Why Digital Fails Without Executive Buy-In with Liz Saxen-Duggan

Digital Alignment Is the Shift Too Many Still Miss in B2B eCommerce

What if the real unlock for B2B eCommerce isn’t better UX, more automation, or even personalization?

What if it’s alignment?

That’s the key theme that surfaced in a recent conversation with Liz Duggan – one of the most strategic minds in B2B digital transformation today. She’s been behind the scenes of more than 85 major clients across manufacturing, distribution, retail, and technology, and she gets the nuance in B2B that most people completely miss.

And it’s this: B2B eCommerce isn’t just a channel shift. It’s an organizational shift.

It’s Not About Shifting Dollars – It’s About Creating Growth Vehicles

As Liz pointed out, too many organizations still treat eCommerce like an order pad. Just another channel. Just another cost center. Just another set of screens to build.

But the companies making real progress? They’re doing something different.

They’re aligning digital under commercial – not just IT, not just marketing. That alignment transforms eCommerce from a cost line item to a legitimate growth vehicle.

And that makes all the difference.

B2C Was All About Behavior. B2B Is About Jobs.

One of my favorite moments in our conversation was when Liz framed the difference between B2C and B2B motivations:

“In B2C, you’re buying from personal need or want. In B2B, you’re buying to get a job done.”

That’s not just a clever soundbite – it’s a foundational truth that too many overlook.

The B2C shopper is emotionally driven. The B2B buyer is functionally driven. That distinction shows up everywhere: in how we structure digital experiences, in how we frame KPIs, and most critically, in how we structure teams.

Complexity Isn’t the Problem – Confusion Is

Complexity is normal in B2B. It’s not an outlier – it’s the baseline.

Rep firms. Master distributors. Contract pricing. ERP workflows. Order approvals. Punchouts. All of that is table stakes.

What’s not normal – and what kills momentum – is confusion. Confusion between digital teams and commercial teams. Confusion between exec sponsors and execution layers. Confusion around what success even looks like.

And it’s often driven by one thing: a lack of depth.

Liz nailed this: “There’s so much software in the space right now creating more confusion because they’re just not built for real B2B complexity.”

Too much Me-Too. Not enough context.

Real B2B eCommerce Requires People Who’ve Lived It

There’s a growing talent gap in B2B digital – not because people aren’t smart, but because they haven’t worked the edge cases. They haven’t sat across from the procurement manager, or walked a branch, or figured out how to make ERP-integrated ordering “just work.”

That’s why practitioners like Liz are so valuable. They’ve seen the scenarios where logic breaks. They’ve helped organizations untangle the hairball of internal priorities, customer expectations, and platform capabilities.

And they know that alignment always beats aspiration.

Final Thought: Digital That’s Misaligned Will Always Underperform

Here’s my take: You can have the best commerce platform, sharpest UX, cleanest product data – but if your digital strategy is misaligned with your commercial organization, it’ll underdeliver.

That’s not just a tech problem. It’s a leadership problem.

Because at the end of the day, the shift to digital isn’t just about tools. It’s about building trust, process, and outcomes across sales, marketing, operations, and technology – all toward the same goal:

Helping customers get their jobs done better, faster, and with less friction.

And that starts with alignment.

Contact Liz

Liz Saxen-Duggan

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Transcript

Justin King:
How do you normally define B2B E commerce to people?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
For me it gets down to the motivation and what that does to influence across that journey because that’s where the complexity comes in. So when I was having the conversation it was B2C customer, I’m doing it for a need or a want or personal motivation. In B2B I’m doing it to complete a job. Right. So we get into our jobs to be done mentality. In B2B I’ve seen a lot more alignment of digital and E commerce but under the commercial organizations and it’s when I’m aligned under the commercial and sales teams and what’s there, it’s no longer just a order pad shift of dollars and what we’re trying to do. It’s not just another channel that is diverting dollars. It can actually be a gross vehicle.

Justin King:
Today’s guest is my friend Liz Duggan. She is a powerhouse in digital transformation. Trusted advisor to some of the world’s leading manufacturers, distributors, retailers, brands and l led digital Strategy for over 85 Fortune 1000 clients helped organizations drive billions of dollars in online transactions across E commerce, marketing, sales, customer experience and whether it’s building strategic roadmaps or leading enterprise wide transformation, she brings this incredibly rare mix of sharp strategy, real world execution. She knows B2B E Commerce. She’s currently at Smith and heads up strategy and works hand in hand with clients to unlock growth and really deliver results. I am so happy for this conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Liz, when and how long have we known each other? When was the first time we met? I think we were like virtual friends.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
We were virtual friends. Yeah, we met over a decade ago. Aim. Yeah, we were, we were instant message buddies. Yeah, I think it was at least a decade ago. I was posting around how product content and manufacturing and there was opportunity with Google Marketing Hub at the time and how things came together and it was opinionated and you were opinionated and you reached out and said you appreciate content. So we started just messaging back and forth on the industry world. I don’t think it was until oh goodness, maybe seven, eight years ago that we met in person for the first time.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
But industry events and what was.

Justin King:
So you were in, at a company in D.C. you weren’t living. Were you living in D.C. or are you?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
No, I was, I was traveling out to Reston every couple of weeks.

Justin King:
What was the name of that company?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Site Works. Then it turned to Shift seven Digital.

Justin King:
Oh yeah, siteworks. Shift seven now. Merkle, I guess. Yeah.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Small incestuous world that we live in it.

Justin King:
I think that I say that all the time. There’s so many of us that have worked together and there’s a. There’s a group of people too that I always say we gotta find something to actually do together. I think you’re one of those people. Like we have never really actually done work together, but we’ve had lots of conversation about the work that we’ve done together and there’s a big group of people that still have. I’d like to actually do some work, project work, customer work, strategy work, whatever it might be actually with them just because I think it would be a lot of fun to deal with.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
I think when people are passionate in this space, you see it come through, right? And all the various perspectives, it’s melded together. It gets the best outcome, especially for customers.

Justin King:
Well, I think there’s also, Liz, a real distinction between people that actually understand this world and don’t. I think, you know, we’ve seen especially over the last 24 months, a pretty rapid movement into B2B, whether that will stay or not. You know, companies seeing the opportunity in B2B platform, seeing the opportunity. But I think there’s a real distinction between people like you that actually understand this, that have lived it, have worked with so many customers. And it, I just think it shows a big, there’s a big knowledge gap with that.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
I think you’re seeing it even the software vendors and the ME too and where it starts to meld together and they’re creating more confusion because the depth isn’t there and it’s not handling those complex use cases and scenarios. It’s the superficial. I was talking to software vendor just the other day and oh, you know, manufacturers distribute B2B doesn’t have retail stores like they do. We call them branches and we can start to take those concepts and bring it together, but there’s just a lot of the hyperbole that, that we don’t really recognize in the space.

Justin King:
How do you distinguish between, like how, how do you normally define B2B E commerce to people like the real B2B commerce? I, I think, I think that’s part of the issue is like B2B E commerce by itself, like it’s, it’s okay that it means a bunch of things, of course, but how do you, how do you kind of define it when you talk to people?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Most recently I was having the conversation with the difference in the retail and B2C motivations. For me, it gets down to the motivation and what that does to influence across that journey because that’s where the complexity comes in. So when I was having the conversation, it was a B2C customer, I’m doing it for a need or a want or personal motivation. In B2B, I’m doing it to complete a job. Right. So we get into our jobs to be done mentality. And because of that, my motivation factor throughout that entire journey is different. And then when you layer on the complexities of the multiple approvers and users that are involved in that entire purchase, layered on with organizational hierarchy and pricing and unique contracts and all the things that make B2B complex.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
And it’s my motivation is what matters throughout that entire process. And that’s where the simplification comes in. And that’s the art form that I think a lot of people struggle with when they try and say, let me take those concepts and what I know from retail and start to apply it. We’re lacking the understanding of where that motivation lies and then where those complexities come in within that organization, both on the buyer side as well as the the company selling to them and how they need to support across multiple different touch points.

Justin King:
I like the way you said like jobs to be done is appropriate as you. I think there’s another movement that I’m trying to kind of distinguish between two, which is kind of the B2B wholesale side versus B2B. I in the training I said there’s lots of B2B. What we’re talking about is B2B2B. You know, manufacturer, distributor to selling to another company versus like manufacturer to distributor, retailer to consumer or. Or to retailer to consumer. And I think there’s a. Do you see a big difference between those two types of companies that are trying to do B2B commerce?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Yeah, I mean we do a lot with B2B to C and then B2B to little B is what I call it. Right. Because it’s usually the. The mom pop shops and where that adoption is. I think the motivation’s different as you look at that. But then also just how much around that end consumer, especially with privacy and data constraints, do you start to really understand? And I think in the B2B to little B model it’s. I don’t have the salesforce to support the small mom and pops is usually the use case that we deal with there. How do I help support the.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
That smaller consumer model when I can’t be in the fields and the way my operational model’s been set up in the consumer world. Oh, I had the distributor in Play. I want to get closer as maybe a manufacturer and I’m trying to understand those consumer behaviors. How do I make it easy to get that data back so that I can start to influence personalized support in maybe services in other areas as I get more data back from those end consumption points. So it’s really around what data are we trying to capture through those journeys and then how do we adjust the organization to support different models in those scenarios?

Justin King:
Yeah, I like that. I like that definition of it. Like, I like when you’re talking about motivation too. I think there’s a big, big difference between them. I think, I think we met in 2013 ish, which would have been like 12 years ago. In, in those 12 years, 13 years almost. What are your kind of biggest surprises that you’ve seen over the last 13 years working in this industry?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Worked in it longer. The gray hair to support it. I think it’s surprising how much has changed with the advancements. It should be easier, but then how much has remained the same. I feel that we’ve had a lot of the cyclical conversations, which it always surprises me that we haven’t made more advancements. But I feel in the last year the opportunity for advancement has grown exponentially and where that’s going to evolve, the last 10 years are not going to look like the next three. I think as far as progress goes and where the investments and how you drive that for your organization and the pace of change is really going to start to accelerate a bit further because we’ve always said, oh, you can’t be left in the dust and wait around for it to happen. The technology has gotten easier to enable those things faster and if you don’t, your competitors will.

Justin King:
When I look at what I’m surprised at that we, that there’s like so much of the, so much of my speaking is the same speaking I did in 2010, same messages. I think executive alignment, change management, customer adoption are like still the primary issues, which were the same issues back then. I think the biggest way that shifted though is that it’s moved from a come with me, come do this to like, you’ve got to do this. It’s critical. And, and then data points to show where it’s critical. Yeah, and I think that’s been the most surprising for me.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
I, I think the. What I’ve seen, it used to be an initiative that was led by IT and technology. Right. We would say, oh, there’s a platform, we need to do this. How do we go about it? And then by the Time we are getting to UAT or launch. Oh right. How, how are we going to drive the adoption? What are we going to do around it? How do we get our people on board?

Justin King:
Right.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
And one of the biggest shifts is when you get that executive alignment, we actually get to deal with the human side of the digital transformation. So despite all the technology and AI, there’s still the human and it’s where the resistance comes from, the adoption and everything else. And I mean the stats and the data, you can get a seven time better outcome when you get that executive sponsor and driving those changes earlier. Right. When we don’t wait till the end, we actually see better success in achieving the outcomes that you actually built your business case around. And I think that’s critical as we look at these of how do we get the sales team aligned that they’re going to drive their customers and get them engaged in these initiatives. How do we align customer experience and the service teams that, that they don’t fall down or break kind of what these patterns are and the sooner that we align those through that journey and where those complex touch points are and look at the business changes needed, we don’t end up with then just same old process around expensive new technology. Right.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
And then start to fail things down.

Justin King:
Is there a most interesting or best placed team in the organization? So we think about how it’s typically led by tech in the past. That’s starting to shift. Where, where do you see it shifting to and what in your opinion are some of the best places? I know it depends on every company of course, because I knew that would be your answer. But in general, what are kind of the most interesting places that the digital team has been placed at?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
In B2B I’ve seen a lot more alignment of digital and E commerce, but under the commercial organizations. Right. And it’s when I’m aligned under the commercial and sales teams and what’s there, it’s no longer just a order pad shift of dollars. Right. And what we’re trying to do, it’s not just another channel that is diverting dollars. It can actually be a growth vehicle. And that was one of the biggest pieces that always surprised me is okay, what are we looking at for our revenue growth targets? Oh no, we’re just looking at this to lower like the, the cost to serve these customers and let’s move those dollars over. And by putting it under the commercial team now there’s a growth initiative of it being a revenue generation source.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
So that one has I think helped a lot because then I need the sales team aligned. I need to drive that adoption. I need to drive where those places mature. That’s been where I’ve seen a lot more success as of late. You know, when it’s still treated as a shared service, either under marketing or others, but it’s not driven for the right attribution or KPIs, then it’s just a constant battle of what’s the ROI tied to this. And that gets into a little bit of some of the attribution challenges we see across the board.

Justin King:
I like that because it can be a forcing factor for sales to adopt. I mean, with sales being some of the hardest people to get adopted. Putting it under sales. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I saw some, I saw a really successful team also put under customer success. So the, the. I’m writing this new book, B2B Commerce for CEOs and, and it’s. And I have like where to place the team and we talk about it and marketing being the first kind of place people want to put it.

Justin King:
But maybe that’s not the best place. I love that. Including sales. As a sales. In the commercial side, you started talking about attribution. So in general, I think the data shows that there for. For customers that use E commerce. For the customers of our customers.

Justin King:
Right. So the. For the customers of a distributor, for example, that use digital tools, E commerce being one of them, that both offline and online sales, you know, increases dramatically. But I think what’s interesting in there is the offline sales, how offline sales are increased dramatically, which brings up this idea of attribution. Talk to me how you think through attribution in the B2B world and maybe explain, explain what you mean by attribution first of all. And then let’s talk about what kind of what it means in the B2B way.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
When I’m putting my business hat on working with customers, they need to justify the investments that they’re making into digital. That’s the base problem statement. As we look at this, how are we attributing the success of those digital channels tied to the influence that they’re creating across the organization? The struggle is this is not just my standard conversion rate optimization or looking at like how through that funnel am I driving more revenue through the digital channel? And that’s just because of B2B’s complexity. End of story. Because I have multiple buyers, multiple stakeholders that are involved in that process. So I might be going online and starting my procurement and discovery process. But when it comes time to Actual purchase. And it’s with procurement they’re placing either through EDI or through, you know, sales rep or forum POS still, God forbid there’s still faxes out there as we go through this.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
But the origination was maybe done through some digital marketing activities, some emails or some online discovery or things to validate what that was needing. One of the biggest gaps that we have is I’m now not tying back the influence that digital had through that top of funnel and where that is tied into the conversion. And so that’s been the underlying problem is when I have a complex enterprise, a complex buying journey and multiple touch points, how am I actually getting the right data throughout that journey to justify the investments I’m making into my marketing and digital channels to drive further investment and the influence that it’s actually having across the organization.

Justin King:
So that brings up two questions for me. One is what’s a better way of doing attribution? But before we get there is is when we talk about justifying investments, often it’s done by percentage of revenue or you know, revenue numbers. Is, is that even the right way to justify an investment in this?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
In E Commerce it’s an easy metric, but it’s a hard one. A couple Examples I had one distributor, 80% of their revenue went through their E commerce digital channel but they were supporting a specific BU and that BU president said that number was going to happen either way. Right. That business is going to come through whether it’s with my sales rep. They’re just using it as an order pad essentially was his logic. So for the E commerce team he said revenue you are influencing within my organization picked a number, 20%. So I’m only going to say 20% of our business is being driven from Digital Even though 80% is going through that channel. So you have that type of juxtaposition when there’s kind of that, that legacy shift.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
On the other hand, when you have a big disparity of revenue and it’s a digital such a small proportion taking just even what’s going through there. If I have a $2 billion distributor and they only have 400 million going through their digital channels, I’m only going to say oh I need a small piece, well then how do I get the uplift to convert more that I could get cost savings on or look at expansion and growth into cross sell and other opportunities and so taking it just as a percentage of revenue, it’s where do I get the growth vehicle then to drive that further? If I’m not telling that narrative correctly and then it hinders where investments are made and then it goes into, you know, infrastructure and manufacturing and let me optimize in other areas versus looking at ways that you can streamline that self service and grow, you know, kind of cross sell in different channels with, with your customer base.

Justin King:
You used a word there, you said driven. I think that I haven’t really thought about this before but really it’s about who’s driving business more than where the transactions are happening. Right. So transactions can be happening through edi but if E commerce is driving business, so that goes to your point about the distributor. That’s 80% coming in like it’s going to come in. You’re not necessarily driving business there. You’re not really increasing business. It’s not really strategic.

Justin King:
It’s just the way, you know, it’s the method by which orders come in.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Right.

Justin King:
How do you, how do you distinguish that for companies? I think that’s a really unique way of looking at it. And how what then becomes the how do you then measure and attribute in those types of scenarios?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
This is why I have a job. No, this is not an easy problem.

Justin King:
For this is how you’re Liz is going to spell out now how you get a job like Liz’s go number one.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Yeah, I, I think that this is a problem that is more prevalent for the business stakeholders and sometimes they can’t articulate why it’s the problem or what that that looks like and it’s not an easy one to solve. If it was an easy button I think we wouldn’t be discussing today. But the best way I’ve found because it’s going to vary by organization. The underlying challenge here is the data silos that exist across that customer journey and not just the digital customer journey. So how do I map out where the various stakeholders in a company buying is going to go through and look at what are the steps they are doing through that journey. Where are we influencing either through digital marketing or digital E commerce channels or discovery processes and then what can we do to try and look at those handoff points to other systems people solutions that are out there and what can we start to do to recover some of that attribution if a conversion’s occurring in other areas? A perfect example is I might be the one that originally made that purchase but or went and kind of looked and did the research around what I needed to buy from you as a. We’ll just go with an H Vac distributor. Right.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
I’m going through and I say this is what I need for the, this big install and job that’s coming up. So I need to make sure we get all of these parts. But I hand it off to my procurement person. They, they purchased that. But your influence and your marketing went to me. So how am I even going to get the revenue attribution for my marketing campaign that like made me want to go and influence that sale. And so those are the pieces that you really just need to take a step back and look through those various touch points and then what data do we have, what systems are there and then how do we start to compile that together? Because this isn’t a normal like customer data problem that we can go solve because I have multiple stakeholders. So I need to look at it both at the user as well as the macro organizational level of who I’m buying and selling to and then say where are those inflection and influence points through that buying process?

Justin King:
Yeah. Then the manufacturing side too, like the company that let’s say E Commerce sells a sample to a brand new customer and that sample then turns into a thousand piece order three months from now.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Right.

Justin King:
But the, but the order never like it never touched online again after that sample, you know that they drove, they drove business there. So again attribution is interesting. So here’s my sticking point with this Liz, is that everything you’re talking about takes analytics y to be able to track like I think, I think some of the things you’re saying. Other there’s people that are listening that are like I don’t even know if we have analytics in place to track that, to be able to determine that. We certainly don’t have the reports to show it and that’s okay. But I don’t even know if we have the data correct for that. Right.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
And it’s not the small ones, it’s the big enterprises as well. And it’s not just web analytics, it’s I might have my customer data platforms and looking at those engagement points right through that journey. I might be looking at, I need the orders and the things in my erp. Like I have all of these other influencing metrics beyond just web analytics that need to come together. And so a lot of this ends up being sometimes custom data lakes and how we’re going to do that to get into some bi reporting and things to aggregate that because of the complexity of all of that siloed data. If it was just a digital problem it would be oh well here’s through this flow. But because there’s so many Other touch points I need to kind of aggregate and collect across many different data sources in order to even be able to tell that narrative. And we all know that data is never an issue in B2B.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
And as we go through this it’s where do I start to make sure I have those. And it can be foundational. You can build it over time. Start with kind of the happy path and the core use cases, but use it as a self funding mechanism as you prove that influence to justify more dollars to help tell that narrative and story better and make the change happen across those solutions that you need.

Justin King:
Yeah, you start, the longer you kind of think through this, you start seeing the direct connection between E commerce analytics and then CRM and data and how the quotes and communication happen there. But I think the base level for everyone listening is, you know, at least have at least kind of, kind of your core analytics running. Even if you don’t know how to use the data and make it actionable, at least be able to collect the data so that you can bring in somebody that does.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen a huge uptick with the convergence of commerce channels and then looking at that sales and CRM data. And how are those worlds starting to come together? Right. How do I take the influence of maybe a digital marketing. I sent an email to a customer, make sure that that’s in the hands of the salesperson, that they know what we’ve been messaging to them and bringing those journeys together in B2B. I think that that’ll be the next iteration to gain and capitalize on some of this efficiency. And it’s also where you see that alignment under that commercial organization making more sense because it’s bringing a efficiency channel through expansion that helps also alleviate some of the adoption challenges that you may have had in the past.

Justin King:
No, I think what you said there about CRM and kind of all front office, I kind of watching a. Not that it’s happening, but a needed convergence for all front office things as we kind of eliminate, I mean the problem with E commerce even in the attribution side, the problem with E commerce. Liz, the word E commerce, is it really like E commerce is probably a small part of this when you think about the digital tools that need to serve your customer. If you, if you kind of reduce the importance of E commerce and increase the importance of kind of digital tools instead, I think front office that will include all the things E commerce, marketing, CRM, marketing automation and then also include things like digital supply chain, the things that are kind of connected to the messy middle between that and the back office, like digital supply chain, you know, having, having more conversations that are more holistic about all of those platforms versus E Comm. Is that that’s something you’re seeing or you see kind of happening?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
I’m smirking because I, I actually have a slide. I mean I have lots of slides, but I had one where it was the front office, mid office and then like your back office and where those are. But I think the struggle that a lot of leaders are having is the breadth of understanding across all these ecosystem and acronyms. Frankly we’re really good at those. But I need to know what all of these are. But those software vendors are also crossing those lines quite a bit. And so when I’m somebody and I say this is my problem for my business, I will have five different software vendors in completely different categories saying let me come help you with that problem. And how do I even navigate that Based off of need has been I think a bigger challenge over the last few years and perforation of like as we look composable, like it’s a pendulum swinging back and forth.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
But it’s really hard for these companies to go navigate of what is actually going to address this. And this is where in like digital transformation programs you’ve had issues in the past where customer service went and bought a tool that did X, the digital and ecom teams went and did the same thing. So you end up with like three tools essentially having the same intent and solving the same problems completely different ways. Then we lose the alignment. And I think that’s part of the struggle across all of this is it’s not just front office, mid office to do digital transformation. Hit my buzzword bingo correctly. We need to kind of look across the enterprise and what’s there. But it needs to be a functional business need identification before we start talking about the technology or the tools at all.

Justin King:
I think one of the problems there is that it is kind of responsible for tech. So you kind of have this kind of push and pull that is constantly happening where I mean first of all it doesn’t know all of the marketing tech. So you know, 10 years ago, even 10 years ago, it really could control most of the technology within a manufacturer distributor. And now that technology, because it touches so many functional areas, it’s not just about ERP anymore or the things supporting erp. The control really needs to be relinquished by it to have other technology. Because so often what happens is once you have customer success as one platform, marketing has another platform, then Somebody up top says we need to collapse these into one. And so they, they pull it back into it instead of pulling into other technical areas of the company. And I think, I think, I think we probably need to.

Justin King:
I haven’t really thought about this before, but probably need to have conversations about how IT and Digital are both tech teams, even though they don’t report to the same spot. Hopefully. But they both have, they both have a need to control the tech that’s delivered inside the company.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Yeah. And I think it’s the purview of those groups. But by what is the business case behind that need? Right. And I think as you go and build those business cases, that’s why that whole attribution story, you know, where that control and how I’m funding these things. I mean, I’ve been in the projects where a. The business unit was funding and there were two different business units and they had their set of requirements and what they were going to do when they were funding it. It got involved. But because we’re the unifier, we have, you know, enterprise standards and what we need to do, they introduced a whole slew of things that actually drove up the cost.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
But then BU’s are paying for it. So it’s where, where this also pulls. It’s really ultimately where the budgetary decisions end up in the organization. And how is that justified and what is it trying to drive from a centralization perspective?

Justin King:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s talk about some of our other favorite topics. Customer adoption. What are you seeing in the world of customer adoption and why are we still talking about it? So just a fun little anecdote. Last year I did a new keynote because I was like, I’m fresh. I’m out of Salsify. I’m doing my new thing. I’m going to come up with something brand new.

Justin King:
I came up with an amazing keynote. It was great. And in the middle of the keynote, I didn’t talk about any of the things I normally talk about. Right in the middle of the keynote, I talked about for like five minutes. I’ve talked about, I talked about customer adoption and change management. After the keynote’s done, people came up, great, great. You know the. I wish you would have spent more time on that middle five minutes on change management and customer adoption.

Justin King:
Next person. This is great. This is great. You know what I wish we would have spent more time on. I’m like, so I just went back. So I’ve just gone back, I’ve reshaped them, of course, but I’VE basically created the same keynote that I’ve been doing for years. And, and, and that’s what’s getting, that’s what’s getting the most response.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Yep.

Justin King:
But why are we, why are we still talking about it?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
It’s the human side, no matter what. We’re human. Right. I mean in this technology landscape and all these projects and initiatives and what’s there if I resist that change, whether it be my internal stakeholders that my sales team that’s saying I’m still, I’m still dealing with my customers, it’s my institutional knowledge that’s my safety net or it’s the, you know, external. I’ve always worked with this company and I just don’t have the trust and confidence in what they’re doing or promising or presenting to me in those digital means. So for, for me, the adoption piece has to start early, just like that change management piece and trying to get your internal stakeholders aligned of what’s coming and why and the outcomes that you’re expecting. The customer strategy has to be how am I going to align my internal people to support our customers and make sure that I can meet them and reduce the friction that they’re experiencing and look at making sure I’m driving confidence that when they engage with me digitally, it’s the same or better than what I had when I picked up the phone and talked to my sales rep. I believe what I’m going to see the moment that that trust is broken or it starts, it instantly erodes and then you don’t have the consistency of use and that’s where the adoption pieces start to fail.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Which all goes back to data, of course.

Justin King:
Well, yeah, I mean I am interested in. Before we talk a little bit about the kind of the people side of adoption, what are their, what are the things that are most left out of a project that affect adoption that people just don’t think of in the beginning as they’re kind of planning their. If, let’s say they’re, they’re doing an e commerce site for the first time. What are the things that actually affect adoption that people just don’t think through in the beginning that can be solved with some, with some technical pieces?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Is it what I think I know about my customers or am I actually hearing from my customers? I think there’s a lot in B2B of well, I know my customers. This is what they expect, this is what they want because this is how I engage in non digital ways with them. Like that’s their expectation and as mediums and Channels shift, expectations change, generational shifts change. And so are you building things for the sake of building things because of that how you work as an organization or are you doing things that are going to be value added? Right. We’ve seen so many times processes or tools get over engineered based on non digital ways of working and then they just become really expensive technology and tools that aren’t changing kind of ways of working for the organization. So I think you create friction with a customer there unnecessarily or unintentionally because you’re, it’s kind of status quo. And then organizationally and that adoption, because adoption’s two sided in B2B. Right.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Because I, I need my, my stakeholders to support and drive towards it whether it’s customer service teams or sales teams. And, and how are we going to go through it’s that the day in the life and what am I solving? Right. Like it’s thought about near the end of a program or project or initiative, it’s not thought about up front. And so I’m going into UAT and I’m starting to introduce these tools to my customer service team that has to support and, and whomever it may be. And well this isn’t going to work for the business and the problems that I have. And then that resistance takes much more time to overcome. And so it’s just a slower rollout, a slower period that you’re losing opportunity on that time to value with your customers and getting the business results that you were hoping for.

Justin King:
I’ve actually had this question a couple times recently. Like in individual conversations the question is okay, so I’m supposed to talk to my customer, what do I do? What do I talk to my customer about? There’s actually a little bit of paralysis with people of okay, gotta talk to my customer, schedule the meeting and then thinking about preparing for that meeting. Like what do I, what do I ask a customer? Like what do I talk about? Like not, not because I just want to have a conversation, but what do I actually ask them to draw out the things that I need to draw out of them.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Right. You don’t go ask them, you don’t go ask them features. Right? We have to remember what’s that motivation and intent, what’s the job that they’re trying to achieve and where do they have friction in engaging with you as an organization? So we’ve done it through surveys, we’ve done it through customer interviews. I have a amazing woman on my team who drives a lot of this and as we go through That a lot of times it’s asking the same question in a different way. But I’m, I’m trying to get to where, if it’s the five whys, go back to what the root cause and the friction point is and what is it that they’re trying to achieve. I’m trying to get the status of my order. But why? Because I have a job and things that I need to get done, that I have promises to my customer to be on the job site and get that accomplished. But like we need to kind of peel back the onion and the layers to understand where that is.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Otherwise it turns into just a feature and a parity shift. And let me make sure I have all of these things there that don’t add value to the efficiency that I’m looking for as a B2B buyer coming to you in a digital mean to self serve.

Justin King:
So if I’m hearing right, like if, if you just ask a customer about they need to, like if you heard that we need to be able to check the order in your head, you’d kind of say oh, you need order status. But being inquisitive, asking those next questions uncovers the kind of the root problem behind that. I like that a lot.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
It’s also where you get the innovative ideas. How do I get past the commodity or get into more differentiation or innovation in my space? And so I start that question, I peel back and I say they are lacking actually tools for their job site management or what they’re doing to run their business if I’m dealing with the B2B to little B that we were talking about in those small shops. So we’ve actually ended up building in project management tools that help them run, that give them stickiness into the business. Because hey, I’m going to them because it’s easier for me to work with and then they become my de facto. And by the way, look at the wealth of information that that distributor manufacturer just collected by getting all of that ancillary information around the edges of those experiences and starting to build that out further. So taking that time and that step back to understand those root cause allows for a different vision of that journey and experience opportunity as well.

Justin King:
Yeah, I would agree. I think the, the biggest innovation is when you’re thinking through how do I give my customer tools to help them do their job, that it’s not about add to cart or even finding product, it’s all those other tools. Tools as a job, like you said.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Leads to innovation and that’s really how I work with clients of when we go through how are we prioritizing roadmaps? It’s so much more than just like the cost. Right. I’m not Chinese menuing this and saying here’s the cost for all of these different features. We need to look at it holistically through those various lenses. So is it driving value for the business? It could maybe. Is it driving value for the customer? Sometimes those don’t always align. What’s the technical debt change management there? What’s the organizational change? But my last one that I always include is, is this table stakes industry standard? Is this a differentiation or is this actually an innovative piece that is going to like leapfrog you? Because if I start to get those, I need to wait that higher because even if there’s more challenge to get there the market opportunity and then as I look at my KPIs aligned to it, it’s going to help actually tell a bit better and stronger narrative.

Justin King:
I, I like, I like that last piece especially is that innovative or just table stakes? That helps with prioritization. How, how do you talk to digital leaders about talking to their executive team? We’ve kind of talked on both sides of this. We’ve talked kind of from the executive change management, talked about the digital leader. Like how do you, how do you help digital leaders communicate better with their executive team and more so like what’s the value of that? I guess I’m stating there’s a value inherently in there.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
You need the executive sponsor, you need it to come top down, right. For that change management piece. Like that spokesperson helps set the tone and the mandate across where that change management program is going to start. When you get that alignment and you feed them, I mean the best way to go about it is when you can feed your executive stakeholder and sponsor what to say and when throughout this program to kind of help with that consistency. It doesn’t lose sight, right? It’s not just at the end of like, oh, this was an important initiative and then look, it’s live. Congratulations, you did great. So that’s the importance of it. It depends where they’re at maturity and what their understanding is.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
I mean I’ve worked with manufacturers that it took them three years to sell in to their C suite. The way they finally broke it down, it wasn’t the numbers and the forecast of like, oh, we think we can get an incremental hundred million dollars in revenue. It was a video of an employee, their shirt going through the site and saying, look how hard it is to do business with us they couldn’t find anything. It was just friction point. Look how hard it is to work with us. This is a risk and so ultimately you have to find which of the three it’s consulting. There’s always three are the big levers. As we look at our change and like business case creation, I’m going to always have a growth target and number as a potential.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Right. It’s, it’s commerce, it’s digital sales. That’s, that’s the easier, the obvious one. I can have my cost reduction like my reduce the cost to serve. Look at this efficiency. It used to cost me five to seven dollars for every sales or customer service call. I can digitize all that. All these amazing savings.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
The third and the one that I think we overlook too much is what’s that risk mitigation play. And that’s where those customer experience. Oh this, this friction. Our competitors are easier to work with than us. And if we don’t do this, then this is what happens. Right. And how we quantify that. There’s different ones between financial security, other ones that you can look at but that KPI strategy and how you roll it up.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
Ultimately those three levers are the ones and how we’re going to have that conversation.

Justin King:
Yeah, I like that a lot. Do you, do you have other things that you’d like to talk about?

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
I mean we’ve covered the gamut. You tell me. That’s was my agenda of just things that I felt could augment within conversations you’ve been having in the space. But I have an open book.

Justin King:
Liz, thank you so much. This is a pretty amazing conversation as always. I just really enjoy the conversations with you and the knowledge you have around the space. Really appreciate coming on. Let’s definitely do it again very, very soon.

Liz Saxen-Duggan:
A lot of fun. Thanks for having me, Justin.

Justin King:
Thanks, Liz.