The Golden Threads: Part 9 (of 12): Organisational Design

This series of blogs explores twelve “golden threads” of critical capability across the CAA® model and considers their application in B2B customer management (CM). All of the threads are important, but your business needs to decide which of these will be defining characteristics of YOUR corporate DNA.

The ninth golden thread is Organisational Design:

Understanding Customer Centric Organisations

Are the characteristics of high performing / customer centric organisations understood and have you been assessed against these? Has the organisational design been benchmarked? Is there acceptance of the change required to become more customer centric and have barriers been identified? Do you assess the levels of trust that exist within the business?

OD Strategy

Is the organisation customer centred and is this seen in the structure? Is it clear who “owns” and is ultimately responsible for the customer experience? Is innovation & co-creation core to business design? Is a common model of change used for all transformation, efficiency and improvement initiatives?

OD Planning

Is Sales in control of its planning, or is it constantly in ‘fire-fighting’ or tactical mode? Do HR plans incorporate innovation, co-creation and changes in customer requirement? Is the model of change driving the plans for transformation, efficiency and improvement initiatives?

Managing Change

Is there clear evidence of movement through the change cycle with good people engagement? Are innovation & co-creation evident? Is the company effective at making informed, timely decisions in support of customer development and customer experience? Do you set, monitor and manage CM-related budgets?

Performing Organisationally

Is there an internally agreed dashboard of hard and soft organisational measures? Are you performing consistently against budgets? Is the added value of innovation & co-creation clearly and separately tracked? Is there evidence of positive outcomes & benefits from change initiatives?

How does B2B perform in these five areas?

The chart shows the highest, lowest and mean (benchmark) scores for companies on the Customer Attuned database. The benchmarks show a slight lack of insight in this area, and that everyone has room to improve. The lowest scores registered are surprisingly poor, showing that some companies remain utterly product-centric.

Where would your business score?

A company that has its organisational design as a defining characteristic of its corporate DNA:

Has customer-centricity as fundamental to its brand, proposition and culture
Has innovation, flexibility & entrepreneurialism as key success factors
An organisation built around the delivery of an excellent customer experience throughout the customer journey/lifecycle
Has mapped the customer journey and developed the organisation to minimise pain points and accentuate the gain points
Never allows internal silos, power bases or politics to become visible to clients or to obstruct their journey

Get Involved!

We are conducting research in June/July 2015 into which of the 12 Golden Threads are of most strategic importance in your sector.

Participate in our research here!!

To read the full e-book please fill out this form and we will e-mail it to you.

[Form id=”20″]

Have a view on this? Tweet to @CustomerAttune// or Tweet to @PeterLavers//

Author
Recent Posts

Peter Lavers

Peter Lavers is a co-founder and Director of Customer Attuned Ltd.

An expert in CRM and customer experience management, Peter is regularly recognised as a top influencer in the subject.

He's a SAS Collaborator and IBM Futurist; and regularly features in "top people to follow" lists for Customer Experience, Customer Service and Customer Success.

His early career was 18 years with Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motors, after which he jumped the fence into business consulting, helping clients improve customer experience and value.