Four Stages of Customer Insight (CI) Maturity

This is an exclusive document to the FlevyPro community - http://flevy.com/pro
Framework Primer
Four Stages of Customer
Insight (CI) Maturity
Presentation created by
Source of
Competitive
Advantage
Strategic Insight
PartnerBusiness ContributorTraditional Market
Research Provider
1
2
3
4

2This document is an exclusive document available to FlevyPro members - http://flevy.com/pro
Contents
Templates
Overview
Four Stages of Customer Insight Maturity
Study Results
Customer Insight Maturity Success Factors
The content on this page has been partially hidden.
FlevyPro members can download the full document here:
http://flevy.com/browse/flevypro/four-stages-of-customer-insight-ci-maturity-2807

The four stages of Customer Insight (CI) Maturity provide a mechanism to
evaluate patterns of CI function maturity across organizations
Presentation Overview
Since the recession of 2008-09, consumer-facing organizations have observed
little growth, resulting in leadership focusing on new sources of customer
information, investigating analytical methods to anticipate customer behavior—
and thus developing the Customer Insight (CI) function.
Integration of CI function into the organization’s core processes has been a
challenge, with most businesses struggling to give CI more than the usual market
research role. This presentation discusses the 4 stages of CI maturity that
organizations evolve through:
Research has showed that organizations that have succeeded in maturing CI to a strategic
level have done that only due to the support from the top executives.
1 Traditional Market Research Provider
2 Business Contributor
3 Strategic Insight Partner
4 Source of Competitive Advantage
Consumers’ demands for information is increasing and so is the ability of
retailers to predict the needs of customers.
Source: BCG Perspectives August 2016.

In today’s ever-changing technological environment, organizations must
revamp and prioritize their CI function to improve bottom line
Capability Development Priorities
Evolution and maturity of the CI function overall has remained quite sluggish, a bulk of
organizations globally have a long way to go.
Source: BCG Survey of 45 cross-sector CEOs and Top Executives, 2016
In a 2016 study by BCG, top executives from various sectors considered customers to be their top
priority, followed by Operational Excellence, Shareholder Value Creation, And Customer Experience.
9
11 13
4 4 4 4 4
4 4 9
Customer
relationship
management
17
40
20
0
Respondents
Percent
7
13
7
Customer
insight
11
33
11
4
43
2
21
2
13
Talent
sourcing
4
Big data
and
customer
analytics
2
4
24
44
Performance
manage-
ment
211
19
Strategic
planning
16
4
2
2
2
11
2
Business
develop-
ment
4
Pricing
analytics
60
Talent
develo-
pment
26
9
2
4 4
25
Brand
develop-
ment
7
26
4
9
11
2
5th priority3rd priority2nd priority 4th priority1st priority
TOP 10 CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT AREAS
• In excess of 75% of the Top
Executives studied
overall—and 100% from
companies with more than
$5 billion in annual
revenue—perceived CI
critical to accelerating
growth.
• The respondents deemed
CI and business
development as top
capabilities their firms
needed to develop followed
by advanced analytics.

Contents
Templates
Overview
Study Results

CI Maturity Stages provide a gauge for organizations to measure the
maturity of their CI function
CI Maturity Stages Overview
We use the CI Maturity Stages to evaluate our organization’s level of performance on each
of the four levels of Customer Insight function.
The following four developmental stages benchmark organizations’ Customer Insight function
advancement patterns.
Source of Competitive
Advantage
Strategic Insight
PartnerBusiness ContributorTraditional Market
Research Provider
1
2
3
4
Tactical focus.
Service provider.
Marketing scope.
Insufficient or
inconsistent budget.
More strategic focus.
Business collaborator.
Commercial scope.
Budget input but no
control.
Mostly strategic focus,
prescriptive.
Trusted advisor.
Cross-functional
scope.
Some budget control.
Focused on
foresight predictive.
Partner with C-suite.
Enterprise
perspective.
Significant budget
and control.

At the earliest stage of CI Maturity, Traditional Market Research Provider,
the CI functions are typically tactical and research oriented
CIM Stages (1/2)
To reach stage 4, the CI team must be empowered as decision makers, perceived as
thought leaders, and provide world-class guidance to solve complex issues.
At this emerging stage, the main focus of the CI function in an organization is on
unearthing product / services sales trends in current channels and geographic locations.
Data is produced only as requested by the line management.
The CI function has limited budget, staff, influence, and leadership buy-in within the
organization.
The results derived from the data are shared only with the line management.
Traditional Market
Research Provider
Business Contributor
At the second stage, the CI function has a more strategic focus within the organization,
and is a business facilitator in terms of leveraging innovations in packaging, pricing, and
promotions, etc.
The customer insights are converted into business recommendations.
The research function enjoys active support from the marketing department, has some
access to BU leaders, but neither represent the executive team nor has access to the
board.
CI budget although exists but mostly outside the function’s control.
Source: BCG Survey of 45 Cross-sector CEOs and Top Executives, 2016
1
2

At the advanced stages of CI Maturity, research gains a strategic focus
and drives informed decision making across the organization
CIM Stages (2/2)
To reach stage 4, the CI team must be empowered as decision makers, perceived as
thought leaders, and provide world-class guidance to solve complex issues.
At this point, senior executives realize the importance of the CI function as a strategic
advisor to guide commercial business decision making.
The function has a dedicated team of generalists and strategists possessing specialized
research skills and strategic mindset, and is managed by leaders from cross industry or
consulting backgrounds. The strategic focus is not only on product / service innovations
but also on analyzing novel data sources and methodologies. There is some budget
control by the function.
An executive team member leads the function, and the CI team collaborates with line
management to decipher customer insights into key decisions, and form a
knowledgeable organization capable of predicting customers’ requirements.
The results are communicated across the business.
Strategic Insight
Partner
Source of Competitive
Advantage
At this stage, the CI function is truly integrated across organization-wide decision making
process.
The focus is on innovation, prudence and predictive inquiry.
The CI team has the maximum control over budget. The functional leaders play
executive roles and report directly to the CEO.
The CI function renders feedback on customer trends and key topics, and focuses on
innovative approaches.
Source: BCG Survey of 45 Cross-sector CEOs and Top Executives, 2016
3
4

Contents
Templates
Overview
Study Results

Survey findings demonstrate that only 20% of the organizations had their
CI function in the advanced stages
Key Findings of Study
All leaders surveyed from organizations with mature CI function believed that CI puts them
on faster growth course.
The findings uncovered that businesses
with advanced level of CI function:
− Perform better on externally demonstrable
indicators including customer loyalty and
growth rates.
− Recognize customer insight’s
effectiveness in decision making, in
addition to monitoring CI ROI.
− Their executives were more likely (by
15%) to consider, versus the executives of
organizations with less mature CI function,
that they contribute to bottom line, assist in
achieving faster growth curves (9%) and
enhancing competitive edge (20%).
1
2
3
1 Executive buy-in.
2 Authority.
3 Communication with other line departments.
4 Budget and control over spending.
• The study revealed that while some
organizations implement capabilities matching
stage 3—such as advanced analytics, digital,
or social media evaluation—these outfits act
as typical market research units. They have
limited:
• CI function is not evaluated specifically with
regards to return on investment (ROI) metric.
5 Career ladder for the team.

Stage 3 (50%) and Stage 4 companies (67%) strive to assess the ROI of CI
investments; and relate higher satisfaction levels—83-88%—with CI’s ROI
Survey Takeaways
The study results clearly indicate that executive leadership should reassess the ROI for CI
functions that are still dated or limited to marketing role only.
In firms with CI maturity levels of stage 3 or 4, CI champions and line management
were closely associated on the value and significance of CI.1
The study participants (90%) agreed that on reaching stage 3 line management
engages CI into decision making.2
Likewise, at stage 4, owing to line management’s greater involvement of CI in
business decisions, executives’ satisfaction with CI’s contribution to decision making
increases to 90%.
3
Similarly at stages 3 and 4, business partners realize CI’s significance in the
identification of crucial enterprise concerns.4

Impact of leadership support on CI maturity
Precursors to CI Maturity
CI maturity warrants unequivocal support from the top management.
In order for the CI function to progress to advanced stages, executive support is as critical as
backing from the CI practitioners.
Seventy three percent of the senior executives from the study declared that the CI function
enjoyed the patronage from top executives, 40% cited the president’s or BU head’s support,
while 49% nominated the CMO championing it.
In contrast, some 30% of CI practitioners and non-executive team members validated the
President’s or BU head’s top management’s active support for CI, whereas only 19% to 32%
ratified CEO’s support.
Part of the disconnect is owing to marketing function transformation and centralized reporting
shifting from the CEO to the CMO.
At advanced stages of CI maturity, CI leader enjoys customary access to the executive team.

Contents
Templates
Overview
Study Results

How do we reach higher levels of Customer Insight maturity?
Key Steps to CI maturity
A PMO should be setup to ensure transparent transformation, accountability, results,
change management, and timely decision making.
Perform Diagnostics1
The purpose of the engagement is to interview all concerned stakeholders,
quantitatively benchmark CI function against competitors, and track information
flow and utilization throughout the organization.
Organize Facilitated
Workshops for the
Executive Team
2
CI practitioners along with the executive team should attend creative facilitated
workshops to achieve shared self-awareness, pinpoint areas where CI function
fulfills executives’ goals and where it falls short and needs fine tuning.
Outlining a Strategy3
Further, the executive teams should develop an action plan with the agenda to
align leadership’s individual and shared responsibilities. Organizations should set
a goal of two years to achieve the highest CI maturity levels. CI transformation is
a painstaking initiative and should only be attempted by organizations where top
management is fully committed to it. Leadership should be kept abreast of the
progress of the program through regular status reports by a steering committee.

For CI initiatives to be successful, organizations need to prioritize cross-
functional initiatives and appoint executive sponsors for each endeavor
Priority Items leading to CI Maturity
This category encompasses initiatives
funding the CI transformation and
gaining external support needed to close
performance gaps including:
• Consolidating market research
vendors.
• Appraising supplier pricing
• Proper allocation of archaic, non-
profitable project resources as well as
expenditures.
The key initiatives for a successful,
functional CI transformation strategy to
gain traction in the medium term are:
• Building knowledge management
systems.
• Calculating CI ROI.
• Management teams’ and boards’
capacity development vis-à-vis CI.
• Specializing in innovative research
resources and methodologies.
• Leveraging CI to use strategic
development and budgetary tools.
The initiatives under this category
leverage the CI function to not only
execute but sustain the transformation
endeavor.
These include alignment of job
functions and specifications for key
employees, formation of executive
staffing alliances to hunt unique talent
pool, defining career pathways,
leadership development and rotation
programs, and linking pays to
performance.
SPONSORING THE JOURNEY MEDIUM TERM GAINS ORGANIZING FOR GROWTH
1 2 3
The three key cross-functional initiatives to CI Maturity are:
CI Transformation programs must initiate at the top management level to set the right tone
from the onset—utilizing CI to formulate decisions can improve marketplace positioning.

Contents
Templates
Overview
Study Results

Insert headline
CI Maturity Stages Framework – TEMPLATE
Insert bumper.
Source of
Competitive
Advantage
Strategic Insight
Partner
Business
Contributor
Traditional Market
Research Provider
1
2
3
4
• Filler text, filler text, filler
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text
text, filler text

Insert headline
Insert bumper.
Traditional
Market Research
Provider
Business
Contributor
Strategic Insight
Partner
Source of
Competitive
Advantage
1 2
3 4
Tactical focus.
Service provider.
Marketing scope.
Insufficient or
inconsistent budget.
More strategic focus.
Business collaborator.
Commercial scope.
Budget input but no control.
Mostly strategic focus,
prescriptive.
Trusted advisor.
Cross-functional scope.
Some budget control.
Focused on foresight
predictive.
Partner with C-suite.
Enterprise perspective.
Significant budget and
control.
CI Maturity Stages Framework – TEMPLATE ALTERNATE

Insert headline
CI Maturity Stages Framework – TEMPLATE ALTERNATE
Insert bumper.
Source of
Competitive
Advantage
Strategic Insight
Partner
Business
Contributor
Traditional Market
Research Provider
1
2
3
4

This presentation was created by PPT Lab. PPT Lab is a
PowerPoint design firm specializing in consulting-quality
presentations.
View our available presentations on Flevy here:
https://flevy.com/seller/PPTLab

Flevy (www.flevy.com) is the marketplace
for premium documents. These
documents can range from Business
Frameworks to Financial Models to
PowerPoint Templates.
Flevy was founded under the principle that
companies waste a lot of time and money
recreating the same foundational business
documents. Our vision is for Flevy to
become a comprehensive knowledge base
of business documents. All organizations,
from startups to large enterprises, can use
Flevy— whether it's to jumpstart projects, to
find reference or comparison materials, or
just to learn.
Contact Us
Please contact us with any questions you may have
about our company.
• General Inquiries
support@flevy.com
• Media/PR
press@flevy.com
• Billing
billing@flevy.com

1
Flevy (www.flevy.com) is the marketplace
for premium documents. These
documents can range from Business
Frameworks to Financial Models to
PowerPoint Templates.
Flevy was founded under the principle that
companies waste a lot of time and money
recreating the same foundational business
documents. Our vision is for Flevy to
become a comprehensive knowledge base
of business documents. All organizations,
from startups to large enterprises, can use
Flevy— whether it's to jumpstart projects, to
find reference or comparison materials, or
just to learn.
Contact Us
Please contact us with any questions you may have
about our company.
• General Inquiries
support@flevy.com
• Media/PR
press@flevy.com
• Billing
billing@flevy.com

Four Stages of Customer Insight (CI) Maturity

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais de Flevy.com Best Practices

Mais de Flevy.com Best Practices (20)

Último

Último (20)

Four Stages of Customer Insight (CI) Maturity