Study: The Digital Challenge | Page 14

14 94% of the study participants believe that, at minimum, B2B partnerships are important for their companies. With respect to the future, those surveyed also say that B2B partnerships will play a decisive role for a company’s positioning in the market. 69% of the interviewees expect the significance of such partnerships to continue to grow, and 31% believe that they will remain as significant as they are now. HIGH IMPORTANCE OF B2B PARTNERSHIPS TODAY “On a scale of 1 to 10: How important are B2B partnerships for your company today? 1 means not important and 10 means very important.” FUTURE “What role will B2B partnerships play for the market positioning of your company in the next five years?” 10 9 8 very important 25% 31% 38% 94% (further) increasing and (very) high importance 7 6 5 69% equal and (very) high importance 4 not important 31% 1 % of mentions (N=16) We must definitely switch to partnering if we want to be competitive in the future. Top executive, Online Shop Management, 1&1, Germany 5.2. MORE SPEED, MORE DIFFERENTIATION, MORE DIGITALIZATION An ever-increasing time to market and ensuring that the telco company is established as a digital brand are the priority goals for study participants who bank on B2B partnerships. With the support of their cooperation partners, telcos want to obtain access to skills that they lack and that are difficult to establish – and leverage them to unlock new markets and accelerate their entry into them. Specifically, B2B partnerships can help solve technical problems such as how to handle growing data streams and cut down on trial-and-error phases in new business segments.