EkaLore defines Aliens as Category Killers, enterprises that invade from a completely different marketplace and up end the traditional order of a market. They possess assets from their current market which they can apply to a completely new market and vacuum the profit from the other market players. Aliens aren’t bound by traditional rules or practices.
Manufacturers and Suppliers may have substantial opportunities or challenges depending on the nature of the Alien coming into the marketplace.
Suppliers and manufacturers vie for customer purchases based on price but must also integrate with large customer purchasing systems and conform to policy and procedure. Large enterprises commonly take months, if not years, to accept newcomers as vendors. Invaders such as Amazon and others such as HyperLedger/Trust Your Supplier seek to short circuit that process. If your enterprise sales force plans a sales campaign for years to win a big deal an Alien may get there first.
Let’s say that the supplier or manufacturer is an Alien itself. In other words, it’s introducing a product to a new marketplace. It can leverage another Alien invading the purchasing cycle to enter new customers quickly.
A supplier/manufacturing Alien can assure new customers that they will get the products ordered in finite times at promised prices. By moving purchase tendering and having Amazon attest to stocking levels at the point of purchase this removes any representations and handling from the product supplier to a third party – Amazon. Instead of having to build credibility slowly through a business development and sales process - an Alien Invader simply uses Amazon’s credibility and process assurances. An Alien Invader needs to build confidence that the enterprise data exchanges in a commercial transaction will be consistently handled, and order management (such as shipping/logistics data) consistently transferred. Amazon does this.
Amazon has created a third-party assurance process that makes Alien Invaders credible. Since the 200 Million Prime Members have personal experience at home with the Amazon Business Process they can know this at work. For commercial and industrial products shipped with a known carrier and the latest logistics updates – Amazon provides the same information as for the personal care product ordered at home -- On the same user interface experience! -- With up-to-the-minute updates as available! Amazon Prime has trained all of the buyers to do this – at no expenses to build new data exchanges, no new EDI/SAP-Cloud data format implementations, no new user interface experience, and no haggling vendor’s payment arrangements.
Amazon is not alone in looking for solutions like this – the HyperLedger/Trust Your Supplier initiative pursues some of the same objectives at a different scale.
Is your enterprise ready to accelerate sales process and be an Alien in a new market? New more thoughts on how to make these advantages happen for you? Set up a time to meet with a Senior Analyst – www.ekalore.com/contact
Comments