Elephant: Combining B2B sales divisions in a large company

November 18, 2013 11:35 AM

I work in e-commerce at a large national retailer. We have at least four other B2B divisions at some stage of e-commerce, and we all know it's time to get our act orchestrated. The question: the head of one of the groups-- my boss-- has asked me to provide internal or external content that makes the case for not only getting our omnichannel presence together online, but also combining our processes and customer-facing (CRM) act together, too. Anyone been to this rodeo? Have any resources you can point out?
posted by Arch1 to Work & Money (2 answers total)

I write about retail technology for a living, and let me tell you, this is what every major retailer is grappling with. There's no easy solution, but there are a ton of companies offering solutions, each claiming to be the best and the only real way.

I won't self link but if you'll look in my profile, I've changed my URL to point to a section of my website that contains a bunch of news stories and how-to guides on omnichannel/multichannel integration. Feel free to me-mail me if I can help further.

Best of luck!
posted by jbickers at 11:47 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not been on this rodeo but Mrs MM has and I have run a retail consultancy in my past. It is, as jbickers says, a huge issue in retailing. As you can guess, it revolves around four key points:

- The technical challenge
- The logistical/process challenge
- The organisational challenge
- The customer experience challenge

My advice would be to give each one due consideration. It is very easy to jump straight down the path of technical spec>vendor selection before really working out what you want to do as an organisation and whether you aspirations and your solutions are appropriate for your business.

Consulting firms I know that have done a fair amount in this arena: Javelin, OC&C, Accenture. However, all the big consulting firms (McKinsey, Bain, Booz, Deloitte, E&Y etc) maintain retail/consumer practices. All publish white papers, which is a great resource to use. My advice - if they don't distinguish in their marketing between retail and FMCG they're primarily an FMCG practice.
posted by MuffinMan at 1:30 PM on November 18, 2013