In recent years, companies have seen a sharp rise in online shopping numbers.
It is estimated that in 2018 alone, over 2.4 trillion dollars were spent in online retail worldwide – a figure that has almost doubled since 2014. Online shoppers today make up over 47% of the internet population.
What makes e-commerce so appealing?
It is no wonder that with all of these advantages, even businesses are making their purchases online these days.
As a leading IT software and services enterprise market store in the Gulf, we have taken note of online purchasing trends. Five years ago, it was challenging to make a sale without multiple visits to our customers, guiding them through the sales cycle – making them aware of the product or service, telling them about its benefits, and trying to convince them that it is something they should be buying.
Today, we find that so many customers have already done their research – they know what products and services are out there, and they already have the top two or three vendors or service providers shortlisted. They have done 70% of the groundwork required for a successful B2B sale.
How did this happen so quickly? Quite simply, business owners and buying decision-makers are following the same habits they’ve formed when making a consumer purchase – research, compare, and buy. Sales Account Managers and Relationship Managers are now viewed as ‘brand ambassadors’ – promoting a specific vendor or service – as opposed to actual consultants. The consultants and everything customers need to know is now online.
Because of these shifting purchasing trends, it is estimated that this year, 2019, B2B firms will spend more on e-commerce technology to facilitate online purchasing than online retailers do.
This massive investment in ‘online stores,’ complete with comparisons, reviews, and round the clock access to chatbots and digital account managers will undoubtedly impact on the ground sales personnel, who will probably be engaged only later in the sales cycle, and act more as facilitators for customers than actual account managers.
The Gulf region is no different from the rest of the world. Since 2016 to date, we have seen a dramatic increase in customer research hours. Organizations, governmental and private, now dedicate hundreds of hours annually to research IT solutions for their problems. IT managers now approach us asking about a specific product or service that could potentially resolve their issue – they refuse to be limited to what is being sold locally by the handful of service providers and vendors on the ground.
This was the main inspiration behind Exceeders.com. When we launched Exceeders back in 2016, our primary goal was to ensure customers had options. Investing in IT solutions in a growing region like the Gulf should be about having international prospects and the ability to bring in the best possible product, even if it does not exist locally.
Today, Exceeders is also about making IT solutions easy to access, research, and purchase as we believe that this is the natural future of IT sales. IT decision-makers are also consumers who make their purchases via Amazon, eBay, etc. When you combine that buyer mentality with progressive governments such as the Government of Dubai which has mandated that by 2021, all internal and customer transactions will be digitized to enable a paper-free government for a faster, more convenient, and environmentally friendly experience – where else is there to go but online?