Leading businesses in India are taking a calibrated leap in their digital transformation journeys, prioritizing areas hitherto largely ignored. While the buzz around customer experience has grown over the past years in the aftermath of the pandemic, crafting B2B customer journeys and sales digitalization are now being recognized as critical areas for business growth.
ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India (AM/NS India), a joint venture between ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel – two of the world’s leading steel companies, undertook a pioneering digital initiative to create a smooth buying experience and ease of doing business for their customers. The company identifies CX as a key business objective. “We want to set the digital benchmark in customer experience,” says Akshaya Gujral, Chief Sales Steering & Distribution, AM/NS, India. E-Sales launched in February 2022 in partnership with SAP, in a little over nine months, has transformed the way AM/NS engages with its customers.
The solution has successfully crafted a seamless digital commerce B2B experience, helping the steel conglomerate fulfil its vision of a “superior digital platform”. After extensive market research, AM/NS had narrowed down on SAP as a partner because it offered the “reliability” they wanted. Gujral calls E-Sales, based on SAP Commerce Cloud that integrates the buying processes to offer a seamless omnichannel experience to the customer, “a work in progress”. Omnichannel requires that a customer gets the same satisfying experience across channels. E-Sales has expanded market reach with an overall improvement in customer satisfaction and brand recall as an omnichannel platform. Further, the simplified process and speedy resolution of customer complaints are leading to more customer buy-in.
Asian Paints has demolished all the myths around traditional companies being laggards with regard to digital transformation. It has transformed from a paint chemicals company to a provider of decor products and services, shaping consumer trends and tastes. Technology is at the core of the company and “customer experience has been a huge focus area for the past 25 years”, says its GM-IT, Deepak Bhosale. Asian Paints has engaged with SAP in various areas spanning customer experience, operations, business operations, finance, reporting, manufacturing, data warehousing, data management and analytics, et al., successfully adopting “digital as a key differentiator” to build a digital path across the organization.
Bhosale calls it “digital 360”, where every function is getting transformed. It has also turned around CX with SAP at its core providing its customers end-to-end services that start with immersive designs and deliver dream designer homes – the ultimate customer experience backed by digital. “SAP has a deep understanding of the challenges Asian Paints faces and can craft solutions that are contextual. Importantly, they understand our vision and are committed to that,” Bhosale says.
Digital transformation is also woven into the DNA of Daikin India and derives from the company’s global philosophy “to stay a step ahead of the competition”. “B2B sales digitalization was one step ahead on digital transformation we wanted to take before others,” says Kanwaljeet Jawa, Chairman & Managing Director, Daikin India & Board Member Daikin Industries Japan. Digitalization has been the glue to keep its vast and growing customer base together.
The motto to “compete only when you have a competitive advantage”, gave birth to Project Link Daikin, an initiative to digitally empower the sales team and customer support ecosystem. The platform has not only improved the sales team’s performance but also ensured a better employee experience by improving work-life balance. “We are making it easy for the dealer fraternity to do business with us and that too in a completely transparent manner,” says Chandrashekhar Mane, General Manager & Head, Artificial Intelligence and IoT Centre, Daikin India.
Daikin evaluated the on-demand B2B SAP Commerce solution on various parameters – firstly, whether it would improve ease of doing business, “the number one priority for our dealers”, says Mane. The second was the service part, for which they targeted the vast database of 10,000 plus technicians. “We needed a very intuitive app for attending to complaints in an integrated manner. We looked at the product availability 24x7 and discussed integration and forward and backward compatibility, among other issues. SAP solution satisfied our concerns,” Mane adds. Link Daikin has also enabled the company to be ready for the next level of growth, as Daikin is expecting an explosion in global demands and a sheer increase in volumes with India uniquely poised as an engine of growth for the globe.
“Asian Paints, Daikin and AM/NS are ideal cases of the longstanding relationships with SAP. How these leading businesses have turned around customer experience and B2B sales with SAP at the core, is a truly remarkable feat,” says Sudeep Singh, VP and Head of Customer Experience, SAP Indian Subcontinent.
Indian companies are taking the lead in digital transformation, embracing the challenges head-on and pioneering new solutions in the process.
Way to go India!
Moneycontrol journalists were not involved in the creation of the article.
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