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B2B manufacturers operate in a special environment that mixes traditional methods with new technology. This article looks at how customer portals and a flexible strategy can shape the digital future of industrial manufacturing. First, you will learn more about the current business situation. Many production-focused companies are facing challenges that affect their digital strategies. Next, you’ll explore how organizational and technological issues, market conditions, and IT environments influence the digital approaches taken by manufacturers.
Servitization in Action
Manufacturers usually focus on their main skills: designing, producing, and marketing their products. However, many seek new ways to make money by exploring aftermarket opportunities. Ecommerce is an essential channel for earning this income, along with extra services like documentation, support, training, and asset information.
Recently, the trend of “as a service” business models, known as “servitization,” has become more popular. Enterprises that are applying this approach are investing in data initiatives and digital platforms. First of which are customer portals, to enhance client interactions and improve their products, moving beyond simply selling items.
When Systems Don’t Talk
According to 26% of digital leaders in manufacturing, the isolated departmental structure is one of the top three reasons companies slow down or fail to adopt digital initiatives effectively. Many manufacturers use different platforms for various functions or regions. These frameworks are usually designed for specific departments, leading to different tools being used for the same goals in separate teams.
For example, various divisions might use customer relationship management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, marketing tools, and service-providing platforms, often customized for different consumer needs, locations, or departmental purposes. Managing data within these separate frameworks makes it hard to get a complete view of clients across the organization and creates barriers between departments. Combining them and keeping data accurate is a common challenge, but most manufacturers understand its importance.
Digital Twins, IoT, AI, and Customer Portals
Technological advancements like Industry 4.0 drive contemporary production-focused companies toward digital and sustainable changes. Innovations like the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics are transforming manufacturing processes. This allows for initiatives like digital twins for equipment and facilities. The primary challenge is establishing an environment where clients can easily access all of your digital services—essentially, a customer portal.
Avoiding Digital Dead Ends: The Case for Unified Portals
Customer portals are essential in digital transformation, offering benefits beyond making transactions easier.
When starting digital changes and having few or no digital tools for consumers, it might seem logical to focus on launching a portal or an ecommerce site. However, without a clear long-term plan, this can lead to stagnation. It may result in the development of just one isolated portal instead of a well-connected digital strategy.
Considerations for starting or continuing digital transformation:
Seeing Your Business Through the Customer’s Eyes
Clients see your organization as one complete team instead of separate departments with their systems, and B2B manufacturers offer various values. Considering the client’s perspective and collaborating across departments is essential for taking a broad view of digital services.
Unifying Services for a Stronger Digital Relationship
A customer portal combines many benefits into one easy experience. Creating it keeps promises and provides value for clients and the organization is not easy, but doing it well offers significant advantages.
Turning Portals into Profit Centers
The dashboards offer opportunities for upselling and personalized services. This approach boosts the long-term value of assets and supports sustainability.
Why Self-Service Tools Matter for Manufacturers
Customer portals help manufacturers save money by automating manual tasks and offering self-service options.
Faster Solutions, Happier Customers
When data is easy to access and communication is efficient, problems get solved faster and shoppers have better experiences. Such an agile infrastructure builds long-lasting trust and loyalty.
Unlocking New Value with Service-Driven Customer Portals
Customer portals provide different service areas to meet silent needs and strengthen connections. These areas include:
Asset management gives clients insights into their assets’ performance and maintenance history. Clients can manage their assets independently with access to product manuals, schematics, service and maintenance records, and real-time performance tracking.
Configuration & transaction simplifies the purchasing process. It offers an easy-to-use catalog for browsing and ordering. Customers can find parts and equipment quickly, check for compatibility, and get detailed product information to support their ordering and quoting needs.
Collaboration & communication features help clients and manufacturers interact smoothly, building trust and reliability. Consumers can track service requests, schedule maintenance, and receive personalized updates.
Knowledge & education provide its visitors with technical help and troubleshooting resources to get the most out of their equipment. This includes operator FAQs, troubleshooting guides, e-learning modules, and customized training to help customers maximize the lifespan and value of their assets.
Overcoming Barriers to Build a Connected Digital Experience
These four service areas connect across different departments and processes in a business. Combining them into one smooth experience may seem hard initially, but it’s a challenge worth taking on. It involves managing change, building solid data systems, improving company structure, and developing new digital skills. The benefits you gain from this effort make it valuable.
Creating a unified customer portal experience includes overcoming various hurdles, such as organizational divisions and technical issues. In the next part of this series, we will examine the composable approach to effectively managing this complexity.
What’s Stopping B2B Manufacturers From Going Fully Digital?
Even as some progress has been made, B2B manufacturers face issues with outdated technology. Different systems make it hard to integrate and scale, as many were not built to work well with modern tools. While some platforms provide easy data access through simple APIs, others require custom integrations, complicating data sharing for digital services.
Production-focused companies want to improve their sales teams’ response times and consumer focus, but often deal with inflexible software that slows down changes and new features. This causes delays in responding to client needs.
Data quality issues arise from manual oversight, leading to incomplete information and difficulties in sharing details with customers. Many still use outdated tools like Excel or Access.
Resistance to change remains a significant barrier to digital transformation. Team members may fear losing their jobs, struggle with new technology, or worry that it will disrupt their work, which makes it hard to accept new processes.
Final Thoughts
To realize the goal of servitization, B2B manufacturers must establish a strong digital base of well-coordinated software solutions and comprehensive data integration. This highlights digitalization as a key strategic focus. The current organizational landscape poses difficulties for production-focused companies in adapting to evolving technological advancements and customer needs. Meanwhile, some digital frontrunners are progressing rapidly by transitioning from traditional production methods to more sophisticated, interconnected, and intelligent systems in line with Industry 4.0.
