Webinar on “Data accessibility in AI-driven B2B sales”

In B2B sales, which require negotiation and customization, both the seller and the customer benefit if the best possible offer can be reached as quickly as possible. For this, AI can potentially improve the sales process by providing insight and offer recommendations. However, this requires use of multiple data sources and tight collaboration between data owners and data scientists to unlock the value of data.

The webinar highlighted both technical and business aspects of accessing data with AI-driven B2B sales. Findings have been gathered from the collaborative research project InnoSale and presented in a blog series in the spring of 2024.

Blogs can be found at https://www.innosale.eu/news/.  The webinar video recording can be found on YouTube link here, and the presentations are available at the links below.

Webinar was hosted by Marko Jurvansuu from VTT. After the welcome, Sari Järvinen from VTT introduced the state-of-the-art in the research on AI-assisted sales. She also presented the InnoSale project. Ari Bertula from Konecranes gave a presentation on the possibilities of AI in B2B-sales development, which was followed by an introduction to blogs given by Marko.

AGENDA

14:00-14:10 Welcome Marko Jurvansuu; Introduction and state-of-the-art Sari Järvinen, VTT

14:10-14:30 Possibilities in AI-driven B2B sales development, Ari Bertula, Konecranes

14:30-14:50 Highlights from the blog serie, Marko Jurvansuu, VTT

14:50-15:25 Lessons learned - roundtable, Konecranes, Molok, Wapice, LeadDesk, Software AG, VTT

15:25-15:30 End of the meeting

Figure 1: Webinar Speakers

The main part of the webinar was the roundtable discussion hosted by Sari Järvinen. Roundtable members were Ari Bertula (Konecranes), Marjaana Tyven-Jokinen (Molok), Kai Huittinen (Wapice), Trang Nguyen (LeadDesk), Johannes Peltola (VTT) and Frank Werner (Software AG). The questions covered a broad area of AI-assisted sales such as:

  • What is the main use case for your company? Where does the value come from when using AI with sales?
  • How did you identify the most promising use cases for AI development? Was the process easy?
  • What were the main challenges in data accessibility? Are the challenges the same in the whole project, which is done in several EU countries?
  • What was the most surprising challenge you met?
  • How do you see the role of AI in B2B sales in the future?
  • What will be the role of human sales experts in the future?
  • What were the main lessons learned in your organization

Further information: marko.jurvansuu@vtt.fi