Unleashing e-commerce’s potential an exploratory study about companies’ drivers and barriers to purchase it-related products and services online

Abstract

Inetum-Realdolmen has helped companies navigate through the challenges of the digital world for over 14 years, by offering a wide range of IT-related products and delivering strategic, operational and tactical solutions. The company is part of the Inetum Group, who aims to conquer new markets and to continue building a culture of positive digital flow for all stakeholders. This resulted in a consolidated turnover of more than €2.219 billion worldwide in 2021. Now, Inetum-Realdolmen is innovating its way of doing business, and with the growing importance of e-commerce activities, the company has set high ambitions for its online channels. By developing an online solution that creates a new unified point of entry to their products, services and people for all clients, it aims at generating €1 billion in revenue by 2027 through e-commerce. Similar to the B2C market, B2B clients are now starting to demand customer centricity and the omnichannel trend is finding its way to more and more companies. THis change in consumer expectations means that the online unified point of entry will have to connect with the client base as a whole, while still engaging with each user in a personal way. The company will also have to find a way to, in addition to their current product web shops: the Cloudstore and Rstore, offer their service range online. Therefore, Inetum-Realdolmen is aiming to align the new solution with its clients preferences and find the right strategy to market the solution. Purpose: The current research seeks to discover how Inetum-Realdolmen can optimise its current web shops and expand the online portfolio with projects, professional services and managed services, to create a one-stop shop. It helps clarify which steps within the purchase process are better done using self-service technologies and provides examples of tools that can be implemented to guide clients when buying online. It also explains the feasibility of expanding the offering portfolio with services and suggests how the company can start its go-to-market strategy. Methodology: Fourteen exploratory customer interviews were conducted to understand clients’ preferences towards self-service technologies and human interaction. Both clients that already used Inetum-Realdolmen’s online solutions and clients that avoid using them were asked to map their current purchase processes, explain their experience with Inetum-Realdolmen’s web shops and elaborate on their need for human interaction. In addition, the clients were asked to state their preferences for bundling and mobile solutions to discover implementation strategies. To complete the findings retrieved from the interviews, the research team also analysed Inetum-Realdolmen’s 3 C’s (Company, Customer and Competitors) and explored future B2B sales trends. Lastly, the feasibility and strategies to market the online solutions were analysed based on internal interviews and the scalability was assessed through two exploratory interviews with teams from the Inetum Group in Spain. Findings: From the interviews, it was retrieved that although some of the processes for product and managed services are similar and thus could be standardised, the process of buying professional services and projects can be very complex and specific. Therefore, clients preferred self-service technologies while buying products or managed services as it would help them save time, but required human interaction when looking for projects or professional services due to the need for advice and coordination when specifying the service. Nevertheless, clients also mentioned there was room for technologies that would enhance their experience before and after the specification step in those cases too. When it came to the current online solutions, comparing them with B2C e-commerce web shops resulted in clients stating it lacked intuitiveness and user friendliness. The web shop was mostly used for lower volume purchases and to look up products. Non-users of the web shops clarified that they preferred direct contact with sales persons as it would give them a higher bargaining power and added a personal touch. Clients from the public sector also mentioned working through the web shop would mean they had to process the order twice, which generated more workload for them. From the interviews, it was also retrieved that clients had mixed feelings about bundling offers. Although some clients acknowledged that discounts and correctly putting offerings together brought value when Inetum-Realdolmen combined hardware, licences and services, most clients needed to maintain IT products with different inventory durations or wanted to do added services in-house and were therefore not convinced. For mobile usage, in the interviews it became clear that purchasing products in a B2B context through a mobile phone was not yet done by clients from Inetum-Realdolmen, and is not something they are eager to do. The only way a mobile solution could still bring value was by assisting them in approving and following up on orders. However, many clients were assessed to have a rigid mentality that resisted certain technological changes. In combination with the fact that most of them did belong to Generation X or Y, not being in favour of a mobile application was put into perspective. It also stressed the importance of knowing the technological readiness of the client base when going to the market with a new solution. Recommendations: In response to the findings from the client interviews, cost-benefit analysis, market research, future B2B sales trends and the company’s vision, the following actions are suggested: Grow the Customer Experience Portal to serve as a single point of entry to the Cloudstore, Rstore and a newly developed Service Store; and implement a renewed design with easier access to all offers while providing features like a centralised Admin Centre, Support Centre and Monitoring options. Limit the development of a mobile application of the Portal to a tool that allows clients to follow-up on their orders and use it as a stepping stone to future mobile extensions. This way, creating the one-stop solution will not only potentially increase the amount of business done through e-commerce, but it will also drive clients more towards self-servicing their administrative requests; which will allow account managers and customer success managers of Inetum-Realdolmen to focus on more strategic tasks. Use the client feedback and proposals to transform the current Rstore into a consumer-centric web shop. Regarding this point, Inetum-Realdolmen should improve the product information section in the store with less technical explanations and the addition of reviews. Additionally, it should add a chat-bot/box feature to the web shop to automatically answer simple questions and help clients solve more complex problems in person. Furthermore, a bundle page where customers can view and buy combined offers of hardware, licences and managed services with discounts should also be included. With its new design and features, the Rstore should serve as the part of the Portal all clients’ hardware products are bought through. Develop a Service Store that at the same time covers the online purchasing of managed services and lists and informs about all specifications of professional services and projects offered. In addition, add simple e-commerce tools like search filters and extensions, expert profiles and automatic scheduling to the web shop to help clients navigate through the different services and solutions. This will result in clients not only having a clear view on the full service range, but also having the opportunity to easily start the purchase process online in a self-service way. Reorganise the role account managers now have within the company by freeing up time that is spent on administrative workload and redirect their focus to strategic assistance and client onboarding. This way you make sure the e-commerce strategy can be an integral part of the overall sales strategy rather than as a separate business. Analyse if the company possesses not only the design skills but also the technical skills to develop the Service Store in-house as it is the most flexible option without any dependencies on third-parties nor commissions. The same vendor that was used to develop the Rstore should also be used to incorporate the new features as it will bring cost savings and a higher client satisfaction. In addition, bundles should be implemented as cross selling and upselling opportunities will outweigh the overall lower price. Direct new traffic to the Customer Experience Portal by focusing on SEO and SEA, and convince existing customers of the benefits the portal provides by communicating, for example, the time saving it will create and the availability of customer support. For scalability, reach out to other countries with insights and a tangible solution of the Customer Experience Portal. Additionally, communicate it as a powerful tool that combines the 3 web shops for clients and helps employees focus on strategic tasks by lowering administrative workload. By doing so, the portal should get all the chances of not only being adopted by clients but also being implemented in other countries.Inetum-Realdolme