B2B Buyers Bypassing Procurement Policies

As the need for convenience and speed dominates almost everything else, B2B buyers are skipping the rules and bypassing procurement policies, according to a report from Forrester Consulting.

The report, detailed in a story in Internet Retailer, said that B2B sites today really need to stop looking like B2B sites.

“The top factor cited by buyers when deciding to purchase products outside corporate procurement channels was convenience and speed (52 percent),” the story said. “Next in importance was the buyers’ prevailing opinion that they understand what they need better than procurement staff (33 percent), followed by their desire to research products and services independently, and the belief they can find lower prices or cut costs better than their procurement departments.”

So what then should be on a B2B site? Technical brochures and specification sheets were tops (61 percent) followed by instruction manuals/how-to documents (46 percent), then videos (38 percent), case studies (31 percent), webinars (30 percent), infographics (25 percent), social media activity (25 percent) and mobile service (22 percent).

Slice a different way, respondents told Forrester that product pricing was their favorite B2B detail (73 percent), following by technical details (64 percent), delivery costs (53 percent), product availability (49 percent) and special offers/discounts (48 percent).