PROCESS MATURITY PERSPECTIVE
This section describes how different technical setups enable you to do customer analytics in different ways. This analysis has to do with the strategic integration of customer analytics with company strategy and recognizing the full potential of customer analytics as a discipline. The aim is to determine whether your current technical setup is sufficient, given your strategic objectives, and to understand what is required to take customer analytics to the next level, given where you are now. As always, there is no right or wrong answer to this; it is essentially about how your company chooses to compete.
Exhibit 8.5 is a maturity model, which is a one-dimensional representation of how customer analytics can be developed over several stages in a given sequence. It is, of course, a crude simplification of a complex reality. One of the main messages of this maturity model is that things have to be done in a logical sequence. What benefit would marketing automation create if you as a company have no idea about latent customer needs that your campaigns are supposed to address? All you would have created is a spamming machine. This simplification can serve as an intuitive framework that both the commercial and the technical side of the organization can relate to. Equally important, it helps you to identify where you are and where you should be from a strategic perspective.
Consider the future ...
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