As electronic manufacturers and distributors continue to operate 24/7 through a growing number of sales channels, the volume of information about their products, customers and suppliers is rising exponentially in size and complexity.
Proactively managing the influx of information as it flows across the enterprise from procurement to distribution, marketing to e-commerce, and all the way to service and support has never been more critical. Organizations are struggling to keep up. Given today’s challenging environment, the ability to leverage operational knowledge in order to improve corporate profitability is more important than ever.
It is obvious that manufacturers are under pressure to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and in response they must react faster to new market opportunities and must sell across multiple channels with greater agility. As electronic companies continue to operate in multichannel environments, the traditional view of separately managing supplier, product, and customer information has become obsolete.
According to Howard Tiersky, president of next-generation digital consultancy group Moving Interactive, 2014 will see an increased focus on mobile commerce and mobile decision-making, which will have major implications for manufacturers. In the article, Tiersky predicts that all digital touchpoints used by customers will need to be mobile friendly as mobile-enabled marketing, websites, and emails become increasingly essential for manufacturers looking to stay in touch with buyers. Additionally, he claims that consumers will use mobile devices to drive decision-making at the point of purchase. As a result, manufacturers will need to extend product marketing to accommodate this trend through use of QR codes and other tags, in order to link interactive content and help drive sales while the customer is physically in the store.
