For PPE, safety, tooling and equipment manufacturer SureWerx, creating a digital journey for customers starts by keeping in mind their ultimate mission of putting their products into the hands of the people who need them at all times. That means, through SureWerx’s distributor partners, ensuring their products are available wherever the ultimate consumer of those products wants to be. Not where its necessarily most convenient for SureWerx.

“Efficient transactions are really important to the consumer,” said Christian Wiltrout, global COO, during an MDM webcast last week. Increasingly, efficient equals online.

Co-headquartered in Chicago and British Columbia, SureWerx sells exclusively through distributor partners. Naturally, that has their omnichannel strategy focused on elements that help enable distributors to be successful, such as large investments in online product content that help the end consumer make a purchase decision.

Also see: “Your E-commerce Plan is Not Enough: Strategies to Increase Digital Orders in 2021.”

Having robust online product content allows SureWerx to digitally influence end users to find SureWerx products for themselves. “Everyone’s goal is to grow faster than the market,” said Wiltrout. “We believe those who focus on this and are good at it — everything else being equal — will grow faster.”

Also participating in the webcast, Conexiom CEO Ray Grady agreed, adding that one of the sales order automation company’s goals is to help distributors engage with their customers the way those customers want to be reached. Enriching product data helps to ensure your relevant products are seen at the right place at the right time, he said.

Look at the Bigger Picture

Polled live during the webcast, 86% of participants said the pandemic has accelerated their digital transformation of business-critical processes. However, Wiltrout noted that trying to make your website as good as someone else’s that has been around for decades with billions of dollars backing it may not be the best leading strategy to make digital transformation happen at your distribution company.

Instead, he recommended plugging into the bigger picture of your company’s value proposition in making every step of the buyer’s journey — awareness, purchasing the product, managing and owning it and then, hopefully, repurchasing the product — a successful one.

E-commerce is about more than standing up a decent website, Grady agreed. It’s using digital as a lead-capture venue, allowing customers the ability to self-service in learning about and acquiring your products. “If you’re relevant and you’re where the customer wants to be, delivering a solution that makes sense to them and engaging and transacting how they want to, you will beat the competitor,” he said.

Click here to watch the entire webcast, Your E-commerce Plan is Not Enough: Strategies to Increase Digital Orders in 2021, on-demand and learn much more about the digital customer journey, including why automation does not equal staff reduction and why it is not fruitful to spend energy trying to change the way customers want to interact with you.