The aim of the project is to investigate:

• How companies are using technology to become more "customer centric".
• How marketing is being transformed by technology. The shape of the new marketing.
• Factors which help or inhibit Enterprise IT to participate in these developments.Our approach is based mainly on interviews with major firms in the US and Europe, complemented by Internet research. We are focusing on B2C companies with secondary interest in B2B.

Results to date 

We are most of the way through our interview schedule, and we can report the following interim findings:

• Traditional marketing focused on TV advertising is dying due to increased expense and declining efficiency as the mass TV market splinters into many smaller markets targeted in particular customer segments. The most attractive consumers, in the 20-30 age bracket, are abandoning television for Internet-based entertainment.
• The new customer wishes to co-create his experience of the product or service, is expert at avoiding traditional ads and ‘interruption’ marketing. He/she is willing to dialogue with the supplier if the value is there. His or her reaction to marketing or advertisements is increasingly dependent on the customer’s context in time and place.
• The new marketing is focused on creating dialogue with the customer, on creating positive experiences. It is also much more integrated with day-to-day business than the old marketing, and it is focused on the Internet channel – the channel of choice of the younger customer cohorts. The new marketing is totally technology-oriented.
• Unlike the old marketing, whose benefits were also hard to measure, the new marketing is very analytical. Everything can be measured from prospect visits to the site, to conversion rates to final sales.
• Effective use of architectures goes hand-in-hand with strong IT governance and good project portfolio management. The new marketing is most advanced and visible in consumer services such as mobile telecoms, banking, and travel. It is least advanced in industrial B2B markets.
• The new marketing requires skills in new areas that did not even exist, in some cases, even a few years ago:
  • Web site design that is able to engage the customer in information and data exchange, leading to customization, dialogue, and sales.
  • Web presence design that is sensitive to the demands of the search engines, which every user – and now customer – uses to find and research possible purchases.
  • Web strategy that is sensitive to the demands of the many aggregator sites using search engines to intermediate between customers and suppliers. Web design must also be aware of user chat sites that now offer opinions on suppliers and their offerings.
  • Pricing engines able to price products services in near real-time to maximize customer capture and revenue, as a function of click volumes and interest levels.
  • Multimedia product design and management; for instance, managing the physical and Internet versions of the same publication.
• Enterprise IT has a major opportunity to play in the new IT-oriented marketing, but the style and culture of this new area is very different from that of traditional IT. Most existing IT staff are far away from having the necessary skills.
• The new marketing professionals combine skills in IT, web design and customization, customer management, and business analytics. They are hard to find, and the best are available only in small private service firms.

Ways in which client organizations can participate in the project 

While we are most of the way through the interview programme, there is still time to participate in the project. Interested firms should contact Jane Kingston at jkingsto@csc.com in London. Participants will obtain an early look at project results, and will also have the chance to participate in the project workshop or focus group which will be scheduled shortly, probably in late June of this year.