B2B has been a sleeping digital giant, but it feels to me like the giant is waking up to the power of digital for engaging with their customers in new ways and in transforming their own ways of doing business lets call it the channel shift challenge. I recently had the pleasure of facilitating the B2B Digital Forum, a roundtable session of like-minded senior digital marketers and heads of ecommerce from businesses focused primarily on marketing, selling and servicing the needs of other businesses. This is a group that came together eighteen months ago frustrated by the mainstream focus on B2C digital and keen to share experience and improve performance in digital for B2B. What really struck me at the most recent session (the sixth so far) was the real appetite for distilling down what are the key factors in driving success through digital in a B2B situation. It reminded me of other attitudinal tipping points Ive seen at different stages over my 14 years in the online world. It feels like a wave of determination to make stuff happen that retailers saw more than five years ago, that consumer brands, media businesses and telecoms firms have been forced to follow. So why has B2B been slower in the drive to digital? Well firstly there are exceptions and there have been good examples in B2B but lets come back to that. We should remind ourselves that consumer behaviour has changed dramatically in recent years to the point where its difficult to remember the days when we didnt rely on the web for so many parts of our life. Of course consumer facing businesses have helped drive that change and many have been alive to the opportunities created for riding that wave. In B2B it can be complicated to identify and differentiate the roles of buyers and users of products and services in order to get the online experience working successfully. But that is fixable and there is one thing we must bear in mind in a B2B digital challenge - most of these now web-savvy consumers have jobs or run businesses and so for a big part of their life they are also buyers or users of our business products and services. But its a simple reality that when we are at work our online expectations dont change, they are influenced by the best of our experiences online as consumers. So, if Im used to using eBay, Amazon and Facebook in my personal life Im going to be disappointed if the trading platform, procurement website and company intranet Im asked to use at work dont match their functionality and usability. Driving the required change in large organisations is complex; you will need strategic clarity, well informed investment, unswerving leadership, service/technology innovation and customer insight to deliver great experiences that lock in customers to your business rather your competitors. Im looking forward to working with the B2B Digital Forum in 2011 as we focus on their channel shift challenge if you want to know more contact me. Bill James