6 Reasons Manufacturers Need Specialists to Drive their Digital Transformation [infographic]

Six Key Factors Missed by Generalists, and Why You Need Industry Specialists:

1. You are multi-channel – when you speak about ‘customers’ and ‘salespeople’, you are a community and network with a lot of diversity. You need solutions that bring you together but also enable you to keep individual identities.

2. Your Products are Adaptable – you make and sell technologies that are engineered for specific purposes; but may be adapted into many different applications and environments.

3. Service Matters MORE – your products are expensive, capital equipment; and that means that efficiency, uptime and maintainability matter as much, or more, as the initial cost.

4. Your Buyers and Sellers Need Knowledge – Your channel partners and end-customers range from very technical engineers to new ‘casual users’ with little familiarity with these technologies – all of these need knowledge and information in context for THEIR needs.

5. Collaboration is KEY – you want to be seamless, and that means that you connect people and communities when they need help or have feedback.

6. Your Systems are More Complex – In addition to the standard ERP and CRM needs, you have a full range of technologies and tools to support guided selling, product selection, sales configuration, order configuration and aftermarket upgrades/services. These need to be integrated.

See original blog post here.