Field Study: Expected Change in Technology, Organizations, and Business in the Digital Era

Abstract

In today’s continuously evolving globe, digital technologies are transforming firms, the way organizations act, think, and strategize to maintain a profitable and sustainable business. This requires the proactive strategy of companies with a digital mindset and culture, adapting to the new dynamics of the unbarriered markets. Customers are now more powerful with access to information, aware of their needs, with an increasing concern on a cleaner, accountable, ethical, and transparent future world. This chapter evaluates the answers of commercial business professionals from corporate world on qualifying the expected impacts of digitalization on organizations, in organizational structure, the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) integration, the influence of social media, the changes in consumer behavior, and how the new sales professionals are expected to manage the new customer journey in terms of the value creation, differentiation, and engagement for competitive advantages. A second survey conducted among industry stakeholders from various businesses assesses the required attributes of a sales professional in the digital era. The analysis of the results indicate the increasing transformation in digital era where most firms are urged for digitalization as the common mind of interviewees addressing mostly hybrid organizations benefiting from the human and digital power depending on the complexity of the industry. Digital competency of sales professionals in predicting market intelligence and insights for strategic decision-making, customer centricity, solution selling, engaging customers for co-value creation for innovation, and loyalty underline the new norms of sales professionals in the digital era.