Calling corporate customer-centric planning deficient is paying it a big compliment. From Fortune companies to entrepreneurial businesses, and our practice spans both, well under 10% of companies understand even the most rudimentary techniques for letting customers drive the strategic equation, and the true number may be less than 5%. Senior managements at the remaining 90 – 95% plus:

a.) Want to become more customer-centric, but can’t find their way out of traditional, company-centric planning approaches
b.) Are still playing the we-them power game
c.) Let financial planning drive their companies
d.) Are content to spout lots of “customer-this, customer that” bromides
e.) Believe letting middle management implement CRM or CEM or Social CRM or whatever new fad is out there will get them close enough to customers?

Unfortunately, customer-centricity starts with aligning strategies with customers through effective customer-centric planning processes – before it moves through aligning process with strategies and technology with process. Lacking well thought-out, customer-responsive business strategies, companies can’t move off the dime in customer-centricity terms – unless their CEO is Jeff Bezos, Fred Smith, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs or someone else with customer-centricity so baked in their brain they can skip planning and go straight to execution.

Why do we have this problem and what should we do about it?