The supply chain is failing across nearly every vertical—and construction is no exception. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to realign efforts with digital transformation. Or at least that is what one new survey recommends.
The report by Sapio Research on behalf of Sana Commerce shows a big disconnect between buyers’ expectations and their actual customer experiences, with more than half of B2B construction buyers reporting suppliers’ websites were missing the mark when it came to meeting their needs.
The biggest frustration came in the form of usability and misinformation, with only 25% of respondents having faith in the ability of their suppliers to provide full, accurate, and consistent information online and offline. Other challenges include payment terms confusion, complicated reordering and checkout process, and more. Do you agree?
This is impacting nearly every aspect of construction: commercial, infrastructure, and homebuilding. Let’s look at one example. Today, it is estimated that the time to build a home from start to finish is roughly 50% longer than before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is due to new product shortages, worker shortages, and more. Construction is experiencing a shortage of roughly 650,000 workers, as one example.
The solution, naturally, comes in the form of digital transformation. Nearly every vertical is moving to online channels at a rapid pace, due partly to pandemic-caused reasons—and construction is certainly moving in this direction as well. In 2021, roughly 75% of construction companies increased their investment in digital transformation because of pandemic disruptions.
I would love to say the result was a smooth-running jobsite operation and a profitable business, but it wasn’t. The report by Sapio Research suggests it has caused high levels of frustration for users instead of helping them, which negatively impacts future buyer-seller relationships.
When asked about the effect of frequent order errors and unnecessary ecommerce returns on their jobs and how they do business, as many as one in five buyers said such problems would drive them to switch suppliers. In fact, the buyer experience is so important that 80% of them say they would return to a supplier with whom they have a strong relationship even if it meant less favorable business terms.
The bottomline is digital transformation is the solution to the supply chain woes in construction, but it seems it will be a bumpy road on the tech journey.
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