B2B commerce is going mobile.
For as long as I can recall, I’ve been hearing from numerous businesses that mobile wouldn’t impact them since they were primarily B2B
companies.
This always struck me as making no sense, since mobile behavior couldn’t be expected to affect only consumer behavior.
People operating in a B2B environment
don’t live in a vacuum. They also are individual consumers, and what they see and experience in the B2C world should be expected to influence what they would come to expect in B2B.
Now
comes along some international research that highlights the B2B move to mobile commerce.
The study was conducted for Intershop by Vanson Bourne, a market research company specializing in
technology. They interviewed 400 senior IT and business decision makers from merchants with a B2B focus and annual online revenues from $1 million to more than $100 million.
The study shows
that about half (51%) already use mobile as a sales channel and a total of two-thirds plan to.
Regarding customer touch points that B2B businesses don’t currently use but would like to
over the next 12 months, the most common response from companies worldwide was mobile, including stores and apps.
Topping the list of the merchants’ vision for B2B commerce were
integrating new touch points such as mobile apps for order entry, order history and status and sales rep apps.
It should come as no surprise that market dynamics are impacting the shift
towards a mobile focus in B2B.
For example, a majority (81%) see customer demand and expectations as a driver of change in B2B commerce, and almost two-thirds (71%) credit mobile device
use.
The bottom line is that business buyers are coming to expect the same levels of mobile functionality that they experience at B2C retail.
And some of those levels are on the
rise.