Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

2

CONTENTSWelcome to the Customer-Centric Economy � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 3

The CX Differentiation Advantage � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 3

Data-Driven Insights for Data-Driven Results � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 4

DEEPEN: A New Way to Think About Customer-Centricity � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 6

New Answers Should Only Open Up More Questions � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 8

About DataStax � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 9

About West Monroe Partners � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 9

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

3

WELCOME TO THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC ECONOMY In today’s fast-paced business climate, companies are seeing dramatic shifts in their market. Customer expectations are changing faster than ever due to digital disruption in areas like commerce, banking, transportation, healthcare, utilities, and media consumption. Technology is being used to disrupt traditionally “safe” industry norms. Data is being generated at levels never seen before, but companies are having a tough time understanding how to find the gold within the gravel.

Given these rapid changes, many organizations find themselves flat-footed and off-balance in adapting to this new customer-centric economy�

What does this shift mean for your company?

It means assumptive customer experience is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a prerequisite for survival. The development of a more agile, data driven, customer-centric organization is quickly becoming table stakes. Those that shift win. Those who stick with 1990s-based operating models suffer.

In order to compete successfully and win a greater share of wallet from today’s—and tomorrow’s—customers, it’s become clear: you need to become a customer-centric organization.

Becoming a customer-centric organization focused on delivering exceptional customer experience allows you to:

Gain and retain customers, driving revenue, and earnings.

Make decisions based on real-time data to avoid missteps in the marketplace and giving your competitors an edge.

Deliver efficiently across functions.

But how exactly does an enterprise become customer-centric?

The first step is recognizing that differentiation on customer experience can be a competitive advantage.

THE CX DIFFERENTIATION ADVANTAGECompanies are in a race to set themselves apart from the competition in a meaningful way. Pre-Internet and pre-cloud, beating the competition meant out-advertising them, out-spending them, out-maneuvering them, or getting to a certain demographic before they did.

Today—it means using data to connect with the customer on a meaningful level. Connection breeds loyalty, which breeds recurring revenue. A huge marketing or advertising budget won’t help you much if you’re not able to connect with your customer in the moment—to capitalize on what the customer wants, when the customer wants it. In this way, you deliver value to your customers while generating value for your organization.

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

4

Far too often, companies go to market with a focus on low-cost leadership. While this strategy may initially gain market share, it’s not a sustainable strategy long-term that leads to advantage. Differentiation is.

Customer experience (CX) differentiation is a strategy that optimizes your relationships with your customers in the marketplace and leads to a much more sustainable, longer-term advantage.

According to Gartner, 89% of companies believe to be competing mostly on the basis of customer experience now, versus 36% four years ago.

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, customers are looking for differentiated experiences. Differentiation based on data- driven customer experience is a winning strategy.

When customers see your company as delivering a consistently better experiences across all functions, from marketing to sales to support, they move from dispassionate buyers towards loyal advocates of your brand.

The economic value created by this shift in focus leads to increased share of wallet, share of market, and EBITDA.

The key to unlocking successful CX differentiation from an organizational perspective is using data as an asset.

DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS FOR DATA-DRIVEN RESULTSUnderstanding your customers and your interactions with them is the raw material for a world-leading customer experience. Being able to contextualize customer and other relevant data in real time and at scale allows your organization to optimize that customer experience successfully. This data-driven optimization leads to market-recognized differentiation.

(Source: Gartner for Marketers, Gartner Surveys Confirm Customer Experience Is the New Battlefield, October 23, 2014)

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

5

Think of some companies you interact with every day. Companies like Google and Netflix are knocking it out of the park with customer experience. They have to deal with mountains of real-time data and millions of customers, and they handle it with ease, with every interaction being unique and personalized to that customer at that moment. This tailor-made interaction breeds trust and loyalty, and this all happens through data.

Enterprises need to use their data to understand customers and keep their finger on the pulse of their customers to influence ongoing strategy.

The ability to handle big data and contextualize it in real time for actionable, loyalty-producing insights is going to mark the difference between companies that thrive and those who don’t.

According to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester on behalf of DataStax, 95% of executives reported having challenges gaining value from the data they collect. This includes difficulty in mapping relationships between data and customer, operational management being too complex, and lack of key capabilities like analytics and real-time visibility.

If you can master your data and use it as an asset instead of only for reporting on past events, you’re setting your enterprise up to lead through customer-centricity and win the battle for customers.

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

6

DEEPEN: A NEW WAY TO THINK ABOUT CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY We’ve established that you need to become a customer-centric company to survive in today’s constantly shifting, disruption-happy business environment, and we’ve also established that you need to optimize your CX differentiation, via powerful real-time data, to achieve this.

The next step is absorbing a customer-centric philosophy into the very core of your company’s operations.

To get ahead of the market, organizations must be built on a foundation of customer experience and deliver on customer expectations using a customer-centered design methodology.

At West Monroe Partners, we’ve developed a methodology we call DEEPEN: Define, Empathize, Envision, Plan, ENact. This framework builds an organization’s customer experience differentiation strategy through the lens of its customers.

The journey begins by defining both the issue and the value that solving this issue brings to the company. We call this the “North Star”, as it provides your company with the CX lens through which to build your strategy and the inside-out approach that benefits both your customers and your organization.

Next comes empathize, meaning seeing things from the customer’s POV, then envision, setting goals based on customer insights, then plan, which includes developing a roadmap to achieve your North Star, and finally enact, which is all about building, implementing, and continually refining your process or plan.

Fig 1—West Monroe Partners’ DEEPEN methodology helps enterprises build a measurable transformational customer experience strategy through design thinking.

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

7

The three objectives of using the DEEPEN process are:

1. Understanding your customers and their needs

Using data and analytics to understand your customers’ identities, behaviors (i.e., how they engage), and outcomes.

Developing personas that represent your customers, using available data and analytics to build them, and supporting the organization’s evolution to becoming data-driven.

Leveraging customer journey mapping to identify opportunities to unlock value for your customers by reducing friction and providing digital alternatives to manual processes.

2. Defining your strategy

Effectively assessing your processes, people, and technology to identify opportunities based on metrics.

• Where do you provide value to your customers? How do you replicate that in other areas of the customer experience?

• What do you need to do short-term and long-term to close gaps? (e.g. fix business process, operating models, culture, etc...)

Gaining alignment among key cross-functional stakeholders on objectives, goals, strategies, and tactics.

3. Making it happen

Achieving successful transformation to a customer-centric organization model via the alignment of technology to business processes, including the implementation of a modern data architecture that can support the insights needed to drive the journey to success.

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

8

NEW ANSWERS SHOULD ONLY OPEN UP MORE QUESTIONSCustomer-centricity. Differentiation. Data. DEEPEN. It’s this kind of holistic, all-encompassing approach to customer experience that will drive successful business initiatives over the next few years.

That said, a company that’s great at CX should never feel like it’s “figured it out”. Every answer should only be opening up more questions and increasing your knowledge.

With every touchpoint, every device, every new customer, every interactive moment across company business units, and every piece of data, the potential payoff of providing a good customer experience in real time increases exponentially, because you’re adding so many branches to the decision tree.

That’s the true power of customer-centricity and differentiated CX. Knowledge means possibilities, which ultimately means happy customers and a better bottom line.

West Monroe Partners’ CX methodology and design expertise combined with DataStax’s industry- leading data technology can help organizations accelerate their time to market with reduced risk and increased flexibility for their critical CX initiatives.

Click here to learn how you can use DataStax technolo-gy to power your own CX initiatives, or contact us.

To learn more about West Monroe Partners CX solutions, click here.

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

9

ABOUT DATASTAXIt starts with a human desire, and when a universe of technology, devices and data aligns, it ends in a moment of fulfillment and insight. Billions of these moments occur each second around the globe. They are moments that can define an era, launch an innovation, and forever alter for the better how we relate to our environment. DataStax is the power behind the moment. Built on the unique architecture of Apache Cassandra™, DataStax Enterprise is the always-on data platform and has been battle-tested for the world’s most innovative, global applications.

DataStax provides data management to the world’s most innovative companies, such as Netflix, Safeway, ING, Adobe, Intuit and eBay. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors including Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital, Premji Invest and Scale Venture Partners. For more information, visit DataStax.com/customers or follow us on @DataStax�

ABOUT WEST MONROE PARTNERSWest Monroe is a leading business and technology consulting firm that partners with dynamic organizations to reimagine, build, and operate their businesses at peak performance. Our team of more than 1,000 professionals is comprised of an uncommon blend of business consultants and deep technologists. This unique combination of expertise enables us to design, develop, implement, and run strategic business and technology solutions that yield a dramatic commercial impact on our clients’ profitability and performance. To learn more, visit us at www.westmonroepartners.com�

Becoming a Customer-Centric Organization with DataStax and West Monroe Partners

ABOUT DATASTAX

It starts with a human desire, and when a universe of technology, devices and data aligns, it ends in a moment of fulfillment and insight. Billions of these moments occur each second around the globe. They are moments that can define an era, launch an innovation, and forever alter for the better how we relate to our environment. DataStax is the power behind the moment. Built on the unique architecture of Apache Cassandra™, DataStax Enterprise is the always-on data platform and has been battle-tested for the world’s most innovative, global applications.

DataStax provides data management to the world’s most innovative companies, such as Netflix, Safeway, ING, Adobe, Intuit and eBay. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors including Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital, Premji Invest and Scale Venture Partners. For more information, visit DataStax.com/customers or follow us on @DataStax.

© 2018 DataStax, All Rights Reserved.