Customer intelligence is key to customer-centricity

WM Circle Logo

By: Wise Marketer Staff |

Posted on January 11, 2006

Improving customer intelligence management practices empowers organisations to more profitably define, identify, and respond to high value customers, having become the top motivator for 74% of companies to create a corporate culture of customer-centricity, according to a report from Aberdeen Group.

The report, Customer Intelligence Management: Converting Data to Profits, suggests that companies that exemplify best-in-class practices attained a 20%+ annual improvement in gross revenues and customer acquisition and retention rates. And the leaders are proactively addressing their need to improve the management, analysis, and application of customer intelligence in several critical areas, including:

  • They have plans to extend or integrate their CRM systems with other customer intelligence tools for increased visibility and better data analysis capabilities.
     
  • They utilise operational BI (business intelligence) and predictive analytics to better respond to high value customers.
     
  • They are more likely to use customer data integration and data quality solutions to incorporate multi-sourced data prior to analysis.
     
  • Exactly 50% said they selectively outsource to third-party service providers to augment internal capabilities and processes.

Aberdeen's report was launched with support from CMO Magazine, DM Review, DHSoft, Experian, and Harte-Hanks Trillium Software. The study found that all the leaders share similar approaches and processes, including:

  • They establish cross-functional teams and ownership processes to align IT with line of business users;
     
  • They take a long-term approach to growth by defining customer value by lifetime value models;
     
  • They centralise customer intelligence management at the corporate level.

According to Leslie Ament, director of Aberdeen's customer intelligence research practice, "Organisations have spent millions capturing, analysing, and applying customer intelligence with the goal of growing revenues by increasing focus on customer-centric strategy and execution. We believe that forward-thinking organisations will continue to invest in select technology enablers, process development, performance measurement capabilities, and services that empower them to apply customer intelligence toward better decision-making in support of more profitable growth."

The report has been made available for download online - click here.

More Info: 

http://www.aberdeen.com