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TORONTO, ON -- (Marketwired) -- 11/19/13 -- Avanade, a global business technology solutions and managed services provider, today released results from a large-scale global survey on the changing sales process and buying patterns of business and IT decision-makers. Avanade's latest research shows the "consumerization" movement is shifting the sales process out of the control of the seller as enterprise buyers begin to mimic consumer shopping behaviors. With this shift, the value of the customer experience is now more important than cost to business and IT decision-makers.

News Highlights

• Customer experience now tops price as the most important factor in a buying decision by an enterprise decision-maker. Notably, business buyers are willing to pay up to 30 percent more both in Canada and globally for a product or service that offers an improved customer experience.
• Businesses no longer have control over information shared about their products or services. 60 percent of Canadian business decision-makers (61 percent globally) report third-party sites and feedback from business partners, industry peers or social channels is more important than conversations with a company's sales teams when making a purchasing decision.
• To help navigate this change, companies are enlisting new people and departments to manage the customer experience. Compared to three years ago, customer support and call centers, IT and marketing are the leading groups now playing a larger role in the customer experience.
• 57 percent of Canadian respondents (70 percent globally) believe technology will mostly replace human interaction with customers in the next ten years. Anticipating this change, businesses are making new technology investments, changing business processes and redesigning organizational roles. More than 80 percent of companies both in Canada and globally have changed at least one business process in the past three years to better interact with customers.

"The report demonstrates the significant change in how Canadian companies conduct sales, which is a result of the 'consumerization of IT,'" said Dean Olmstead, Avanade corporate vice president, Canada Operating Unit. "Sales can no longer be clearly defined as B2B or B2C; it is now business-to-everyone. Canadian businesses need to recognize and embrace this shift in order to have stronger, longer-lasting customer relationships."

This new global study builds on findings from Avanade's Work Redesigned research conducted in January 2013. Progressive companies are changing business processes to adapt to a new style of work influenced by mobile devices, collaboration tools and social technologies. In this latest survey, Avanade found that businesses are changing processes to embrace the new business buyer and by increasing customer sales and support technologies (48 percent in Canada, 44 percent globally), increasing the number of employees interacting with customers (49 percent in Canada, 40 percent globally) and adding automation to the sales process (31 percent in Canada, 32 percent globally).

There are business benefits to making these changes. The research shows that businesses investing in technology to support better customer service and modifying internal roles are seeing positive results. Specifically, the companies making these changes are experiencing increases in customer loyalty (60 percent in Canada, 61 percent globally), revenues (64 percent in Canada, 60 percent globally) and customer base (70 percent in Canada, 60 percent globally).

The research also supports the findings of Accenture's High Performers in IT: Defined by Digital report, which said that 'high performers' are fully focused on the customer. Accenture found that 'high performers' top three business objectives relate to improving the customer's experience whereas other organizations primarily focus on cutting costs and increasing productivity.

Avanade surveyed 1,000 C-level executives, business unit leaders and IT decision-makers in 19 countries across more than 12 industries.

To learn more about Avanade's views on the new customer journey, please visit http://avana.de/CustJourney.

About the Global Survey
Avanade's survey was conducted in October 2013 by Wakefield Research (www.wakefieldresearch.com), an independent research firm. It surveyed 1,000 C-level executives, business unit leaders and IT decision makers, at the top companies in the following countries: U.S., Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.

About Avanade
Avanade provides business technology solutions and managed services that connect insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft® technologies to help customers realize results. Our people have helped thousands of organizations in all industries improve business agility, employee productivity, and customer loyalty. Avanade combines the collective business, technical and industry expertise of its worldwide network of experts with the rigor of an industrialized delivery model to provide high quality solutions using proven and emerging technologies with flexible deployment models -- on premises, cloud-based or outsourced. Avanade, which is majority owned by Accenture, was founded in 2000 by Accenture LLP and Microsoft Corporation and has 20,000 professionals in more than 20 countries. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com.

Avanade and the Avanade logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Avanade Inc. Other product, service, or company names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.