We recently welcomed a new member to the viax team to lead Industry Strategy and Partnerships. Brian Diehl, a mechanical engineer by trade, joins viax with 20+ years of B2B and executive leadership experience. Diehl has worked on all sides of the business, bringing a deep understanding and appreciation for what it takes to be successful. During his 15+ years in manufacturing, he drove business transformation efforts deploying B2B CX capabilities in 50+ countries. He then joined SAP's customer experience business to lead B2B Industry go-to-market efforts globally for 6 years. Brian is an obvious choice to join viax and drive our industry strategy. We couldn't be more excited to have him on the team!
We caught up with Brian to talk about his journey to viax.
As someone who has lived the day-to-day experience of designing and managing systems for manufacturers, what challenges are you hearing from customers?
B2B is primarily defined by its complex products, sales channels, processes, and pricing strategies. Several topics consistently come up in conversation, but picking three, I would say:
From a customer experience perspective, manufacturers are working to provide more content and self-service capabilities to their customers. These efforts not only reduce the cost to serve, allowing sales to concentrate on higher-value tasks, but also provide a more personalized view to the customer.
When discussing operations, customers are looking to formalize best practices by introducing workflow capabilities to automate end-to-end processes. Manufacturers want to enhance channel collaboration and improve their partner relationships. To do this, they need to address unstructured and off-system processes that have prevented them from scaling.