Why online selling models will be crucial in 2021

In order to keep up with modern customer demands, manufacturers of complex goods need to get out of the dark ages by quickly digitalizing and moving to a customer-driven, online selling model.

Why online selling models will be crucial in 2021

Those who don't will be unable to survive this coming year let alone compete in the future. There is one critical lynchpin technology that will make online sales possible for complex manufactured products: configure-price-quote technology. Without it, no major manufacturer will be able to sell their products across all channels, and competitors will steamroll right over them.

Here's why: buyers of complex or heavy-duty goods -- think huge farming equipment or complex medical machines -- aren't looking for standard products.

They need highly customized, highly configured machines. Manufacturers need to make those adjustments translate across all the ripple effects of customizations and then negotiating and purchasing (engineering, suppliers, pricing, manufacturing). The process has traditionally required a herculean effort full of manual processes, in-person meetings, paper spreadsheets, outdated catalogs, and costly rework, all rife with the potential for human error. But that sales model crumbled over the past year. First, buyers began demanding consumer-like ease and came to expect automated, online interactions, and real-time price adjustments. Second, Covid-19 swept through and amplified that demand for online interactions, forcing buyers and sellers alike to move away from virtually all in-person interactions.

There's no going back from this shift, and manufacturers across the world will continue to revamp their sales processes to remove all the complexities of traditional methods. Those that move slowly, or not at all, will not survive.

Bo Gyldenvang, CEO, Tacton

Prior to joining Tacton as CEO Bo Gyldenvang was COO at Software AG Americas, an enterprise integration and IoT software platform. Prior to this, he held management positions at software companies such as BMC Software and HP Software.