IT Tools are a critical component for the success in the adoption of a customer-centric management strategy. They not only give support to the customer-oriented process areas, as those centered on collecting, analyzing and disseminating customer data and knowledge, but also to the broader organizational transformation and information technology implementation.
Without the appropiate IT Tools, organization’s processes will never deliver the expected outcomes and the organization will not be able to properly evolve through the different customer-centric maturity levels.
Given that the implementation of a customer-centric management strategy—and a Maturity model— is highly data and knowledge-intensive, the following IT Tools are those that I consider essential to attain the final goals:
1. Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management tools provide the organization with a systematic process to manage customer relationship initiation, maintenance and termination across all customer contact points. In other words, they are designed to maximize the value of the customer relationship portfolio.
2. Customer Analytics
Customer Analytics tools are to help the organization discover, gather and communicate meaningful patterns in customer data to drive business decisions, as well as project future customer behavior via predictive modeling.
3. Social Networks
Social Networks tools are those used to create a community and encourage users to share and redistribute content widely and often.
4. Project Management Tools
Project Management tools enable Project and Team managers to save time and achieve effective management of improvement projects by providing functionalities that simplify complex tasks. They also play a relevant role when integrating improvement project along the more global vision of program management.
5. Communication Tools
Communication tools support the organization in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communication aimed at creating favourable relationships with customer and stakeholders and dissemination of information.
It is worth mentioning that the above recommended IT Tools listing is technology independent, and that only the functionalities provided by the vendors is what should matter when the time comes for its implementation.
Furthermore, the listing does not claim to be exhaustive and we might add more and sophisticated IT Tools, but rather it highlights those key IT Tools that will provide the needed support for the improvement of the process areas at each maturiy level.
Last but not least, keep in mind that successfully managing a complex and heterogeneous IT Tools environment will only be possible if you are backed with a solid IT Governance framework. The combination of the appropiate IT Tools and an IT Governance framework will better set your company to deliver the expected results and make it possible to meet its organizational goals.
Contact the author to know more about how to improve your company customer-centric capability.
Republished with author’s permission from original post.
