Unlike most journeys, the path to product-to-consumer (P2C) transformation doesn’t have a finish line. It’s a progressive journey that involves the entire organization and revolutionizes the way companies and teams operate. The Productsup P2C Maturity Model acts as an advisory framework that enables companies to start and/or advance on their journey to a complete P2C transformation. By using the Model as a benchmarking tool, brands, retailers, marketplaces and service providers can continuously realize their global commerce potential and find new opportunities to reach new audiences and deliver new product innovations that enhance the brand and customer experience. So, where does the P2C journey take businesses?
Master commerce anarchy, be ready for what’s next
The world is digitizing and consumers are becoming increasingly aware of their power to influence commerce. What does this mean for businesses? It means that sales and marketing teams are having to engage more channels than ever before. Brands, retailers, marketplaces, and service providers are frantically juggling omnichannel B2B, B2C, and D2C processes. And don’t forget, the metaverse with augmented and virtual reality commerce opportunities is also looming large on our retail horizons.
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Commerce anarchy rules as many businesses face a daily struggle to manage the tortuous paths between suppliers and buyers. While all companies feel some of the adverse effects of these chaotic journeys, others are already beginning to fail. Only a few businesses know why they are failing, making it extremely difficult to overcome the anarchic challenges.
Combating commerce anarchy requires smart navigation of the commerce space and a fundamental reevaluation of strategy to build consumer relationships and foster brand loyalty. Brands, retailers, marketplaces, and service providers can only protect their market share and grow if they assert effective control over every aspect of their global product information value chains (PIVCs). And consumer feedback has become essential for businesses proactively influencing positive consumer purchasing decisions. This holistic look at product data within the commerce ecosystem is known as 3D commerce.
The P2C journey: Plot your transformation course
To plot the course of their ongoing P2C journey, maturing companies need to understand why they are succeeding and how well they are progressing. There has to be an engagement framework where businesses can review this progress and define the milestones they should work toward – benchmarking performance against proven approaches as they go.
Of course, KPIs, OKRs, or other goal-oriented metrics can contribute to this assessment. They are very reliable and established quantitative indicators of pure performance. But they need to be combined with measured qualitative insights to benchmark the transformation’s progress.
Achieving effective control requires constant maturing because the consumer never sleeps, and Big Tech won’t stop making disruptions. The P2C Maturity Model eliminates the guesswork and offers a clear view of where organizations are on this path. It shows organizations where they have made progress and where they need to focus to stay ahead of the competition and lessen the negative impact of commerce anarchy. Maturing translates concretely to continual improvement in process management where ongoing mapping, understanding, and ultimately controlling PIVCs clears a path for products through commerce anarchy, delivering consistent product experiences to consumers when and where they want to buy.
P2C transformation is crucial because the strategic management challenge facing today’s businesses is not to optimize today’s digital processes – it’s to transform future relationships and be ready for whatever comes next. Only by entirely rethinking the commerce journey will organizations be able to deliver the kind of personalized, consumer-centric experiences their shoppers have come to expect.
The P2C transformation framework
As an analytic tool, the P2C Maturity Model gives businesses insights into how commerce anarchy affects them. As a prescriptive tool, the Model inspires organizations to realize their global commerce potential through continuous process improvement of PIVC processes across geographies.
We have built a framework for companies to evaluate where they are on the product-to-consumer journey. The model will offer valuable benchmarks with which Productsup P2C experts can assess and support the businesses. The levels within the model will be assessed according to each business’ P2C tech adoption, as well as their P2C organizational adoption.
The framework has five distinct levels. Organizations will identify the level they’re operating at after taking a self-assessment or by talking to our support teams. Once the level is clear, the business will find out how it can progress to the next level. The ultimate goal is full P2C adoption when the business has total control over all of its global PIVCs in each P2C discipline – including feed management, social commerce, product content syndication, etc. In the final level, all P2C processes will be running and constantly evolving as the business adapts to consumer trends, channel specifications, and technical developments as they happen.
Next steps toward full P2C transformation
For more detailed information on the various P2C transformation levels, download our free whitepaper. The whitepaper will explain the Maturity Model in detail and you will also find the next steps for your journey.
