Power Of Purpose

Only 7 percent of companies are … unifying creativity, analytics, and purpose …driving average revenue growth of 2.3 times versus peers from 2018–19 (which increased to 2.7 times versus peers from 2019–20).

~ McKinsey “The Growth Triple Play” June 2021.

Purpose is a scalable, core part of the business, and it doesn’t have to compete for limited time and resources anymore - or any less - than the rest of the business does. A purpose-driven business strategy creates value for stakeholders and is usually global.  It’s not just a marketing & communication strategy, the company reorganizes its processes around the purpose. 

Robust purpose-driven strategies answer the HOW and produce an external roadmap to open new markets, improve customer experience, save costs, and innovate new products and services.  Analytics, embedded in a company’s decision-making process, is key to designing the roadmap. According to Forrester, 74% of surveyed companies stated their desire to be more data-driven, but only 3 out of 10 were good at connecting analytics to actions.

Robust business strategies create evangelists, reinforce a learning and evolving organization, and inform talent acquisition.  The universal truth is that we buy products we know and love.  Customers and employees want to be associated with products that help them dream bigger and better, that match their values.  These strategies are creative and authentic.

75% of organizations will have established a data and analytics center of excellence by 2024 to prevent enterprise failure.

~ Gartner January 2021.

Every good roadmap has 5 elements: Map Frame, Legend or Map Key, Scale Indicator, Grid, and a Compass Rose.  We can think of a purpose-driven strategy as the Map Frame, and the map key describes tactics in the Frame.  The other elements are in the Analytics Center of Excellence (COE). 

The Analytics Center of Excellence is an integrated decision science and emerging technology capability that fosters innovation, builds brand equity and informs new product development.  It sharpens the focus on cross-sell and up-sell to existing customers as an output of the strategic, data science-based analyses.

The Analytics Center of Excellence (COE) supports the purpose-driven strategy with the data backbone and analytics.  During its construction, the COE ecosystem considers how to digitize and what is needed to transform, to create a real, competitive advantage.  The journey articulates the efforts and outcomes, which will strengthen and drive the innovation-led strategic vision. 

Data and technology are the foundation for building a data backbone that is focused on data enrichment – to clean, standardize, refine, and enhance data that is currently accessed when managing the business.  Data Science creates intelligent domain intervention opportunities for cross functional stakeholders and enhances executive management and stakeholder engagement. Strategic insights, which include upgraded corporate performance reporting, shape management decision-making and produce 360° customer views that target customer conversion opportunities. 

More data is created per hour now than in an entire year just two decades ago … The constraints on capturing the full potential of data are both systemic and operational.

~ Seagate Technology Report 2020.

Customers are spoiled.  They want to access information anytime, anywhere, on any device and they want real-time, personalized interactions with companies, brands, and products.  Customer-focused companies show varying degrees of success engaging their customers; and research indicates that companies believe their hyper-personalization programs are strong while consumers are not as impressed.

Most companies still rely on historical, structured data to develop strategies, tactics and anticipate success.  If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that the future can change in an instant.  Companies need to shift the data and analytics paradigm to predictions based on the most complete, reliable, and current data available.   

Every company has real-time data, and more is coming exponentially each day. IDC predicts that by 2025 80% of all data will be unstructured and nearly 30% of global data will be real-time, at the same time CTOs recently reported that 55% of all data available in their company goes unused. 

Time is Now to plan and create a hyper-personalization strategy.  Every interaction with a customer needs to be a “moment of truth” and be as relevant and personal as possible.  And the “moment of truth” for company leaders is that only data will define the ability to perform and adapt in the fast-evolving business world. 

The biggest needle-movers will be things that customers don't know to ask for. We have to tap into our own inner imagination about what's possible.

~ Jeff Bezos (2018)

Cross-sell is a powerful product strategy.  It relies on customer loyalty and loyalty motivated by customer experience.  The broader the one-on-one relationship with a customer the better the share of wallet, and the better top- and bottom-line performance.  The benefits are well documented: Cross-sell reduces customer acquisition costs, and reduces customer servicing, and marketing and communication costs.  It reduces customer attrition and increases stickiness.

Some questions to ask include: Is there any preferred channel for cross selling?  What is the customer appetite to identity next product purchase potential?  Can you identify your customers by their preferences of product, channel, price, time? Do you know customer lifetime value? 

While it may take time, effort, and teamwork to successfully cross-sell, the results are more rewarding.  Sales credibility and customer motivation are very important, and a smart cross sell engine is an enabler.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

~ Warren Buffett

Customers speak, voice their concerns, and complain to contact centers, on social media, on the web, in apps, over emails – these channels continue to grow in count.  Do we hear this customer voice?  Do we know the root cause or reason for their dissatisfaction?  Do we know the resolution?  Do we care enough to resolve it?

Costs to gain new customers can be as high as 5 to 10 times the cost of retaining existing customers.  Companies say their mission and vision statements are set to meet customer expectations.  They undertake big bold bets, go public with their customer-centric, high quality values, next-gen tech, competitive edge, accountability, customized experiences, corporate citizenship, and financial stability.  Do the customer facing processes resemble customer values? Do the people feel prepared to offer this visionary experience?  Does the technology support the mission statement?  Do we have the data to reflect on these values?  Do we measure and know the cost of retaining existing customers?  Customer Lifetime Value?  Measure customer loyalty?  Impact of customer retention and loyalty on profits?  Return on investment in values?

Companies must connect with customers in four ways – as individuals; based on what they do; continuously over time; and, directed towards a mutually beneficial outcome.  Companies must focus less on cultivating a forest of great reviews, and more on the state of each tree.  Customer-centric companies show varying degrees of success engaging with their customers when they create effective customer satisfaction and retention efforts.  Customer dissatisfaction, which is intangible when it goes unnoticed, can slowly kill a company. 

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

~ Maya Angelou

A purpose-driven strategy will be customer-centric.  It should be hyper-personalized, using real-time or near real-time current data; it understands what the customer wants and why they may be dissatisfied. Cross-selling is stronger when it has a hyper-personalized component.  The purpose-driven strategy isn’t formulaic, and as a guide inspires creativity, satisfies customers and employees. 

Finally, while shareholders can expect to see more meaningful short-term profits, companies will be better positioned in the future when their purpose inspires business strategy.

Resources are scarce. 

Time is limited. This is THE second chance because there is no third chance.

Time Is Now. We must move forward and continue Rising Ahead.

Author | Joanna Pasquale 

References | McKinsey “The Growth Triple Play” and Gartner Predictions 2021.