Digitalization of Commercial Activity of Russian Companies as a Factor of Their Competitiveness

Study of the impact of modern technologies and, in particular, digitalization, on the transformation and future development of industries, as well as changes in economic and marketing models within industries and their impact on business competitiveness is one of the new areas of research in the economic sciences. The purpose of this study is to apply the latest digital trends to modern commercial systems (B2B and B2B2C) of Russian companies to improve their competitiveness in an open digital economy. This work includes the authors’ own developments and field studies of digitalization of commercial functions, with a comparative analysis of the launches of B2B and B2B2C digital CRM systems in 2017 and 2020. The authors analyze materials on economic history and economic development impacted by technological progress, as well as recent researches in the field of digital technologies. This comparison reveals an understanding of the development of digital technologies in business aiming to increase its competitiveness in an open digital economy and to reveal the perception of these technologies by consumers and business partners of companies in Russia. Among the major digital trends that companies are rapidly adopting into their current business processes, including sales and marketing, the authors highlight the growing use of AI, voice search, 5G, AR technologies, chatbots, programmatic advertising, predictive analytics, omnichannel marketing, digital video marketing, blockchain. The field study revealed some progress in the level of digitalization and its perception in the country, starting with the dissemination of modern equipment to the increase in the computer literacy of the population and its openness to work with digital tools, both at the end-user level and at the level of business partners. That confirms the prospect of digitalizing the fieldwork for companies and leveraging the personalization component of marketing to improve the competitiveness of companies in an open digital economy.