develop and lead a large scale digital transformation, including:

·        Creating a multi-year roadmap to operationalize your customer first digital strategy

·        Getting organizational alignment to ensure the eCommerce organization delivers maximum value for the enterprise

·        Building opportunities for innovation into the digital roadmap

·        Partnering with supply chain, operations, finance and beyond to deliver on growth through digital channels

·        Leveraging data collection for business insights to support decision making and new product and service opportunities

·        Maintaining an investment in customer first initiatives and continuing to innovate to drive customer loyalty