Hot Topic: The Agile Customer-Driven Organizations

Not a single article, speech or statement nowadays fails to mention digitalization and agility.

What is digitalization? A set of tools such as social media and community management? Practices? New means to reach more customers more effectively?

Digitalization is much more than an e-volution. It is a re-volution. The direct impact of digitalization is a shift of power from companies to customers. In these highly competitive days where supply often exceeds demand, scarce customers are becoming more and more demanding. Their capacity to influence and impact decisions has dramatically increased and will only continue to do so. The company-customer interaction is also radically changing. Companies are becoming the target of customers.

Putting the customer – or patient, client, consumer – at the heart of the company is no longer just “nice to have”. It is simply mandatory.

In the age of digitalization, a number of critical new capabilities are necessary in order to succeed:

Collect and use data to better understand customers. Beyond traditional market research, the skills needed to uncover insights and capitalize on them in a strategic manner have become essential: companies must understand the ‘why behind the what’ while remaining focused on the objective to be achieved when tracking this data.

Develop ‘power offers’ that will not only better respond to evolving customer needs but also engage them in supporting your product and activities.

Build and reinforce customer loyalty to grow their lifetime value.

Master technology to reach customers whenever, wherever and however they prefer to engage with the appropriate message.

Measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and prioritize activities that improve the bottom line.

Developing these new capabilities can be hard, and carries a high risk of drowning in analysis, building silos of ownership and dramatically slowing down a company’s process precisely at the time when it must adapt and respond much more quickly to rapidly changing conditions.

Agility, the second ‘buzzword’, becomes critical when speed is at stake. Managers – and not only the marketers – should feel safe when experimenting, following the lean start-up principles: fail fast, fail often, fail cheaply but learn in the process and share the learnings.

Implementing new customer discovery initiatives increases the probability of developing an exceptional design: a power offer that will create superior value to customers. Tests executed rapidly should provide the necessary guardrails before significant launches.

This approach requires exploration and creativity to lead to value creation. It breaks away from the traditional focus on rigorously capturing value, often rigidly siloed.

Agility is closely linked to customer intimacy. Digitalization has dramatically changed the customer-company relationship. It could profoundly improve its quality.

At CentrX, our state-of-the-art business simulations first encourage participants to transform rich and relevant customer-based market research data into strategic information. They must then explore customer insights initiatives, test and experiment with different approaches in order to rapidly develop stronger value propositions. Managers will learn to use digital communication tools to increase their effectiveness and boost results.

Learn how to demystify digitalization, boost agility and customer intimacy in your organization by contacting Jean-Michel Chopin jean-michel.chopin@centrx-exl.com