Five 'no regrets' moves for superior customer engagement - McKinsey Quarterly - Marketing & Sales - Strategy. No organization can avoid coming to grips with the rapidly evolving behavior of consumers and business customers. They check prices at a keystroke and are increasingly selective about which brands share their lives. They form impressions from every encounter and post withering online reviews. As we noted in a McKinsey Quarterly article last year, these changes present significant organizational challenges, as well as opportunities. The biggest is that all of us have become marketers: the critical moments of interaction, or touch points, between companies and customers are increasingly spread across different parts of the organization, so customer engagement is now everyone’s responsibility. In many companies, the marketing function is best placed to orchestrate customer engagement for the entire organization.
To do so, the function must be pervasive—able to influence touch points it doesn’t directly control. 1. 2. The second consideration is how regularly the council should meet. 3. 4. Automating the bank’s back office - McKinsey Quarterly - Business Technology - Operations. Banks have enhanced many of their customer-facing, front-end operations with digital solutions. Online banking, for example, offers consumers enormous convenience, and the rise of mobile payments is slowly eliminating the need for cash. But too many processes at banks still rely on people and paper. Often, back offices have thousands of people processing customer requests.
This high degree of manual processing is costly and slow, and it can lead to inconsistent results and a high error rate. Our research indicates that a significant opportunity exists to increase the levels of automation in back offices. IT-enabling operations encompasses both automating processes (preventing customers from using paper, digitizing work flows, and automating or supporting decision making) and using IT solutions to manage residual operations that must be carried out manually (for example, using software for resource planning).
This scenario sounds promising, but achieving it is easier said than done. Minding your digital business: McKinsey Global Survey - McKinsey Quarterly - High Tech - Strategy & Analysis. Most C-level executives say the three key trends in digital business—namely, big data and analytics, digital marketing and social-media tools, and the use of new delivery platforms such as cloud computing and mobility—are strategic priorities at their companies, according to McKinsey’s first annual survey on the topic. The survey asked executives in the C-suite about their companies’ adoption of these trends; the extent to which their companies are investing in new digital technologies; the value that they expect to reap from these investments; and the role the IT function plays in driving digital business initiatives forward.
These executives have high expectations for the potential value their companies can generate from the three trends, and one-third even expect digital business to increase operating income by more than 10 percent over the next three years. However, they also report some tough challenges. Prioritizing and investing in digital business Exhibit 1 Enlarge Exhibit 2. When job seekers invade Facebook - McKinsey Quarterly - Media & Entertainment - Publishing. As the downturn continues, millions of corporate managers—gripped by the job jitters—are rushing to join online social networks in a scramble to build their social capital. The popularity of sites such as LinkedIn is soaring: less than a year ago the site had little brand profile and was seen mostly as a venue for corporate suits trolling for professional contacts while plotting their next career move. Facebook, by contrast, has largely attracted individuals seeking a compelling site for fun social networking.
Today LinkedIn’s year-on-year growth is up nearly 200 percent in the United States and it now has more than 35 million members—many of whom were formerly employed within the hard-hit financial sector. This surging popularity of online social networking is transforming the nature of business networking, with profound implications for the way business people manage their careers. But it also augurs profound change for social networking itself. About the authors. Becoming more strategic: Three tips for any executive - McKinsey Quarterly - Strategy - Strategy in Practice. We are entering the age of the strategist. As our colleagues Chris Bradley, Lowell Bryan, and Sven Smit have explained in “Managing the strategy journey,” a powerful means of coping with today’s more volatile environment is increasing the time a company’s top team spends on strategy.
Involving more senior leaders in strategic dialogue makes it easier to stay ahead of emerging opportunities, respond quickly to unexpected threats, and make timely decisions. This is a significant change. At a good number of companies, corporate strategy has long represented the bland aggregation of strategies that individual business unit heads put forward. At others, it’s been the domain of a small coterie, perhaps led by a chief strategist who is protective of his or her domain—or the exclusive territory of a CEO. Rare is the company, though, where all members of the top team have well-developed strategic muscles. 1.
But that’s also part of the problem. 2. But those insights don’t emerge magically. 3. Five 'no regrets' moves for superior customer engagement - McKinsey Quarterly - Marketing & Sales - Strategy.