Summit Spotlight: How To Unlock B2B Revenue Growth Through a Connected Ecosystem

When three celestial bodies line up — for example, the sun, the moon, and Earth — the results can be pretty amazing, ranging from high tides to eclipses. Scientists have a special word for this phenomenon: syzygy.

In the Digital Shelf Summit (DSS) session entitled “Unlocking B2B Revenue Growth Through a Connected Ecosystem,” Justin King, senior analyst at the B2B eCommerce Association, explores how business-to-business (B2B) digital shelf managers can apply the idea of syzygy to their organizations to gain cross-functional alignment and, as a result, grow their revenue.

Digitization projects can be difficult in many B2B organizations. But, as the natural world demonstrates, amazing things can happen when the necessary bodies align.

Creating Cross-Company Alignment

King began with some illuminating statistics from Deloitte: More than 75% of B2B companies say their customers want a digitized sales process, but 71% describe their processes as manual.

The reason behind this discrepancy is often multifaceted, but King discusses some common challenges. For example: Executives aren’t aligned with the digital team.

“As I talk to executive teams, most of them say this: ‘Our digital team speaks a different language than we speak,’” King says. Digital teams need to meet executives where they are by discussing digital initiatives in terms that make sense to them.

King also explores strategies for getting other cross-functional departments on board. “Ecommerce is not a digital team problem; it’s a whole company problem,” King says.

He spoke of introducing incentives that motivate sales teams to support digitization, and of keeping product content deeply and continuously involved.

“Product content is a program, not a project,” King says.

To successfully complete a digitization effort that grows revenue: “The most important thing is the syzygy of three very important bodies: the alignment of the digital team to the exec team, and the alignment of the digital team and the executive team to the rest of the company,” King says.

Finding Models for Growth

The exact priorities to focus on for digitization will depend on an organization’s preferred selling model. While almost all business-to-customer (B2C) organizations work on a customer acquisition model, King discusses the different priorities many B2B organizations have.

For example, many are focused on optimizing their sell-through rate. In these instances, being able to syndicate SKUs to retailers efficiently becomes a major priority. King tells of how he “had a customer once who built a PIM and syndicated out to their largest distributor, and that distributor doubled their revenue in three months.”

Not only did ecommerce grow, but “the people inside that distributor were using their website to look up information,” meaning the distributor sold more. This shows how effective SKU syndication can have far-reaching benefits.

B2B organizations are also focused more on adopting customers who will depend on them for their long-term supply needs. Part of accomplishing this means creating digital experiences that make your site or portal easy to order from. And, of course, part of it is being able to provide great customer service.

“How do you get someone who placed a first order to place a second order?” King asks. “You don’t ‘eff up’ the first order.”

Finally, generative AI introduces a wealth of digitization opportunities that could help B2B organizations grow revenue. King explored use cases for copy localization, personalized marketing, and more.

Raising the Revenue Tide

Ultimately, B2B revenue growth requires investment in digital initiatives. Succeeding in these initiatives requires alignment across the organization, from the executive team to the digital team to the organization as a whole.

When this syzygy happens, it can cause a rising tide that lifts the whole organization.