Industrial Digitalisation - Is Marketing, Sales & Communication left behind?

Lately I took a giant leap. I changed my Job as an Online Marketing Consultant in the b2c surrounding to a Digital Marketing & Sales Manager at an industrial and B2B oriented technology company called Humai Technologies. This means plant and mechanical engineering and similar classic industrial sectors. In order to better understand this world, I recently visited the "Bau 2019" and the "400 Sec" in Munich. It soon became clear to me that everything was talking about the digitization of machines and production processes. Unfortunately the digital marketing & sales departments are clearly underrepresented in this action field of digital tools. That's a pity and can cause bigger problems in the future!

The event "400 Sec" of the consulting firm ROI was exciting, informative and dedicated to the digitization of the industry. The chosen location was a renovated industrial building with lots of natural light and charm. There were keynote speeches, network corners and of course "Pecha Kucha" - do not worry, I hab to google it too. It is a Japanese concept that a lecture was allowed to last only 400 seconds and thus was also the namesake of the event. But back to the topic and why the neglected focus on digital marketing & sales carries a risk.

No buzzword was used more often than Industry 4.0. In general, I think that is a very good development, because the Internet can not be shut down and a backward development excludes probably everyone. The event was very much about technology including questions about autonomous transport systems, cobots or even fully automatic production robots. Of course, I understood only a fraction, but I listened attentively. At one point, the audience was asked in a Life Survey to answer the following question:

What is your goal with digitalisation?

Now all attendees could use their smartphones to vote in real time and the result was displayed on the projector. These included points such as "better monitoring of industrial facilities", "easier maintenance," "improving inventory" and a few others. But one thing was missing: "marketing, sales and communication". I was more than surprised concerning my economic background, when I found none of these items on the shortlist. Therefore, there is only one conclusion for me: "The industries technical complexitiy and the education of executives, which is usually a purely technical, leaves the idea of further digitizations in these fields behind!" - Colloquially spoken, but completely neutral ment, it could probably also be referred to as "operational or industry blindness". So far a well-known and widespread phenomenon! But now comes the connection to the emerging risk.

For more than two decades, digitization has been inexorably penetrating ever deeper into our private and personal lives.

• We have become accustomed to receiving information about restaurants, street maps, opening hours and other functions in just a few clicks.
• We've gotten used to ordering things on Amazon with just one click.
• We've also got used to finding out about every product or question via Google Search. If a second or even third search with Google is needed, several users already bounced.

The attention span a user is willing to give to a website is sometimes quite short. (According to a controversial Microsoft study from the year 2015 just 8 seconds.) This habituation process is intensified daily and with each use of our smartphones - we develop a claim to simplicity, usability & process speed.

Do you notice what I want to go for? There is an ever-growing gap between the demands of users for the usual simplicity and the reality of digital products in marketing, sales and communication across most of B2B industries. Currently this does not seem to be an extreme problem, but the shoe is already starting to push. I do not want to provide any negative examples about old websites, slow load times or heavy banner ads. Much more, I would like to point out that the website and the general digital image of a company should be as important as other areas of industrial digitization.

To date, only a few major players have come up with best practices. But whoever succeeds in successfully incorporating the simplicity, convenience, and incredible value of these B2C technologies into their B2B enterprise, has at least as well developed a unique USP as pioneering technology & know-how. In the end, that reminds me of a beautiful quote from Dr. Ing. Eberhard von Kuenheim which I heard for the first time in my studies:

It's Not the Big That Eat the Small. It's the Fast That Eat the Slow.