• The number of B2B tech categories causes a lot of confusion and misuse today
  • Organizations must find a new way to approach the building and management of their tech stack
  • SiriusDecisions 2018 Technology Exchange will highlight three key takeaways for organizations

One of the benefits of cohosting an event is getting visibility into everything on the agenda. Having sat in every single content review for our upcoming fourth annual SiriusDecisions Technology Exchange (TechX), I couldn’t be more excited about what we’ll be presenting on November 8 and 9 in New Orleans. I’m so excited that I’m going to outline three key lessons you’re bound to take away from the event, even before the event happens!

keys-three-techx-takeaways

  • B2B technology buying has to change. From the moment the conference begins, it will become obvious that the way organizations are currently buying B2B technology needs to be reversed. Organizations can no longer buy by category or even by vendor/platform capability to solve an existing or forecasted challenge – doing so will result in siloed, bloated, unused technology pieces that simply cannot be afforded in this day and age. Organizations need to focus on new trends, new buyers, and those buyers’ preferences and individual journeys, requiring them to look closer at key priorities and the business requirements for achieving these priorities. This will happen not only within sales and marketing, but also across other critical functions like customer success, IT, finance and key stakeholders in the B2B ecosystem.
  • It’s about more than just buying the right technology. Too often, technology is purchased as the solution, then left unused, unmanaged or even forgotten, leaving users feeling unsatisfied until it’s time to renew or replace the technology. As additional scrutiny is placed on every dollar spent within an organization, this pattern of behavior has to change. Outside of financial scrutiny, technology will play a critical role in key strategic initiatives within organizations that include customer success beyond the buyer’s journey, managing multiple buyer journeys and paths to purchase, and account-based marketing (ABM). Enabling each of these strategic initiatives requires understanding the individual business requirements, the tech stack to support them, and any gaps or concerns with the existing tech stack that need to be addressed as well. Taking a hard look at all the in-house technologies and determining their adoption level requires establishing a cross-functional partnership and integrated process that will pay dividends at tech-enabling different strategies.
  • The tech-stack-on-a-page tool is pretty awesome. Having already previewed a few of these tools to select clients recently, I’m thrilled that we’re going to unveil a series of tech-stack-on-a-page tools at this year’s TechX. These tools will outline the core (critical) and extended (supplemental) business requirements that organizations need to address for a series of key initiatives (e.g. ABM program planning and execution, content management for sales and marketing, customer experience, e-commerce). First, the list of business requirements for these key initiatives will open some eyes to what’s really needed. Then, the ability to map that to technology categories to determine if existing or new technologies – and additional action items – are required is extremely beneficial. This will allow organizations to figure out what is actually needed and avoid any “shiny new object syndrome” and category-led buying behaviors.

Across our four mainstage keynotes, 12 track sessions and four client guest keynotes at TechX, these three takeaways will become apparent to you live – and so will the solutions to some of your most pressing tech challenges. If you’re as “Sirius” about technology as we are, you need to join us in New Orleans at the 2018 SiriusDecisions Technology Exchange on November 7 to 9, where we’ll go into detail on B2B sales and marketing technology, how to assess your organization’s current state, and how to buy technology and use it effectively. Register for TechX now. Hope to see you there!