How Firms Organize Their Customer Intelligence Function

One of our most frequent client inquiries relates to the best way to organize Customer Intelligence (CI). Our research shows that no single "best" way exists. Firms organize differently — often reflecting their corporate structure and culture. To provide a benchmark about how other firms organize, we dug into our Q2 2009 Global Customer Intelligence Online Survey. We found significant disparity in how firms organize and structure their CI functions. But firms demonstrating a strategic intelligence level share some common tendencies. Customer Intelligence teams in these firms tend to be larger and more centralized and wield far more influence across the firm.