Information and The Empowered Digital Consumer

When we think about digital and the enterprise buying process, part of what we see is this shift to customer power and the idea of being empowered buyer. But one of the things that these buyers have access to more information than ever before, and that’s great news for them, but it’s also a challenge for them. If you think about just the amount of information you and I have to consume in a day and miss, there’s just too much information flowing.

And so one of the things that challenges buyers is that they don’t know what necessarily what they’re seeing and what they’re missing, and that’s where we can help and guide them.

But the other thing that happens with digital is that we don’t see a consistent stream of activity. I don’t identify by a need and then identify by solutions and then create a shortlist. I do all those things together. I may be very deep in the buying process. I may have narrowed it to two specific companies, and then all of a sudden one of my colleagues will say, we implemented this technology and it’s the best experience that we’ve ever had in the company. And it’s in the specific area of which I was looking.

I may say, whoa, I have got to take a break here and take a look at this. And so jump all the way back to exploring that new solution put the other things on hold and then bring them back in. So it’s dynamic, its customer controlled, it moves back and forth, and it really requires buyers are looking for help. That could be coming from the providers and that could be coming from experts to help guide them through that process, to help build confidence in the solution and make sure that they don’t make a mistake.