1. The new digital
ecosystem reality:
Digital commerce is a journey
Technology Institute
November 2014

2. 81 percent of CEOs believe
that technology will
transform their business
PwC’s 17th Annual Global CEO Survey, January 2014,
www.pwc.com/ceosurvey.

3. PwC 1
Overview
The ability to market, sell and serve
through digital means has become a
key expectation of all enterprises, but
a variety of industry challenges
complicate those efforts at
Technology companies.
 An extensive network of resellers
and integrators are involved in the
selling and support process, which
creates technical and operational
complexity;
 High-tech industry customers
have experience in technology and
thus have high expectations for
digital capabilities across web,
mobile, and social;
 Companies are rapidly deploying
new products and services, and
need to provide easy and
immediate access to pre-sales
information, evaluation products,
and current entitlements;
The time has come for a new
transition, one in which companies
focus not on a digital strategy, but
rather a business strategy for the
digital age. Because of their unique
position within this inflection point,
Technology companies have the
potential to take the lead in making
digital commerce work, work well,
and inspire customers. That means
understanding the various facets of
digital commerce, while carefully
engaging customers and enabling
partners.
Technology companies find
themselves in a uniquely enviable
position these days. New digital
technology has transformed almost
every element of every business. But
what enterprises have experienced
and delivered up to now is only a
small percentage of what’s possible.
The transformation toward seamless
digital capabilities – and especially
digital commerce – has only just
begun.
In PwC’s 17th Annual Global CEO
Survey, an overwhelming 81 percent
of CEOs believe that technology will
transform their business, but that
percentage is so high that the
transition becomes meaningless if
everyone does it.1 Achieving a
frictionless state of digital commerce
requires careful business planning,
operational excellence, thoughtful
customer experiences, and a flexible
technology architecture that can meet
current and future needs. Companies
need to start thinking not just of
transactions but of the entire
customer lifecycle. For Technology
companies, addressing this lifecycle
1 PwC’s 17th Annual Global CEO Survey, January
2014, www.pwc.com/ceosurvey.
means accommodating more moving
parts than some other industries face.
For instance, Technology companies
tend to have extensive networks of
resellers, partners, and systems
integrators involved in the selling and
support process. Frequently, these
are geographically organized,
necessitating insights into culture,
currency, compliance, and other
concerns. Companies must think
through carefully how to engage
directly with their customers without
upsetting their partner ecosystem. In
addition, companies must think about
the tools they provide their partners
to help them conduct business more
simply.
Technology companies find
themselves in a uniquely
enviable position these days
The New Digital Ecosystem Reality is a series providing PwC’s perspectives relative to the trends and challenges
that businesses should consider to remain competitive. PwC has identified nine key technological, economic, and
political trends for CEOs to consider. In this article, we look at digital commerce, which is affected by all nine
trends, but most significantly by five in particular: disruptive innovation, managing cost and complexity,
convergence, consumerization of IT, and the explosion of data.

4. 2 The new digital ecosystem reality: Digital commerce is a journey
Technology companies also tend to
offer highly complex product
offerings. These may be hardware,
software, or systems that combine
both. These offerings may involve
complex configuration options,
professional services, such as
consulting, and educational services,
such as training. The cost and
availability of those services may be
predicated on contractual discounts,
renewal programs, and entitlement or
license compliance. These challenges
separate digital commerce from
traditional e-commerce models found
in other industries.
By virtue of their frequently selling
into IT departments, Technology
companies face the blessing and the
curse that their customers have
extensive experience in technology.
This means they also have extremely
high expectations regarding digital
interaction. These customers have a
high propensity for doing research
either online or among peers long
before they identify themselves as a
prospect and engage with
salespeople. It’s entirely possible that
a Technology vendor without strong
analytics and social strategy may lose
business without ever having a
conversation.
In addition, Technology companies
themselves are strongly impacted by
technology itself. Just as in many
other industries, their business
models are changing. Their customers
can experience their products in more
ways than ever before. The industry
has moved beyond the days of
licensed software-in-a-box to SaaS
subscriptions and “freemium”
models. They can sample software in
trialware versions before buying it, or
even speaking with the company.
These options affect more than
Technology companies’ revenue
streams. They mean that these
companies must accommodate new
ways of doing business, not only at
the beginning of the sales and
deployment process, but also when it
comes time to renew contracts for
products and services.
But it’s important to note that
Technology companies themselves
are not immune from the evolving
digital landscape. They face
competition from new market
entrants – smaller companies with
fewer legacy products and cloud-
based point solutions. Free from
legacy constraints, they can be more
nimble. Their SaaS-based models
simplify installation and reduce
infrastructure costs. They target
influencers rather than buyers with
online evaluations and trials, and
they use the digital channel to keep
field sales teams small.
At the same time, customer
expectations are changing in the B2B
world. Enterprise customers are
consumers in their personal lives, and
they now have expectations based on
their B2C experiences. These
expectations range from easy access
to product information to complex
configuration, quoting, and pricing
online, to self-service portals. Like
consumers, enterprise customers will
look for information both from the
company itself as well as through
social channels. It is important that
companies learn to be part of the
conversation.
Based on these reasons, Technology
companies face what may look like a
daunting challenge, one that to solve
it, requires understanding an
unprecedented number of
departments and capabilities. That’s a
big task, but one that – with the right
strategy – can be tamed.
Defining digital
commerce
An important aspect of digital
commerce is its ability to encompass
and enfold the entire, four-phase
customer digital lifecycle:
 Discover
 Transact
 Fulfill
 Care
Technology companies need to look
at the elements in this lifecycle not
individually, but rather holistically,
and to do so in a way that creates a
completely customer-centric view.
This lifecycle in its ideal form is an
ongoing process, one in which the
customer discovers the vendor and
conducts the transaction, after which
the vendor fulfills the delivery and
provides service and support. As the
process continues, the customer
discovers more of the vendors’
products and services, and the cycle
begins again. The last area – care – is
frequently overlooked by Technology
companies as part of the sales and
retention strategy, causing them to
lose repeat business. Therefore,
digital commerce requires tight
integration of technology and
business process across business, IT,
marketing, and support teams.
Technology companies
themselves are not immune
from the evolving digital
landscape

5. PwC 3
Discover
The digital channel is becoming
increasingly more important as the
source for generating new leads and
customer acquisition. Potential
customers will often use digital
channels to find and explore offerings
before engaging with field or inside
sales. They expect rich content that
goes beyond standard product
information and they expect
experiences tailored to their needs.
Customers expect easy access to
product information, case studies,
videos, and evaluation products.
Providing these types of capabilities
allows companies to potentially
identify leads earlier, while data
collection and analytics tools allow
companies to engage prospects with
targeted offers earlier in the sales
process.
Even more important, is the
information tracked consistently
across multiple channels, so that
representatives know whether
prospects have visited the Web site,
queried on social media about
products, or watched a corporate
video online. Transforming a
prospect into a customer means
having a better understanding of their
interests and interactions with the
company than ever before.
Transact
Technology companies should also
consider how to apply technology to
technology selling. What parts of the
sales cycle can they automate, such as
self-service configuration of quotes?
The goal: automating as many
segments of the sales cycle as
possible, so that salespeople are
focused on productive selling
activities rather than time-wasting
administrative tasks.
At the same time, companies should
apply similar automation capabilities
to both partner enablement and
customer enablement. This means
allowing partners access to sales
systems, and enabling prospects to
design their own desired systems,
even from a pick-list, indicating as
much as possible their options for
other services, such as consulting and
education.
Fulfill
As Technology companies evolve
their products and enhance their
digital engagement with customers,
fulfillment becomes more
challenging. It becomes more of a
The four-phase customer
digital lifecycle
Transact
Fulfill
Care
Discover

6. 4 The new digital ecosystem reality: Digital commerce is a journey
consideration during both the
evaluation and post-sales lifecycle
stages. Companies must provide their
customers easy self-service access to
those products and services that they
are entitled to use. For cloud
providers, fulfillment is an ongoing
process that requires very high
availability. While fulfillment can be
challenging, the ongoing engagement
creates another opportunity to collect
data and engage with customers.
Care
As the preceding interactions have
changed, so too must support. Many
Technology companies are already
recognizing that support is more than
just resolving break-fix issues – it’s
an opportunity to engage with
customers. In addition,
understanding how end-users
consume products and services
provides companies with tremendous
opportunity to identify high-value
enhancements, engage with
customers, and proactively identify
and resolve support issues.
Thanks to the deeper insight
Technology companies have,
customers in turn expect companies
to be knowledgeable about their
relationships. For example, do
customers have self-service access
into purchase history, SaaS billing,
warranty and licensing expiration
dates (and have indeed checked
them)? If so, customers expect that a
customer service representative won’t
waste their time repeating
information they already know.
In response to this new landscape of
digital interaction, many companies
have identified executives responsible
for customer success; that is,
ensuring that interactions throughout
the customer lifecycle are consistent
with both customer expectations and
the brand promise.
The ultimate goal of these activities is
to digitally integrate the customer
lifecycle, creating an end-to-end
customer experience that acts as a
competitive advantage for Technology
companies. Done well, such a digital
commerce strategy puts the
customers first and capabilities are
delivered through operational and
technical excellence. Just as all
channels must be integrated, so to
must the discover/transact/
fulfill/service processes be well
integrated. Tools should remove
friction from the process as much as
possible and enable all participants in
the process: prospects, customers,
partners, salespeople, marketing
staff, and the technical support team.
Supporting an end-to-
end digital commerce
experience
As much as automation and self-
service capabilities can support a
digital commerce strategy, one cannot
be deployed solely on the foundation
of technology. Technology companies
must consider the many
organizational implications as well.
They need to address internal
organizational challenges and
confirm they do not constrain the
company’s ability to deliver digital
experiences. Digital commerce should
provide a single face to the digital
customer, one that hides the
complexity and internal
organizational structures.
For many Technology companies,
moving toward an integrated digital
commerce capability starts by
breaking down silos within their
companies. Only by breaking down
silos will they be able to increase
collaboration among internal and
external teams. And only by
increasing collaboration will they be
able to increase customer value,
improve customer experience, and
increase customer engagement.
Before companies can break down
silos and organize teams, companies
must define their business strategy
for the digital age. Companies must
identify who they want to be in the
digital space. Is your digital strategy
to educate prospects and enable
business partners; is your goal to
deliver pre and post-sale capabilities;
or is your strategy to provide direct-
to-customer capabilities that deliver
discover, transact, fulfill, and service
functionality? How companies
answer these questions will influence
organizational structure, technical
architecture, marketing approach,
and channel strategy.
Another key issue to address: The
ability to drive meaningful business
decisions through data. Consistent
with the shift from transactional e-
commerce to building a digital
relationship that serves entire
customer lifecycle, analytics – the
ability to track both micro and macro
patterns – become more important.
In the early days of e-commerce, we
looked at discrete statistics such as
net new visitors, page views,
In the digital commerce world, Technology companies must be
able to embed and analyze processes across all stages of the
lifecycle to measure business impact

7. PwC 5
conversion rates, and cart
abandonment.
In the digital commerce world,
Technology companies must be able
to embed and analyze processes
across all stages of the lifecycle to
measure business impact. Given the
complexity and cost of many
technology products, traditional
eCommerce metrics such as average
order value or cart abandonment, do
not apply. Companies must be able to
measure digital commerce’s ability to
attract new leads, assist in the
acquisition of new customers, and
retain existing customers. A well-
executed digital commerce strategy
should reduce the cost of sales,
reduce the cost to serve, and improve
customer retention.
Getting started on the
digital commerce
journey
While a thorough digital commerce
strategy requires a holistic
perspective, that doesn’t mean that
Technology companies’
transformations require an
enervating “boil the ocean” effort.
Creating a distinguished digital
commerce experience – one that
transcends simply adding more
technology – is an evolutionary effort,
not a revolutionary one. For the sake
of competitive advantage, of course,
it’s important to start the process,
especially since competitors are doing
so and catching up may be difficult
later. But the process can be broken
down into smaller tactics, using the
following leading practices.
 Think about customer-
centricity. What kind of
experience do you want prospects
and customers to have? How can
you reduce or even better,
eliminate, friction and confusion
among processes? Indeed, each of
the following points should be
viewed through the lens of
simplifying the customer
experience. Lead with the
customer experience rather have
your current technology drive the
experience.
 Identify digital champions.
Within each of the crucial
departments (sales, marketing,
support, product development)
and among your partners, there
are likely people who thrive on
using collaboration to make
processes move faster and more
smoothly. Identify them and get
their input.
 Experiment. Unleash your
champions to try pilot projects,
using tools that they think will
provide the biggest payoff within
the shortest amount of time. Track
the results to get a sense of the
potential benefits.
 Break down silos across
marketing, sales, and service.
Identify ways that these
departments can work better
together. Identify issues that crop
up regularly, and look for ways to
automate or at least speed up
resolution.
 Set up an online community.
Give your customers and partners
a way to communicate among
themselves, while at the same time
using it as a way to discuss
products or new features that may
resonate with customers.
Encourage interaction and peer
discussions – and ask how
customers would like to
communicate with the vendor.
PwC works with companies
Whether in technology or other industries to make the transformation toward a reliable, viable digital commerce strategy.
PwC’s consultative services start with a discovery of the desired customer experience, followed by an understanding and
mapping of the complex interactions of people, process, and technology involved in the customer lifecycle. This mapping
starts with operations and organizational structure, acknowledges technology and compliance needs, and then overlays
where they affect customer experience.
PwC can accelerate this process through the use of leading industry tools and accelerators. These help from strategy
through execution across the business and technical aspects of a digital commerce initiative. We help our clients make
the transformation toward a reliable, viable digital commerce strategy by using our design tools, leading industry
methodologies and practices for digital commerce, and by incorporating everything from user experience design to back-
end integration. The result is a solution that enhances customer experiences and increases business value across the
customer lifecycle. We have used this approach many times to help global Technology companies become more efficient
and increase revenues.

8. www.pwc.com
© 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the United States member firm, and may sometimes refer to the PwC
network. Each member firm is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.
PwC can help
For a deeper discussion on digital commerce, please contact one of our leaders:
Joseph Lamano
Principal, Digital Commerce Leader
408 817 4427
joseph.lamano@us.pwc.com
Michael Pearl
Global Cloud Computing Leader
408 817 3801
michael.pearl@us.pwc.com
Let’s talk
Please reach out to any of our technology leaders to discuss this or other challenges. We’re here to help.
Tom Archer
US Technology Industry Leader
408 817 3836
thomas.archer@us.pwc.com
Cory Starr
US Technology Assurance Leader
408 817 1215
cory.j.starr@us.pwc.com
Kayvan Shahabi
US Technology Advisory Leader
408 817 5724
kayvan.shahabi@us.pwc.com
Diane Baylor
US Technology Tax Leader
408 817 5005
diane.baylor@us.pwc.com
Acknowledgements
The following PwC professionals contributed their experience and knowledge to produce this paper.
Todd McElfresh
Director, Digital Services
214 740 6748
todd.e.mcelfresh@us.pwc.com
About PwC’s Technology Institute
The Technology Institute is PwC’s global research network that studies the business of technology and the technology of
business with the purpose of creating thought leadership that offers both fact-based analysis and experience-based
perspectives. Technology Institute insights and viewpoints originate from active collaboration between our professionals
across the globe and their first-hand experiences working in and with the Technology industry. For more information
please contact Tom Archer, US Technology Industry Leader.