This digital era sees the exceptions around the B2B technology buying strategies across business, and marketers are prepared to adapt – claims LinkedIn.
Whether the pandemic has presented new business opportunities or pressing challenges for brands, markets have adopted new ways of operations. This primarily involves the perspective of customers and prospects – which may make marketing functionalities seem more complicated this year.
Although many B2B enterprises managed to survive the initial impact of the global crisis, a new study reveals that its waves will continue to be felt in the coming days, predominantly in the technology area across industries.
Indeed, as we advance, technology is poised to play a key role in how brands navigate the rapidly evolving marketplace. The steep volume of digital transformation is anticipated to take place over the next few years from rising dependency on cloud-centric solutions and remote work – shifting how companies operate.
LinkedIn has recently published its “Age of Agility” report that focuses on overall B2B tech spending.
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LinkedIn surveyed 5894 technology decision-makers to understand the current market scenario. However, according to the statistics, most of the B2B marketing leaders (about 34%) intend to reduce their technology spending. This is compared to pre-COVID spending levels – which suggests it may be more critical for the B2B marketers working.
In this context, only 13% of the surveyed respondents indicated that they would increase their B2B technology spending – compared to the pre-pandemic times. Overall, some 30% of enterprises intend to maintain their existing B2B technology spends.
Surprisingly, even 13% of the marketers reported that they planned to suspend their complete B2B tech initiatives and spending. It may come as surprise to many that technology plans are globally decreasing; however, the pandemic also has a positive impact on B2B marketing technology budgets with the increasing virtual events.
Even though there have been budget cuts, of those marketers who reduced, about 39% made an effort to focus on their existing vendors and internal users. This is primarily to avoid further adoption of new strategies or without having to buy new martech tools, claims a recent Gartner study.
Embracing this sudden change is one of the most perplexing yet interesting aspects of utilizing innovative technology. Still, many emerging use cases around technology can emerge from anywhere in an enterprise. In fact, 63% of influential business functions currently sit away from the IT department.
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This points to the fact that the increased responsibility on IT teams to help, support, and advise the decision-making business process owned by non-IT stakeholders. This will undoubtedly enable them to rally around a shared vision towards their technology outcomes. Thus, CIOs should guide diverse sets of influencers via the next wave of technology investments.
“Although this year has taught us that no business is 100 percent resilient, those fortified by digital technology are more resilient and more capable of transforming when faced with sweeping changes like those we are experiencing.” – cited Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft in the LinkedIn report.
