Business-to-business marketers are taking on an increasingly pivotal role in the Internet-driven transformation of the economy. In the next 12 months, we anticipate the pace of revolutionary change to accelerate as the Internet rapidly evolves to become far more than just another business tool.

 

Strategies and tactics are emerging in connection with the B2B marketing-driven revolution making it possible to more profitably acquire and retain customers. These changes are destined to radically re-shape almost every business process and create an entirely new way of conducting business.

 

A single factor is propelling B2B past B2C and is causing it to become the point of innovation and economic
change – hyper-competition.

 

This stands in sharp contrast to the B2C side, where the impetus for the use of the Web is greatly dependent on the vagaries of consumer tastes and the perception of convenience offered by new technologies.

 

Instead, the implementation of new technologies in the B2B arena is being driven by compelling competitive considerations and by important bottom-line imperatives. Companies recognize that it is crucial to use the new technological capabilities to streamline and dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business operations – and those of their customers and suppliers.

 

In fact, for more than a decade, the re-engineering of linkages between customers and suppliers already has been under way in more operational B2B arenas through such initiatives as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and just-in-time delivery. Already, these types of efforts have spurred major changes in the ways that activities such as manufacturing and logistics are executed. There has even been significant progress in areas such as collaborative product design and development.

 

Now, through the use of the Web, this paradigm is being combined with quantum leaps in Customer-Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities to re-shape the way in which traditional B2B marketing is conducted.

 

Full recognition of the importance of these marketing-driven B2B transformations was initially obscured by the flurry of early attention showered on B2B exchanges.

 

Online exchanges undoubtedly will play an important role in helping buyers and sellers execute B2B transactions. However, unlike the B2C marketplace, the B2B arena involves a much more complex web of interactions between prospects and vendors in which the actual transaction represents only a small part of the entire purchase process.

 

Too much of a focus on transaction-centered exchanges inevitably runs the risk of overlooking much greater opportunities that the Internet avails for B2B marketers – a new generation of Web-enabled, CRM-based, marketing initiatives that add enormous value to customers and prospects.

 

The strategies and tactics emerging in connection with this B2B marketing revolution are destined to radically re-shape almost every business process. It is a revolution that is triggering changes on a similar scale in such innovations as the use of interchangeable parts and the development of the assembly line and mass-production processes.

 

This leading-edge role in driving the adoption of new technology is not a new one for the B2B community; in fact, it represents the usual trajectory of the development of a new technology.