The Customer-Activated Enterprise

Customers increasingly use digital technologies to "activate" their suppliers, throwing off significant and highly valuable data in the process; they expect enhanced value across all touchpoints in return. Meanwhile, brands are investing heavily in two types of capabilities: 1) listening technologies to capture this data, typically managed by marketing; and 2) collaboration technologies to improve employee communication and sharing, typically governed by tech management. However, companies generally don't weave these investments together. As a result, the most valuable information in an organization — customer data and insights — is not routinely applied to the day-to-day, customer-facing activities of winning, serving, and retaining customers. This report introduces Forrester's model for application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals to bring these two investment streams together, across technologies and functions, amplifying the returns on each, and ultimately evolving to a highly differentiated, fully "customer-activated enterprise."