In today’s digital, always-on world, innovation is no longer a luxury. To stay ahead of the competition, manufacturers must deliver world-class customer experiences with solutions that increase efficiency, mitigate risks, and accelerate time-to-market.
But for many manufacturers, legacy, on-premise systems and business silos result in disconnected customer experiences that prevent even the best companies from delivering seamless customer experiences. In fact, according to McKinsey, 70% of transformations fail, with many organizations also citing poor execution as a reason for failure.
To overcome these challenges, manufacturers need to innovate. And that requires transforming their business with an industry-leading partner and a unified Customer Experience Platform (CXP) that delivers world-class experiences their customers expect.
Manufacturers should look for companies that not only provide a unified CXP, but also have a proven track record of helping companies like them successfully implement the solution with a crawl-walk-run approach that enables them to achieve fast, sustainable results.
A CXP can deliver multiple solutions, including e-commerce, with all the capabilities manufacturers need, all in one place. And because manufacturers’ needs are more complex than those in other industries, it’s also important to consider a platform designed specifically for the manufacturing industry. For example, connecting manufacturing plants, data, and business silos spread across different geographies and multiple brands is where other e-commerce solutions fall short. However, an industry-focused solution enables manufacturers to create personalized customer journeys for each region and brand, leading to increased brand loyalty and sales.
In addition to providing rich features and capabilities, a unified CXP can provide the best e-commerce solution (and many others) for manufacturers with:
- The fastest time-to-market: Modern e-commerce solutions should be quick to implement so your business can begin to see results quickly. If the platform you’re evaluating is going to take months to implement, keep looking.
- The support of industry expertise: The best e-commerce solution has a team of industry experts behind them so you can take advantage of their deep manufacturing and distribution experience and expertise, and who can advise you on industry best practices.
- Integrations across all relevant enterprise systems: From multiple catalogues, inventory, order management, pricing, delivery, and fulfilment systems to customer support, return and warranty, marketing and sales automation, and websites, these disconnected systems and workflows disrupt customer and employee experiences. The best platforms provide out-of-the-box integrations so you can quickly and easily connect your e-commerce platform to other business-critical solutions.
- A Cloud-Native infrastructure: Today, innovation happens in the cloud. That’s why the best e-commerce solutions are SaaS-based, providing your business with the continuous innovation and cost-effective upgrades needed to run your business.
When solutions (eg: e-commerce) are built on top of a unified CXP, manufacturers accelerate innovation through access to a richer, more complete set of capabilities designed specifically for their industry. The capabilities of a CXP also enables manufacturers to provide solutions beyond just e-commerce, creating seamless experiences across employees, distribution channels, and end-users.
With the right unified CXP, and the right partner, manufacturers can deliver world-class experiences across brands and geographies that exceed customer expectations, drive loyalty and retention, and enable greater efficiency across the business.
Ram ChandraSekar
Founder and CEO of PhaseZero.ai