Enterprise enablement – or business enablement – is the preparation of a business for success by leveraging a variety of tools, technology, and resources into a comprehensive strategy.
If you’re curious about how you can increase operational efficiency within your business or create a more customer-oriented environment, then this is the guide for you. We’ll take a look at components of a successful business enablement strategy for enterprise before outlining some practical steps you can take to put a strategy into place in your business.
Components of a successful business enablement strategy for enterprise
Enterprise enablement vs sales enablement
Business enablement is a “strategic implementation of process and technology initiatives” towards the end of reducing workplace friction, increasing productivity, achieving operational efficiency, and becoming more customer-oriented.
This differs slightly from other types of enablement which you might have heard of, such as sales enablement and technology enablement.
Before we dive into the components of business enablement, let’s take a moment to define the differences between these strategies.
Sales enablement involves four key components: structure, content, training, and tools & technology. The primary aim of a sales enablement strategy is to equip sales reps to be able to carry out their role competently and efficiently.
Technology enablement focuses on the streamlining of internal processes through technology. Depending on the business in question, this may or may not be fully distinct from business enablement.
Now let’s take a look at the key components of enterprise enablement and the benefits of investing in enablement for business.
What does enterprise enablement look like?
Business enablement prioritizes solutions that are intuitive, customer-oriented, and able to be integrated company-wide. This might include:
- Adapting technology to meet organizational goals and objectives
- Leveraging resources to drive value and efficiency
- Providing training, onboarding, and continuous professional development
- Implementing clear and effective data strategies
- Proactive risk management
- Prioritizing digital intelligence and technological solutions
Who is involved in enterprise enablement?
Enterprise enablement strategies tend to be implemented company-wide. Those directly involved may include:
- Directors: typically those within HR or IT departments, directors are responsible for the strategic creation, implementation, and assessment of business enablement strategies
- Managers: responsible for overseeing the everyday implementation of business enablement initiatives and seeking feedback from users
- Employees: depending on your industry, this might include administrators, sales representatives, engineers, developers, IT technicians, or any other internal employees or contractors who might benefit from your business enablement initiatives.
What are the benefits of enterprise enablement?
The benefits of enterprise enablement are varied and may include:
- Greater operational efficiency
- Increased employee productivity (through strategic implementation of technological solutions including automation)
- Improved data security (through data governance policies)
- The ability to offer an accessible and intuitive customer experience
- Increased agility & resilience
- Increased profitability (through streamlined spending)
Operational changes to support enterprise enablement initiatives
To start enacting an enterprise enablement strategy within your organization, consider the following areas for tactical improvement:
Prioritize dynamic professional development
Just as within a sales enablement, training and onboarding ought to form a key part of any enterprise enablement strategy.
Crucially, as your business invests in digital transformation, adopting new tools and technologies, it needs to offer a similar investment in training employees to make the best use of these new tools. Professional development can take the form of formal training, coaching, role-based training, or peer-to-peer mentoring, and can be oriented toward learning specific skills or competencies or toward boosting soft skills such as communication and collaboration.
As you provide development opportunities, aim to create a culture of empowerment by encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and embracing different working styles. Just as a one-size-fits-all onboarding solution isn’t going to maximize the productivity of your new hires, expecting all employees to function and perform identically is both unrealistic and inefficient.
Maximize the value of customer interactions
Improving customer experience is central to business enablement, and can be achieved through a range of strategies that increase the value of customer interactions – whether that’s with a representative or digital touchstone.
With 81% of customers reporting that a positive customer service experience would increase the likelihood they’d make a repeat purchase, it’s no secret that customer experience (CX) is a crucial business differentiator.
To maximize the value of every customer interaction, consider initiatives that:
- Increase accessibility to customer support (such as an online chat, messaging apps, comprehensive phone and email support, AI support, etc.)
- Map out the customer journey and identify the weakest points for customer satisfaction – then prioritize improving these
- Offer comprehensive product/service training to your reps to boost their knowledge base
- Encourage (and respond to) customer feedback
- Create online customer communities in which customers can crowdsource answers to common problems
Invest in digital transformation
Technology is a key tenet of enterprise enablement. Internally, technological solutions can be utilized to increase efficiency both by delegating tasks to automation and by enhancing existing processes and boosting productivity. Externally, technology can be utilized to optimize the customer experience throughout the buyer journey.
Consolidating technological solutions across your organization can help reduce IT costs, minimize risks to data security, decrease training needs, and improve access to data. Managers can work to identify potential areas for streamlining across workflows and work to create technical documentation outlining SOPs.
Monitoring the use of tools through end-user analytics can be a great way to assess the uptake and use of a given technological solution, highlighting where further training or support might be needed – or whether the tool might not be the best fit.
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