Accenture to help transform M’sian firms

0

Company’s new marketing model – Customer Analytics will help organisations to operate effectively

KUALA LUMPUR: Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, is set to help Malaysian companies and organisations undergo a transformation, through a new marketing model powered by Customer Analytics.Accenture Global managing director Nick Smith said the Customer Analytics is a critical enabler to the new marketing model, as it finds opportunities for growth in the customer base, anticipates changing customer needs, continuously improves decision making and helps manage and steer business in turbulent times.

Smith, who has 20 over years experience in advertising, marketing and customer relationship management, told Bernama in an interview that the consumer landscape had changed fundamentally while businesses are faced with new challenges to deliver on growth.

He said building an effective marketing capability is important, but also more complex than ever.

“Marketing is no longer an activity on its own but the centre of an organisation, a catalyst for change and an engine for sustainable growth,” he explained.

Smith elaborated that analytics is an integrated framework that employs quantitative methods to derive actionable insights from data and then use it, to shape business decisions and ultimately, improve outcomes.

“We believe that the analytics is emerging as the next management science to transform businesses, making them more agile as they predict, optimise and simulate the impact of changes to undertakings before it happens,” he said.

He said analytics is also becoming a key differentiator for executives in taking on important challenges of driving growth, enhancing cost and cash advantage, improving operational excellence, restructuring the business at scale and winning the war for talent.

Smith said the last two years have been a time of profound change and challenges as well as exciting.

This year, he said, would be the tipping point – when the true impact of changes grows clearer and industry leaders make their move.

“This is also a year when marketing fulfils its strategic role.

“In fact, marketing will play the key role in helping enterprises create their own upturn by operating more efficiently, using Customer Analytics more effectively while reaching and engaging customers more profitably,” he stated.

According to Smith, change on the present scale means steep challenges for chief marketing officers (CMOs), trying to grow and sustain high performance.

“However, at Accenture, we also believe these changes create a major opportunity for CMOs to help their companies create their own upturn,” he said.

Many organisations in Malaysia, he highlighted, especially telecommunications, financial services and retailers, have some form of analytics capability within their organisations.

“All the organisations that I met with are using data effectively. The question we are finding ourselves debating is, how much better can the data be used,” he said.

Recently, 50 of the world’s top CEOs shared their vision of the future and the role marketing would play in shaping it.

In association with Accenture, The Marketing Society, a non-profit professional association, has published their insights in a new book titled appropriately, ‘The Future of Marketing’.

“Our research has shown that companies which emerged more successfully from previous economic downturns, exploited information management.

“This has evolved into predictive analytics, where companies put massive amounts of data to work for them, creating unique competitive advantage by acting on the insights produced,” Smith noted.

According to Accenture’s research, companies which substantially outperformed competitors over the long term and across economic, industry and leadership cycles, are five times more likely to use analytics strategically compared with low performers.

The new economy means, the need for speed in decision making has never been more critical.

It is a key competitive differentiator that allows organisations to create their own upturn.

Accenture’s research also showed that highperformance companies made fast decisions and are typically in close proximity to their customers.

High performers also get the right information into the hands of the right people who can act quickly.

“Technology is critical but it is not the only factor that high performers focus on.

“While insights are interesting, competitive advantage comes from identifying those insights that enable your strategies, and then mobilise talent and processes, to drive business outcomes.

“To be successful, companies need to build a culture of fact-based decision making that’s led from the top and driven across the organisation,” Smith said. — Bernama