Revamp Strategic Planning From The Outside In

Fail to help your firm adapt to increasingly powerful customers, and you risk more than near-term disruption — you risk your company's long-term viability. Today's strategic planning must change to address this new paradigm. To cope, CMOs must lead the transformation of their firm's strategic planning process to an outside-in perspective focused on the customer. High-performing companies have learned that as customer behavior adapts, so must their business strategy, moving from a yearly strategy exercise to a continuous process with a focus on customer value and loyalty. In this report, we reveal three ways CMOs must step up to serve as the customer advocate in the C-suite, shaping business strategy to deliver more value to customers, generate greater loyalty, and produce better business results. We identify new responsibilities both the CIO and business leaders must assume. To succeed, CMOs must collaborate effectively with these key C-suite peers to build unified strategies and a shared business technology agenda to win, serve, and retain customers.