Related Topics:
			Business Research: Contact Center Technology Research: Business Process Management, Operational Intelligence Imperative Research: Business Innovation, Compliance Management, Cost Management, Performance Improvement, Process Improvement, Profitability Management
			Printer friendly version Email this article Send feedback to editor

Summary
The Customer Management practice at Ventana Research is dedicated to helping organizations improve their efficiency and effectiveness in managing customer relationships. In 2007 we will focus on how companies can become more customer-centric and better at managing interactions with their customers. We will examine the people and process issues involved in customer management, emerging technologies that support it and new techniques for analyzing information to improve understanding of customers. In particular, we will assess how companies are transitioning from customer relationship management (CRM) to customer experience management, and how companies are seeking to create a single authoritative source of customer data that they can use to make better operational decisions.

View
Since the emergence of the concept of customer relationship management, consultants, vendors and companies have spoken about the need to become customer-centric – focused on the customer and not on internal issues.  There is little evidence today that companies have achieved this objective. Most are still organized in business units that use processes that do not cross business unit boundaries or systems that are not used elsewhere in the organization. This structural situation makes it nearly impossible for companies to manage their customer relationships consistently across departments and touch points, or to produce meaningful reports about how they are performing from a customer perspective.

For many organizations, then, realization of CRM is still a dream. Now the discussion has shifted to customer experience management. This is much the same concept, but it takes a more pragmatic approach that recognizes the need to manage customer interactions consistently across the organization. This is confounded by the finding of our research into master data management that many business units continue to use isolated systems to manage their particular parts of the business processes. Again, this makes it very difficult to produce a complete view of the customer on which the whole enterprise can base its decisions. However, new technologies are emerging that can support companies in their efforts to create a single, integrated master source of customer data, bringing closer that elusive complete view. Companies that achieve this objective will have the information required to identify weaknesses in their customer-facing processes and customer data and to plan ways to improve the situation.

To guide strategic planning to improve customer management, Ventana Research will investigate the following areas in this research focus this year:

Customer Experience Management
To help companies create a customer-focused organization, we will assess the use of business process management, workflow and collaboration tools to synchronize across geographic and business unit boundaries all the processes that involve the customer. We also will study how these tools are used to ensure that at every touch point the organization uses the same processes to handle customer interactions. As well, we will assess the key performance metrics and associated employee reward schemes that can make employees more aware of the need to focus on the customer. Finally, one of the primary objectives of CRM has been to improve the acquisition and retention of customers and increase their lifetime value; we will look into the role that loyalty schemes can play in achieving this objective.

A Single View of the Customer
The primary requirement for any company that wants to become customer-focused is that all employees, at every level, base their decisions on a single, comprehensive view of the customer. We will examine the emerging tools for master data management, customer data integration and data quality to determine how these can be used to create a master source of clean customer data. We also will assess how business intelligence (BI) and predictive analytics tools can be utilized to contribute to a single view of the customer. Along with these areas, we will investigate new and emerging data governance processes. For businesses operating in a world in which they must comply with many different regulations, we will advise how business process management tools and BI tools can be used to monitor and ensure compliance.

Assessment
Customers are of paramount importance to companies – without them, businesses would die. But in relentlessly competitive marketplaces, it is becoming harder to attract, retain and serve customers. For many companies, the dream of CRM has not become a reality, and now they are hearing the siren call of customer experience management. During 2007 Ventana Research will examine whether this approach is any more real. We will work closely with operational management and vendors to learn from the past, examine possibilities for improvement in the future and encourage the adoption of new processes, measures and technologies. Our goal is to help companies realize the dream of becoming customer-centric, to help them understand the realities of customer experience management and to assist them in managing customers to the mutual benefit of all concerned.