Leveraging Customer and Market Information
- Project Summaries
- Leveraging Customer and Market Information
A multi-billion dollar division within a global leader in heavy equipment manufacturing believes a more formal translation of data into insights and actions is essential to better serve customers, target prospects, and enable growth.
Clearly defining the sources of and business uses for wide ranging information, as well as knowing how to collaborate across the company and with an independent dealer network, are critical objectives.
Based on its experience with content management and customer-centric methodologies, SimpatiCo is selected to lead two teams chartered to meet these goals.
SimpatiCo’s Role
SimpatiCo was a driver and coach through analysis and into implementation.
- Co-authored and instituted guiding principles for the on-going management of information—from acquisition to aggregation, distribution to continual improvement (e.g., “a common customer identifier will be the backbone of disciplined information management”)
- Identified and defined 50 customer/market information intensive processes across the division within the US and Canada; created “big ugly map” demonstrating interconnectedness (or lack thereof) of processes
- Detailed information gaps and created action plan for filling, including purchasing from third party providers, gathering on-the-ground intelligence via field force, and accessing siloed information at dealerships and in other divisions
- Drafted information management metrics
- Designed, tested, and implemented an Insight Generation Process that produced actionable insights from various information sources; instituted continuous improvement to ensure relevance to time-sensitive business issues
Results
A division that once relied predominantly on intuition and disparate data points is now guided by relevant customer and market information for strategic and tactical business decisions. By tapping into legacy systems and accessing increasingly more sophisticated information sources, critical information gaps have been filled, and a longer-term vision and plan are in place for the continual improvement of information management. Additionally, new positions have been created to ensure other recommendations are successfully implemented, momentum is sustained, and learnings are shared across other geographies and divisions.