---
title: "What Are the Key Levers Between Suppliers and Brand Owners in Digital Transformation?"
description: "This article, written from the perspective of a brand owner, is aimed at system suppliers dedicated to channel digital transformation services. Based on nearly four years of consulting experience assisting six large and medium-sized brand owners in channel digital transformation—from bidding, research, methodology, to implementation—it focuses on how system suppliers can better serve brand owners' digital transformation, while also illustrating what channel digital tools brand owners actually need."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2023-10-26"
language: "en"
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# What Are the Key Levers Between Suppliers and Brand Owners in Digital Transformation?

> This article, written from the perspective of a brand owner, is aimed at system suppliers dedicated to channel digital transformation services. Based on nearly four years of consulting experience assisting six large and medium-sized brand owners in channel digital transformation—from bidding, research, methodology, to implementation—it focuses on how system suppliers can better serve brand owners' digital transformation, while also illustrating what channel digital tools brand owners actually need.

First, a note: this article is written from the perspective of the client (brand owner) and is intended for system suppliers committed to serving enterprise channel digital transformation. The insights come from nearly four years of heavy consulting experience assisting six large and medium-sized brand owners in channel digital transformation, from bidding, research, methodology, to implementation. It focuses on how system suppliers can better serve brand owners' digital transformation, while also illustrating what channel digital tools brand owners actually need.

**First, let's talk about the real thoughts of several brand owners when participating in bidding meetings.**

Once, I chatted with a brand owner's general manager about the selection of system suppliers. He said something like this: "I wasn't very professional in understanding system tools, but after participating in several bidding processes, I gained a deeper understanding. The reason is simple: most system suppliers' bidding presentations explain the same thing from different dimensions, just with different PPT formats. The core services are almost identical, and they don't understand what we really need. It's like when my car breaks down, they don't try to find out where the fault is; instead, they try to sell me a bunch of repair tools that could fix the car." From the client's perspective, what should brand owners consider when selecting system suppliers for marketing digitalization?

**1. Functional Requirements:** Clarify your marketing digitalization needs and ensure the system supplier can provide suitable functions and solutions. There are three key points: first, understand my business needs; second, provide implementable solutions; third, provide user-friendly and practical system tools. Only a supplier that combines all three can truly help me. Also consider future business growth and development—whether the system's scalability can support the brand owner's future needs and business changes.

**2. Cost-Effectiveness:** Carefully consider the supplier's price and cost-effectiveness. Not only focus on initial investment but also consider long-term maintenance and upgrade costs, and weigh them against expected benefits. This has two implications: first, once I pay, how do I judge if the money is well spent? An evaluation system must be established for organizational efficiency and performance growth. Second, match system value to timely needs. For example, if I just need to open a beer, sell me a bottle opener first; don't try to persuade me to buy a Swiss Army knife—it's expensive and not handy.

**3. Data Security and Privacy Protection:** Marketing digitalization involves large amounts of user data. Brand owners need to choose system suppliers with robust data security and privacy protection measures to ensure user data safety and compliance, especially absolute confidentiality regarding main competitors.

**4. Reference Cases and User Reviews:** Understand the supplier's past projects and client reviews, and examine their experience and capabilities in marketing digitalization to assess whether they fit your needs. Case studies are essential, but they must be close to our management and operations, preferably close to our products.

**5. Integration Capability:** The marketing digitalization system may need to integrate with the brand owner's existing systems (such as CRM, ERP, etc.). The selected supplier must have the corresponding integration capability to ensure smooth data flow and information consistency. Also, ensure they offer flexible customization options for personalized tailoring based on specific needs.

**6. Data Analysis and Reporting Functions:** The data analysis and reporting functions of the marketing digitalization system are crucial for brand owners. When selecting a supplier, ensure they provide powerful data analysis and reporting functions for business decision-making and optimization. Data reports should ideally be "foolproof"—easy to learn—and "one-click" for export and import.

**What should system suppliers do?**

This is a big topic. In short, I suggest starting from three aspects: first, build a marketing business school to improve bidding capabilities; second, establish a marketing advisory group to enhance digital transformation implementation capabilities; and third, improve the customer operations service center to build lasting partnerships with brand owners.

**1. Build a Marketing Business School**

This institution is necessary. Its purpose is to empower the pre-sales team through training, practical combat, and business scenario awareness, to deeply explore brand owners' digital transformation pain points and enhance overall competitiveness.

I have a viewpoint: selling a bottle of mineral water only requires the marketing 4Ps, but selling a system requires mastering the marketing 4Cs. The biggest difference between the 4C theory and the 4P theory is that one is from the consumer's perspective and the other from the enterprise's perspective.

The marketing 4Ps are: Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Applied to selling mineral water: at the product level, build brand power by creating competitiveness through total cost leadership, differentiation, and focus; at the price level, design a competitive pricing system by optimizing channel links, making consumers feel value for money, thereby enhancing consumer competitiveness; at the place level, achieve efficient, large-scale, low-cost, and diversified reach to consumers from the factory, thereby enhancing channel competitiveness; at the promotion level, use sampling, buy-one-get-one, trade-in, and other promotional methods to achieve comprehensive improvement in consumer acquisition, repurchase, and average order value. Can selling systems work this way? I think it can, but it's far from enough. However, in reality, most system suppliers' pre-sales teams do exactly this. They talk endlessly about their system's functions, implying that what the client needs, they have; what the client doesn't need, they also have—they are comprehensive. Then they talk about price (cost-performance) being absolutely superior to other suppliers. Then they use previous successful cases to build trust and open cooperation channels. Finally, they often organize offline salons, study tours, and other market activities to connect upstream and downstream customers, learn from each other, and match resources, which is also a disguised way to increase services for promotion. Why is this far from enough? Because you don't understand the brand owner's business. Even if you win the bid by luck, the subsequent cooperation will inevitably have more bumps. Selling systems requires mastering the marketing 4Cs. The marketing 4Cs are: Consumer, Cost, Communication, Convenience. From these aspects: First, the consumer is the client. We must treat the client's business as our own, consider what difficulties this business currently faces, and how to solve them with my methods and tools. **System suppliers should design products and services around the client's real needs, not from their own perspective. What they provide is not just products and services, but more importantly, the customer value derived from them.** Second, cost means the client is only willing to pay for solving their core needs. The ideal pricing is below the client's psychological expectation while still allowing the enterprise to profit. This is difficult to achieve. **The best way is to research the solution to the core need—the key pain point—thoroughly, and use results to cover costs.** Third, communication emphasizes the relationship between the supplier and the client as a continuous two-way communication, building a closer trust relationship. The supplier uses the product + method + tool logic to empower the brand owner's team management and marketing. Finally, convenience means understanding the logic of the client's system implementation, paying attention to the user experience of the client's personnel, and better improving the work efficiency of personnel at all levels of the client. Therefore, building a marketing business school to clarify the above operational logic and create standard courses is essential to support the 4Ps and 4Cs needed for system sales.

**2. Establish a Marketing Advisory Group**

This institution is also necessary. Its purpose is to create distinctive methodologies that match the brand owner's operations and the supplier's system functions. The implementation of digital transformation is the core work of the delivery team. This delivery should not only focus on system deployment but also on the dimension of marketing strategy implementation. The work policy is: rely on products to refine methods; rely on tools to carry methods; rely on methods to empower organizations; rely on organizations to drive growth. Without methodology, marketing digitalization is just pure gaming and internal friction!

Here's an example of system tool implementation in channel digitalization. A certain system company had reached consensus with the client on all marketing policies—from transformation strategy at the top, to execution tactics in the middle, to implementation plans at the bottom—and signed off. However, they suffered a major setback when implementing the system tools. The reason was that they assumed that since the brand owner's level was fully aligned, the distributor level and the marketing team level would not dare not to execute. So they ignored the fact that when multiple system functions are implemented simultaneously, frontline personnel's acceptance ability is limited, and there is a lack of a process from unfamiliar to familiar, from shallow to deep. They also failed to provide psychological counseling to system users (who thought this was software to monitor them, not to empower them and improve work efficiency). The result was that frontline staff reported that the system made work less efficient, distributors resisted because they thought the system monitored their expenses and execution, and the brand owner's marketing team, whose performance pay mainly depended on distributor shipments, echoed these sentiments. These three roles dared not offend the brand owner, so they made the system supplier the scapegoat. Over time, the brand owner had to change system suppliers. Therefore, establishing a marketing advisory group is necessary. **This group should not only provide strategic support suggestions for the brand owner's digital transformation but also go deep into market operation scenarios to solve problems related to people, usage scenarios, and strategy alignment during system implementation.**

**3. Improve the Customer Operations Service Center**

This institution is also necessary. Its purpose is to build lasting partnerships with brand owners. Essentially, brand owners are also reluctant to frequently change system suppliers. For existing digital systems (such as SFA, DMS, TPM), changing them may result in loss of accumulated data. For incremental digital systems (such as one-code-one-item), changing them is even more troublesome, as it may involve many high-quality terminal outlets and even damage customer relationships. Many system changes are done out of necessity. Therefore, establishing a customer operations service center is necessary. On one hand, it should understand operations and value. There are many uncertainties in marketing events. During the digital transformation process, it should assist brand owners in sorting out and balancing management logic and empowerment logic. In the results of digital transformation, it should establish an evaluation system for organizational efficiency and performance growth to ensure the system's value is recognized. On the other hand, brand owners will consider future business growth and development, and whether the system's scalability can support future needs and business changes. In this process, the customer operations service center should conduct continuous tracking to ensure potential risks are nipped in the bud.

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