“Café Royal Pro has been making coffee for eight years and is part of a huge, traditional Swiss retailer called Migros. They decided to attack the B2B market very aggressively. Café Royal Pro’s website was italy mobile number search up and running in just three months and a few weeks later they started attracting hundreds of customers to their new business model.”
“The key words were agility and speed,” says Benedetti, “but also alignment. Café Royal Pro acts like a startup, like a typical digital disruptor, and they were successful because Mikros was completely in line with their ideas and objectives.”
Britton agrees with this.
“For any change project to be successful, you need to have the right leadership in place from the start. If the right stakeholders are not involved from the start, you are investing in a change that people are not involved in.
“You may have the best technology in the world, but without the people behind it to drive it, you won’t get the agile change you want.”
The stakeholders most fearful of change tend to be the sales team, says Benedetti.
“B2B commerce is definitely seen as a real threat to any B2B marketer,” he says, “so you need to take this into account in your transformation so that sales are not resistant, but ready to embrace ecommerce.
“In most B2B companies, the salesperson still has a role to play… a different role, more advisory, and probably with a different compensation structure… but they are still very much needed in the process. You have to bring sales on board.”
