Connect the Enterprise to Orchestrate End-to-End Customer-Centric Journeys

This IDC Perspective discusses customer experience (CX) initiatives that are at a crossroads: Companies have a choice either to optimize their financial, product, and operational excellence or to take on a more customer-centric business model. The challenge for the customer-centric model is that, while it is intuitively true that a deep understanding of customer behavior has significant business value, it is extremely difficult to measure and prove its actual business impact. In addition, the customer-centric business model requires significant organizational transformation to orchestrate an end-to-end customer journey across the enterprise. Companies that want to gain a competitive advantage through a superior customer experience must not make the same mistakes that have torpedoed some earlier CX initiatives, where major investments in data gathering didn't pay off. The following are four key areas that are critical to the success of most CX initiatives:Defining the North Star of CX for the entire enterpriseDefining the proof points to measure the business impact of customer orchestrationDefining a customer-centric data platform that will weave the journey togetherDefining the culture and organization that will deliver exceptional end-to-end customer journeys"CX needs to be defined at the highest level of the enterprise mission, strategy, vision, goals, values, success factors, and priorities as companies take on a more customer-centric business model," says Bob Multhaup, adjunct research advisor, IT Executive Programs (IEP), IDC. "This reenvisioning of the enterprise with the customer in the center can be viewed as the North Star of the enterprise."