SAP Ariba Chief Strategy Officer on The Digitization of Business and the Futu...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how advancements in business applications and the modern infrastructure that supports them portends new and higher degrees of business innovation.
Building a Modern Marketing Organization in a Multi-Channel WorldDana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how social medical and business networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies.
Putting Buyers and Sellers in the Best Light, How Etsy Leverages Big Data for...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how Etsy uses data science to improve their buyers and sellers’ experience as well as theiown corporate destiny.
With Large Workforce in the Field, Source Refrigeration Selects an Agile Plat...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how a nationwide company has harnessed the power of mobile applications to increase the productivity of its workforce.
Rolta AdvizeX Experts on Hastening Time to Value for Big Data Analytics in He...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on using the right balance between open source and commercial IT products to create a big data capability for the long-term.
SAP Ariba Chief Strategy Officer on The Digitization of Business and the Futu...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how advancements in business applications and the modern infrastructure that supports them portends new and higher degrees of business innovation.
Building a Modern Marketing Organization in a Multi-Channel WorldDana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how social medical and business networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies.
Putting Buyers and Sellers in the Best Light, How Etsy Leverages Big Data for...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how Etsy uses data science to improve their buyers and sellers’ experience as well as theiown corporate destiny.
With Large Workforce in the Field, Source Refrigeration Selects an Agile Plat...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how a nationwide company has harnessed the power of mobile applications to increase the productivity of its workforce.
Rolta AdvizeX Experts on Hastening Time to Value for Big Data Analytics in He...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on using the right balance between open source and commercial IT products to create a big data capability for the long-term.
How New Technology Trends Will Disrupt the Very Nature of Business Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how major new trends and technology are translating into disruption, and for the innovative business -- opportunity.
'Extreme Apps’ Approach to Analysis Makes On-Site Retail Experience King AgainDana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how technology providers have teamed as an ecosystem to develop new dynamic and rapid analysis capabilities for the retail industry.
The death of big business (as we know it)Tradeshift
What do Moore’s Law, 3D printing, self-driving cars, machine learning, and other disruptive technologies have to do with supply chains and procure to pay?
More than you’d think. Tradeshift CEO and Co-founder Christian Lanng connected the dots during his tour de force keynote at the Credit Suisse 18th Annual Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong.
Businesses will need to come up with new strategies and models in order to survive and prosper in the new digital environment. But doing so by optimizing for cost and using legacy ERP systems is no longer enough. Now, the ability to continuously change is what really matters if your business is to survive the tectonic shifts underway.
Need for Fast Analytics Across All Kinds of Healthcare Data Spurs Converged S...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how a triumvirate of big players have teamed to deliver a rapid and efficient analysis capability across disparate data types for the healthcare industry.
Intralinks Uses Hybrid Computing to Blaze a Compliance Trail Across the Regul...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how regulations around data sovereignty are forcing enterprises to consider new approaches to data, intellectual property, and cloud collaboration services.
Closing the Digital Transformation GapDana Gardner
Transcript of a discussion on how intelligence gleaned from business applications, data, and networks provides the best new hope for closing the digital transformation gap at many companies.
How Enterprises Like McKesson Digitize Procurement and Automate Spend Managem...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a discussion on how leading enterprises are digitizing procurement and automating spend management to reduce inefficiencies, cut manual tasks, and streamline the entire source-to-pay process.
HP Vertica Provides adMarketplace with Big Data Warehousing SolutionDana Gardner
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how an intent search company is able to handle massive amounts of data and analyze it quickly with HP Vertica.
New Health Data Deluges Require Secure Information Flow Enablement Via Standa...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how new devices and practices have the potential to expand the information available to healthcare providers and facilities.
How New Technology Trends Will Disrupt the Very Nature of Business Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how major new trends and technology are translating into disruption, and for the innovative business -- opportunity.
'Extreme Apps’ Approach to Analysis Makes On-Site Retail Experience King AgainDana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how technology providers have teamed as an ecosystem to develop new dynamic and rapid analysis capabilities for the retail industry.
The death of big business (as we know it)Tradeshift
What do Moore’s Law, 3D printing, self-driving cars, machine learning, and other disruptive technologies have to do with supply chains and procure to pay?
More than you’d think. Tradeshift CEO and Co-founder Christian Lanng connected the dots during his tour de force keynote at the Credit Suisse 18th Annual Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong.
Businesses will need to come up with new strategies and models in order to survive and prosper in the new digital environment. But doing so by optimizing for cost and using legacy ERP systems is no longer enough. Now, the ability to continuously change is what really matters if your business is to survive the tectonic shifts underway.
Need for Fast Analytics Across All Kinds of Healthcare Data Spurs Converged S...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how a triumvirate of big players have teamed to deliver a rapid and efficient analysis capability across disparate data types for the healthcare industry.
Intralinks Uses Hybrid Computing to Blaze a Compliance Trail Across the Regul...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a sponsored discussion on how regulations around data sovereignty are forcing enterprises to consider new approaches to data, intellectual property, and cloud collaboration services.
Closing the Digital Transformation GapDana Gardner
Transcript of a discussion on how intelligence gleaned from business applications, data, and networks provides the best new hope for closing the digital transformation gap at many companies.
How Enterprises Like McKesson Digitize Procurement and Automate Spend Managem...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a discussion on how leading enterprises are digitizing procurement and automating spend management to reduce inefficiencies, cut manual tasks, and streamline the entire source-to-pay process.
HP Vertica Provides adMarketplace with Big Data Warehousing SolutionDana Gardner
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how an intent search company is able to handle massive amounts of data and analyze it quickly with HP Vertica.
New Health Data Deluges Require Secure Information Flow Enablement Via Standa...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how new devices and practices have the potential to expand the information available to healthcare providers and facilities.
Understanding your audience; Agile thinking & our content - BrightonSEO Septe...Charlie Williams
My talk from BrightonSEO on 19th September 2015 on creating content that works for both your audience & search engines.
As the search engines seek to reward content that satisfies users, we can learn from what our audience says to influence our work and reach them via search and social channels.
The core of agile thinking is putting user's needs as the primary goal, considering everything from the perspective of the audience. We'll take a look at how this ethos is perfect for modern SEO, and how a range of social media, audience research, keyword topic and content tools can help us build a user-first content development environment.
Join Cloudera’s founder and Chief Scientist, Jeff Hammerbacher, as he describes ten common problems that are being solved with Apache Hadoop.
A replay of the webinar can be viewed here:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/719074008
You know you need a content strategy for your brand, but where do you even start? Here's your content strategy starter kit, straight from McMURRY/TMG's Chief Content Officer, Kim Caviness.
Tips and advice on Thought Leadership how you can become an authority in your industry and drive conversation online about your brand, product or service.
This presentation also covers content marketing and how it is a tactical process vs. thought leadership which is strategic.
Included are examples and tools which you can use in your content marketing strategy and develop thought leadership for your clients.
This talk was presented at Oxon Digital.
Work culture is powerful: it can impact sales, profits, recruiting efforts and employee morale, whether positively or negatively. Having a positive workplace culture is very important. Let's see how work culture impacts employees.
Based on a survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive, this report explores the relationship between consumers and brands. It reveals facts about what consumers are looking for and identifies concrete actions brands can take to keep the connection with consumers alive and well.
10+ Deploys Per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at FlickrJohn Allspaw
Communications and cooperation between development and operations isn't optional, it's mandatory. Flickr takes the idea of "release early, release often" to an extreme - on a normal day there are 10 full deployments of the site to our servers. This session discusses why this rate of change works so well, and the culture and technology needed to make it possible.
Combining Big Data and Cloud Capabilities for ECommerce Matches Buyers and Se...Dana Gardner
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect on how a mid-market company saw immediate results from participation in Ariba Discovery, eliminating the need for mailing half a million catalogs a year.
Futureproofing digital business models in Retail - Jacob Dutton, 383 - Byte B...383
Jacob Dutton, Partner & Commercial Director at digital experience studio 383, talks about the ways that traditional retail models are being disrupted. He also explore some practical ways that today's retailers can help to future proof their revenue streams for tomorrow
Jacob spoke at 383's monthly Byte Breakfast event. Each event features a guest speaker from inside one of the world’s most interesting companies and a related talk on product development and customer experience from a team lead at 383.
The direct ways to increase gross margin and GMROI are to find ways to increase sales, decrease cost of goods sold and reduce inventory. Ed and Bill debate these and other more
nuanced ways to increase profitability.
An Interaction Design Approach to Choice ModelingSKIM
Conjoint analysis and similar methods are excellent ways to model consumer choice processes and to support scenario planning by answering “what if” questions. Typically, the predictive validity of conjoint analysis study is high and the experimental nature delivers great freedom, turning it into a widely accepted market standard. However, rightful questions are asked about the external validity – the ability to describe actual consumer choice behavior – and the richness of information – does it deliver information the brand can really act upon?
Choice modeling approaches can bear resemblance to online purchase environments, although there are key differences. The way we design the online environment and optimize the customer experience impacts what customers choose and how they make their choices. The premise is that the interaction design of an exercise impacts the way people take the exercise, form their opinions thus the outcome of the exercise; the preferences formed. Interaction design is aimed at impacting the experience of the exercise at hand, evoking a positive emotional response toward the exercise, thereby driving the quality and accuracy of the outcomes of the exercise.
Gerard and Willem took the audience through an overview of interaction design principles in designing choice processes. Translating these fundamentals to conjoint analysis and online sales environments, they shared hypotheses and tested examples of the impact of different visual designs on consumer choices.
Find out more at http://www.skimgroup.com/iiex-na-2014.
An Interaction Design Approach to Choice Modeling in E-CommerceGerard Loosschilder
This presentation was delivered by Gerard Loosschilder, Chief Innovation Officer and Willem Buijs, Interaction Designer, at the Insight Innovation Exchange conference in the Georgia Tech conference center in Atlanta (GA, USA) on 18 June 2014. The presentation taps into insights extracted from SKIM’s E-Tailor program, which combines insights from choice modeling and interaction design to help drive the conversion and satisfaction rates of online retail.
Growing Your Manufacturing Business with Modern Marketing and SalesARTILLERY LLC
Webinar slides and script for presentation to members of the American Ceramics Society on November 20, 2019. Recorded version can be watched at http://bit.ly/2XQBvsC
Transcript: Redefining the book supply chain: A glimpse into the future - Tec...BookNet Canada
Supply chains are built and updated by design, with goals set by the stakeholders on the ground. Those goals reflect the era and the tools available when the supply chains were created. As needs and capabilities evolve, old designs can start to limit functionality and limit new idea generation. Join Book Industry Study Group Executive Director Brian O’Leary as he suggests visionary ideas about the book industry as it could be.
In this talk, O’Leary reflects on the goal of promoting growth in the industry, offering ideas to accelerate revenue streams for business development, identify efficiencies, and improve insights. Referencing trends and insights evident today, O’Leary shares his vision of an emerging book industry supply chain and offers advice for professionals working today to future-proof their skills. This webinar will include a longer Q&A session, please bring your questions for Brian O’Leary.
Link to recording and slides: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/redefining-the-book-supply-chain-a-glimpse-into-the-future/
Presented by BookNet Canada on November 30, 2023 with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
The ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
I can’t understand why a manufacturing brand would not arm their retail customers with sales and marketing materials that define their mission, vision, product attributes and more, to position and differentiate their products from the commoditization of everything in this industry. By commoditization, I mean that the primary brand platform out there is SALE with some differentiation by using the words Anniversary, Warehouse, Liquidation, Labor Day, etc., before the word SALE. The result is that industry brands and their products have become largely undifferentiated in the minds of consumers. And, industry manufacturers have allowed this to happen by not promoting their brand equity.
https://www.social4retail.com/do-industry-brands-matter-pointcounterpoint.html
Starting up a business has many challenges and demands. This paper from Swystun Communications provides ways and examples for how branding can better ensure success if the focus is there from the start.
The Ultimate Business Model That Lets You'll Huge Inventories Without lifting a Fringe
Welcome to the complete Dropshipping course. I'm going to teach you, step-by-step, how to build a highly profitable eCommerce store, from scratch. You don't need any prior knowledge of eCommerce or any technical skills - if you can use a web browser you are good to go!
My name is Tim Sharp and I've been a successful online entrepreneur since 2004. Over the years, I've built successful businesses in eCommerce, WordPress, Affiliate Marketing and Web and Database Development. I have extensive knowledge of the complete business cycle and a wealth of real world experience. But the best part is I've been able to live the Internet lifestyle, making great money working from anywhere and having the flexibility to do what I want when I want. And that's what I'm going to teach you
The course is designed with the total beginner in mind, but if you're struggling in eCommerce many of the tips and tricks I'll share with you will help you on your way. I'll be taking you step-by-step, showing you exactly what I have done to build a profitable eCommerce business. We'll be <b>learning by doing</b> and within the first few lectures you will have built your very own fully operational eCommerce store. From there, I'll teach you how to find profitable markets, find hot selling products within those markets, identify your ideal customer and then drive them to your store to buy your products.<br>
The final lectures will focus on how you can build your store towards $100K / year and beyond.
So what are you waiting for, let's get started right now on building a financially secure future.
ORDER NOW.
Similar to Winning the B2B Commerce Game: What Leading Sales Organizations Do Differently to Rise Above the Competition (20)
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
To Graph or Not to Graph Knowledge Graph Architectures and LLMs
Winning the B2B Commerce Game: What Leading Sales Organizations Do Differently to Rise Above the Competition
1. Winning the B2B Commerce Game: What Leading Sales
Organizations Do Differently to Rise Above the Competition
Transcript of a Briefings Direct podcast on how the focus of sales in changing from product to
person thanks to technology.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app for iOS or Android.
Sponsor: Ariba
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect Podcast series, coming to you
from the 2015 Ariba LIVE Conference in Las Vegas.
We're here in the week of April 6 to explore the future of business commerce. We'll learn how
innovative companies are tapping into business networks to harness the power of
communities, to discover, connect and collaborate with peers and partners across
the street or around the world.
Not only are these leaders better managing their spend in buyer/seller interactions,
they're also gleaning insights and intelligence to learn from the past, capitalize on
the present, and chart an effective course for the future, all in real-time from a
single platform.
I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host throughout this series of
Ariba-sponsored BriefingsDirect discussions.
Our next thought leadership panel discussion focuses on what winning sales organizations do to
separate themselves from the competition and create market advantage.
We'll hear from RAIN Group about a recent study on sales that
uncovers what sales leaders do differently to foster loyalty and
gain repeat business.
And we'll also hear from National Business Furniture on how they're leveraging business
networks to enable more collaborative and innovative processes that enhance their relationships,
improve customer satisfaction, and boost sales.
So with that, please join me now in welcoming our guests. We're here with Mike Schultz,
President of RAIN Group, based in Framingham, Massachusetts. Welcome, Mike.
Mike Schultz: Thanks for having me Dana. It’s good to be here.
Gardner: We're also here with Brady Seiberlich. He is IT e-Procurement and Development
Manager at National Business Furniture based in Milwaukee. Welcome, Brady.
Gardner
2. Brady Seiberlich: Thanks, Dana. This should be fun.
Competitive pressures
Gardner: Let's start. Mike, tell me about competitive pressures. What's happening in
companies now? What's changing the sales dynamic? Why should we be aware of that and what
can we do about it?
Schultz: It's really interesting. In the world of sales, if you fell asleep in 1982, having just read a
sales book, and woke up 30-something years later and in 2005 went back to work, you didn't
miss anything. It didn't really change that much.
But there are a couple of things that have been happening in the last 10 years or so
that have been making sales a lot different. It has changed more in the last 10
years than it did in the previous 40. So let’s look at two of the things.
The first one is that buyers perceive the offerings that different companies bring to
them to be somewhat similar, somewhat interchangeable. What that means is that
the sellers are no longer competing on saying, "Hey, here is the product, here is the service, and
here's the benefit it’s going to get you," because the other guy has something that the buyer
perceives to be kind of the same.
What they're actually competing on now is how to use and how to apply those services and
products so the company actually gets the greatest benefit from them. That’s not actually the
power of the offering; that is the power of the ideas, the innovation, and the collaboration that the
sellers are bringing to the table. So there's one thing.
The other thing is the asymmetry of information has been changing. It used to be very
asymmetrical, because the buyer had all the need and all the desire, but the seller
had all the knowledge. Now, buyers can hop online and talk to user groups who
have bought from you and see what everyone says about your pricing and they
can find your competitors really quickly. They can get a lot more information.
So it's been leveling the playing field, which brings us back to point number one.
If the sellers want to compete, they have to be smarter than the average bear,
smarter than they used to be, They used to be able to just take orders; they can't do
that anymore and still win.
Gardner: Brady, does that strike you as similar to what you're facing? What do you do
differently about this new dynamic in the last 10 years than the previous 40?
Schultz
Seiberlich
3. Seiberlich: I definitely agree with Mike there. In the last couple of years, buyers are getting
smarter. They're trying to challenge us more. With the Internet, they have the ability to easily
price compare, shop products, look at product reviews. They're so much more knowledgeable
now.
Another thing that we found with our buyers is that they want the ordering process to be as easy
as possible, whether it's through the Internet or an e-procurement system. You have to work a lot
harder to make sure the buyer finds you as the easiest way to order.
We've really had to work hard at that and we've had to be able to adjust, because every buyer has
needs and they all have different needs. We want to make sure we can cover as many different
needs without doing a whole customization for everybody.
The experience is important
Gardner: It sounds as if the experience of buying and procuring is as important as what you're
buying. Is that what we are getting at?
Schultz: That’s actually what we found from our research project that you mentioned. I said that
sales has changed in the last 10 years more than it's changed in the last 40. My industry is very
sleepy. Most people do the same thing in terms of what they profess to be what's important, to a
whole bunch of people saying a whole bunch of different things. It goes all the way up to the
Harvard Business Review saying that solution sales is at its end.
They published an article, ‘The End of Solution Sales,’ and they published an article, ‘Selling Is
Not About Relationships.’ So is this true? What's actually going on?
We did the study where we studied 700 business-to-business (B2) purchases from buyers who
represented $3.1 billion of purchasing power. We wanted to find out what was the buyer's
experience like from the seller they awarded the business to, to the seller that came in almost
there, but came in second place. When you sell, person in first place gets the trip to Aruba, and
the second place person gets the trip back to their office.
What we found first of all, is that the sellers that win don’t just sell differently; they sell radically
differently than the sellers that even come in the closest second place.
The product and service playing field was perceived to be that the buyer is similar, especially by
the time they get to the last two. Maybe they kicked out some lesser providers early, and when
they get down to the end, both providers provide the technology, they can both engineer the
playing field that we're building, and they can both do the thing that we need them to do.
It actually came down to the buyer experience with the seller and how the seller treated the
buyer. What they did with the buyer were the tipping points for why they got awarded the
business.
4. Gardner: Brady, what has changed in terms of your creating a better experience, a simple,
direct, maybe even informative process for your customers? How do you accommodate what we
have been talking about in terms of improved experience?
Flexible as possible
Seiberlich: We try to be as flexible as possible and we try to provide them with as much
information as possible.
Information is huge for us. Back in the days when we first started, we mailed catalogs. For each
piece of our furniture that we sell, you probably saw in the catalog seven pieces of information:
how big it was, how much it weighed, what colors it came in.
Right now, for every piece of furniture we have, we hold over a 100 pieces of information on it
and we display a lot of that on the web. It's an ergonomic chair, it’s leather, it raises up and down,
it comes with or without arm, things like that. We try to provide as much information, because
the shopper works harder.
In the days of a catalog, where you had a catalog at your desk and you opened it up, there was no
competition there. On the web, there's plenty of competition and everybody is trying to compete
for that same dollar.
We want to make the customer as informed as possible. The customer doesn’t want to necessarily
have to call us and say, "Is this brown; how dark is this brown?" We want to give them as much
information as possible and inform them, because they want to make the decision themselves and
be done with it. We're trying to get better at that.
Gardner: I believe you are in your 40th year now at National Business Furniture. Tell us a little
about your company: your scale, where you do business, and what it is precisely that you are
selling?
Seiberlich: That is correct. This year we are celebrating our 40th anniversary, which is pretty
exciting for us. We sell in the US and in Canada. We opened our office in Canada a couple of
years ago.
The main reason we mainly sell in the US market is because of what we sell. We sell office
furniture: desks, chairs, and bookcases. That stuff is too heavy to ship overseas, and we can't
compete with some of the vendors that are over there already selling. So we sell here in the US
mostly. The majority of our business obviously comes from there.
We started as 100 percent catalog. In the early '90s we made a website that was just for browsing
purposes. You couldn't shop off of it. In the late 1990s we added the ability to buy off of it, and
right now we're up to about a 50/50 split in what comes through the catalog and what comes
5. through via e-commerce. And in e-commerce, we include the Internet, the e-procurement system,
and stuff like that.
So we've proven that we're still adjusting with it, but the weird thing is that some of our product
lines haven’t changed that much. Traditional furniture is still traditional furniture. We are selling
some very similar products, just 40 years later.
Different approach
Gardner: Given this change in the environment with the emphasis on experience and data,
making good choices with a lot of different possible choices, if you're a buyer, what are you
doing differently in order to keep your business healthy?
Is this a matter of having more strategic long-term predictable sales? Do you go about marketing
in a different way? Have you changed the actual selling process in some fashion? How are you
adjusting?
Seiberlich: Probably all of the above, unfortunately -- or fortunately I guess. We're always
looking for new markets to sell. We've just started to move into medical furniture and we're
doing some new things there.
The government has different rules in buying. So we're tying to make sure that we can adhere to
those and make sure that’s an open market for us. And we continue to just try and find better
ways to do things. That's what separates us from our competitors.
Everyone who sells office furniture is all selling similar products, around the same price. So we
have to do something to differentiate ourselves, and we do that. We try to make the process easy,
we try to provide the customer with as much information as possible, and we just want to make it
a smooth process.
The days of establishing a relationship and just hoping that will carry you for years, like Mike
said, have kind of come and gone. So we've got to work harder to keep our existing customers.
We're doing that and also trying to find ways to find new customers too.
Gardner: We are here at Ariba LIVE. We're hearing a lot about business networks, end-to-end
processes, using different partners and different suppliers to create a solution within that end-to-
end process. What is it about business networks that helps you attain your goals of a smoother
data-driven process for sales?
Seiberlich:When you can prove that you can collaborate over these networks, you have a
success that you can show to other buyers. "You can say, "We've proven we can do this." It
shows that you have established yourselves in these different markets.
6. I'm sure everybody knows that nobody wants to be the guinea pig and try something new with
somebody else. But we've proven that we can work on these different markets and different
networks and continue to try to find ways to make it easier. That’s what we're really pushing.
Unpacking the term
Schultz: Dana, I wanted to add one quick thing on that. "Network" is one of those interesting
words that you can unpack. You can unpack it in the technology sense that things are networked,
but there's also the concept of a network that says that on the other side of this technology, there
are people.
As a seller what it does, when what you do here isn’t just what you do there, it starts to go out
through technology to other people and it amplifies whatever you do.
So, if you're doing a pretty bad job, people are going to hear that it’s a pretty bad job a lot faster
than they used to. But if you are doing something interesting, if you are doing something
worthwhile, if you are doing something like Brady is talking about, saying, "Wow, this process
really used to be a pain and now it's a lot better because of the technology," that will get through
to more people.
If you're doing the things that I talked about earlier, if you're selling in ways that help buyers get
the most use out of what they you're selling, get the most benefit out of what you're selling, it’s
no longer just words in a catalog saying, "This is how you're going to benefit." In some ways,
you're going to benefit from working with us to get it, not just from the thing itself. The
technology amplifies the good sellers, and they end up selling a lot more because it spreads
faster.
Gardner: I suppose another part of the technology impact is convenience. When you're already
in an environment, an application, a cloud, a network, maybe even a mobile interface, and the
seller is in that same environment, if you are a buyer, that has some positive implications. Things
can be integrated. Things can be repeatable. The data can be collected, shared, and analyzed.
Tell me a little bit, if you would, Brady about being in a shared environment technically that also
provides grease to the sales gear?
Seiberlich: It definitely does. We have some customers that we transact with here on Ariba, and
in the the first one, two, or three transactions, we had to work through some difficulties, but by
transaction 10, 15, or 20, it’s just smooth and it goes right through. And that's what we're trying
to push with other customers that buy from us and we are trying to get them moved over to the
network.
We have a proven track record here. We are the highest rated furniture provider here. We are gold
from the Ariba standpoint. So we're trying to push customers to continue to buy from us off of
7. these networks, because we've proven how simple it can be and we want to continue to do that.
We want to make the ordering process as simple as possible.
Transaction algorithm
Gardner: Mike, maybe looking a bit forward, if all things become equal in terms of the
product and the information that’s available, if we take that to its fullest extent, it really becomes
a transactional efficiency, even down to compressing the payment, schedule, and negotiating vis-
à-vis actual transactions on a larger and larger scale. Where do we end up? Do sales go well
together and it simply becomes a transaction algorithm?
Schultz: There were predictions about 10 years ago with e-commerce when the information
symmetry really started to happen, when it shifted towards buyers. They started to know more
that there were going to be fewer salespeople in the US, because of government data, the US
economy.
US government data said that 1 out of 9 people working in the United States were in sales; that
was in 2000. If you fast forward to now, the massive change has been that there are about 1 in 9
people working in sales. So it hasn’t changed; it’s just that they're not order takers anymore.
The other thing is, is that while things look the same, they still aren't always necessarily the
same.
If you think about it, all this becomes price pressure. If this goes directly to microeconomics, and
we are just buying pork bellies, it has to be the exact same price because the elasticity works that
way. Any shift is going to make it go to a different provider. That’s really not the case, because
we're not all buying pork bellies.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that Brady is looking really well. Maybe he needs some
heart surgery. I have a really cheap surgeon. Would you like to go see him. He's board-certified,
and he is a really cheap heart surgeon? It’s like, oh jeez.
There is a lot of decision process and a lot of mental things built up about what cheap-versus-
expensive means, especially because if you are not talking about pork bellies, it's not necessarily
the same.
So the new challenge for buyers is to figure out what are the differences. This law firm says they
have the same capabilities at that law firm, but in fact, one law firm is better. The question is
how. It’s contingent on buyers and sellers to figure that out together.
That’s why for law firms, consulting firms, accounting firms, I can't sink my teeth into them, bite
them, and tell you which one is thicker or stronger, or which is going to have a 20-year guarantee
versus a 10-year guarantee on the chair. I'm just trying to figure out who is actually better, who
can serve me better, and who is the right fit. So it's not all commodities.
8. One other challenge, if you think about it from the buying side, is that it's not a big secret that
heading into the purchasing department is not necessarily the absolute positive I am dying to do a
career path for the top MBAs that are coming out of the top schools.
Complicated purchases
There are some great people in purchasing, but a lot of the times, when we're talking to sellers,
we're talking to sellers that are doing $5 and $10 million on very complicated things with buyers,
and the purchasing person they're working with doesn't actually understand the business context
of what they're trying to get done. So they're asking, "How do I actually get to interact with them
when the rules are they don't let me talk to them?" This is $7 million. They're buying this like
they're buying roofing shingles.
It's going to require much more sophistication from the buyers to figure out what they really need
and what are really the quality levels as it is on the sellers to make sure that they bring forth the
right ideas, craft the right solutions, and treat the buyers well.
Gardner: So clearly we've hit on that reputation being in an open visible network where
information can be traded. That gets to that reputation, trust, and a track record. But it also
sounds like we're talking about some sort of value add to the buy.
If other things are equal but the experience of buying, if making a decision in a complex
environment is the case, something else is needed, perhaps consulting, data, or analysis. So,
Brady, what is potentially a value add in your business to increase your likelihood of making the
sale and then keeping that relationship with the buyer?
Seiberlich: We have a couple of things, but one of our most important things is that we've been
around for 40 years. If you call either inside sales or a customer service, you're going to get
somebody, on average, with over 10-plus years of furniture experience with us, and that's a big
thing. They understand our products. Our vendors come into our office weekly and explain our
products. Our salespeople know the products and they can really help you find a solution that fits
you.
And that’s one of our biggest selling points -- our people. That’s an important thing for us. They
have the knowledge that they need and they're not just order takers. They're much more.
Everybody on our side who answers the phone are furniture experts. That’s what they do.
Gardner: Do you find that those salespeople with that track record, with that depth of
knowledge, are taking advantage of things like the Ariba Network to get more data, more
analysis to help them? Have they made that leap yet to being data driven, rather than just
experience driven?
Seiberlich: They're working on it. We're getting better and we're consistently improving.
9. I agree with Mike’s point, one of the hardest things is making sure that we align ourselves with
our buyers’ needs, figuring out what’s important to them and then making sure we are addressing
those situations. That’s a challenge, and when you figure it out today, it changes tomorrow That
makes it even more challenging.
Gardner: Last word to you, Mike, what advice are you offering people as they think about
creating a more attuned sales, for sales function in this new environment?
Buying value add
Schultz: First, I'd like to thank Brady for agreeing with me all the time. I really appreciate it.
And congratulations on 40 years.
We're celebrating our 13th year at RAIN Group, and you are all invited to the bar mitzvah. Come
on down to Framingham. We'd love to see you.
What advice do we have to sellers in this economy? Yes, product and service are important, but
what they're buying is you, and you just mentioned value add. When we surveyed those 700
buyers, we talked to 300 of them afterwards. We wanted to get their sense of the experience.
The kinds of things they told us was along the lines of, I was working to buy this particular thing,
and this is going to be important. This isn’t just putting paperclips in a drawer. This is about our
ability to innovate, because I'm actually buying innovation training from a leadership consulting
firm. Or this is about our ability to expand internationally. So we're going to be buying some kind
of software.
So I looked at those two software companies that we were down to and I had a two-hour
discussion with the seller. When I told him that I was really worried about the pitfalls of trying to
do this and what I didn’t know, he went out and he surveyed 15 of his own clients and gathered
a little research report of one to give me insight.
He created his own little focus group to gather information for me, so I could think about what
challenges might await me. The other guy didn’t do that.
This guy’s software costs more, but if I have this guy around, if the company treats me, the
delivery teams treat me, and he continues to treat me like he is treating me right now, they're
actually going to be more supportive of my success in this important initiative.
So, be better, be stronger, don’t just take orders. Think for the important buyers, how can I have
them see that working with us, the whole package. It’s not just that the product and service are
superior, because they might be close, but the whole thing that we bring to the table is superior
value. I know that sounds like a consulting word, but I talked to this guy and he brought my all
10. of these ideas and he talked to his other clients. I said, can I talk to them? He said, yeah, let me
check with a few.
That was worth a lot. I could sign the PO for him, even though it’s a little bit more, because it
was important to me to go to bat for him. Live that kind of value add yourself as a person and
you can win and win consistently.
Gardner: Well, great. I'm afraid we will have to leave it there. We've been learning about
winning sales organizations and what they're doing to separate themselves from the competition
and create market advantage.
So a big thanks to our guests. We've been with Mike Schultz, President of RAIN Group based in
Framingham, Massachusetts. Thanks, Mike.
Schultz: Thanks for having me, Dana.
Gardner: We're also here with Brady Seiberlich, IT e-Procurement and Development Manager
at National Business Furniture based in Milwaukee. Thank you, Brady.
Seiberlich: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: And thanks to our audience for joining us for this special podcast, coming to you from
the 2015 Ariba LIVE Conference in Las Vegas.
I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host throughout this series of
Ariba-sponsored BriefingsDirect discussions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next
time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app for iOS or Android.
Sponsor: Ariba
Transcript of a Briefings Direct podcast on how the focus of sales in changing from product to
person thanks to technology. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2015. All rights
reserved.
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