This section examines the necessity for strategic alignment of Customer Value Management within the organization and proposes methods to enhance this alignment.
The Necessity of Aligning CVM
Most senior leaders understand the importance of making sure that the organization is firstly doing the right things, only then doing them right. Customer Value management role, by virtue of being a modern incarnation of marketing, is extremely sensitive to changes in the business environment and the definition of what is right is an ever moving target. There is almost an infinite number of business scenarios that throw CVM out of balance – ranging from competitor acquisitions or mergers, economic cycles, technological advancements, entry of new competitors, constant stream of regulatory changes, introduction of new products, changing company owners – the changes never end.
Therefore it is essential to ensure that a periodic CVM alignment process is in place. Regardless of whether your planning process is top-down driven by strategy, or bottom-up driven by customer needs and feature requests, strategic alignment process is about creating a shared agreement between key stakeholders on the direction. This may sound daunting at first, but the important thing to realize is that just a few key aspects impact CVM in a significant way, while many aspects can be left out of sync. By making sure that these key aspects are well aligned among senior management you can ensure that the CVM role is well positioned to contribute to the business in a big way.
What are those key aspects? Experience shows that there are 6 key aspects – 3 looking from the customer perspective (persona, needs, alternatives) and 3 looking from the business perspective (strategy, business objectives, and major initiatives). They are described in more detail in the Strategic CVM Alignment Tool chapter below. By making sure all 6 aspects are covered with coherent answers senior leadership creates a solid foundation on top of which CVM team can begin their work in sync with the business direction.
Using Strategic CVM Alignment Tool for Aligning CVM Activities
Rooting the rationale for a CVM initiative in the strategic plan simplifies its justification and ensures funding stability, even when stakeholders change. For example, if a company merger was concluded in order to broaden the product portfolio of the combined company and cross-sell the product portfolio to the combined customer base, this creates a massive CVM initiative to ensure this key commercial driver for the merger is successfully implemented.
How should one go about aligning CVM with the results of the Strategic CVM alignment tool? In order to align CVM we should ensure that the CVM KPIs, the high priority Moments of Truth and the Cross-functional collaboration setup is traceable to the strategic bets.
