The economic disruption caused by inflation, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine have challenged organizations to really deliver to customers and citizens.
Resilient organizations look to maximize the efficiency and value of their customer ecosystems. They fully understand all customer dynamics. They have a deep appreciation of real consumer and citizen demand, and they know how to deliver customer services that include holistic product and channel delivery. They also understand where and how to source product from suppliers and resolve complex supply chain issues.
While every sector has its own characteristics, our analysis pinpoints five key actions undertaken by resilient organizations to understand the total customer dynamic and thrive in a changing environment.
Key actions
- Know your customer ecosystem: Understand the complete customer, then satisfy them by providing a perfect delivery, based on their actual requirements.
- Turn data centricity into a competitive advantage: Accumulate useful, accessible, uniform data that creates customer insights and supports timely risk management.
- Use technology to improve agility: Invest in the right solutions and train your people to deploy them effectively, so you can maximize the opportunities afforded by new technologies.
- Empower your people for change: Create a working environment that helps your people adapt and respond rapidly to changes and risks.
- Simplify governance for better decisions: Put in place structures and decision-making processes that support your people when responding to customers.
We believe that only by combining these five characteristics can a company design, implement and maintain a truly resilient customer ecosystem. Your empowered people need access to the right data and technology to make the right decisions at the right time when sourcing from suppliers and delivering to customers.
Achieving this depends on organizing the data and technology-driven decision-making processes to marry resources and investment – and embrace opportunities as they arise.
This paper is the fourth of five companion pieces to the 2021 BearingPoint study, “Can you thrive under pressure?”. It explores how you can work across these five dimensions to form a single, bold strategy for building a resilient customer ecosystem that ensures your company’s ability to thrive in challenging conditions.
