Achieving High Performance through
Information Management Services:
A Realistic Route to Capture the
Next-Generation Customer
Many communications, entertainment
and high-tech companies have lost sight
of what their customers want today
and what they are looking for in the
immediate future. They are tied to
obsolete views of customer behavior
and are only now glimpsing the next-
generation customer to whom the
Internet has granted unprecedented
Point of View
power and choice. Coupled with a new
framework that recategorizes providers’
links to their customers, analytical
methods demonstrate the value of
using a continuous loop of fact-based
insights that help achieve high
performance.
By Astrid Bohé and Prof. Michael Paetsch
Listening to Last.fm
isn’t just about
listening to music.
By telling other listeners something
about what songs you like, the Internet
radio station can connect you to other
people who like what you like—and
recommend songs from their music
collections as well as yours. There’s a
good chance that you’ll buy some of
the new tracks, and maybe pick up
some upcoming concert tickets too.
Purchased last year by media giant
CBS, Last.fm is the world’s largest
Internet radio network. The station is
typical of an increasing array of fast-
growing new businesses that use
recent developments in Web-based
technologies to fundamentally reshape
customer behavior. Harnessing the
potential of tools such as search
engines and social networks, businesses
like Last.fm are transforming the
ways in which customers socialize
and communicate with each other,
how they discover and compare new
products or services, and how and
where they purchase them.
In essence, companies like Last.fm
have a deep understanding of the
differences between previous
generations of customers and what
we’ll call next-generation customers.
2
In sharp contrast, most established To be sure, a few communications,
companies in the communications, entertainment and high-tech
entertainment and high-tech sectors companies do understand that their
have so far not taken advantage customers expect more of them today
of these new techniques to create than simply selling hardware and
strongly differentiated products and providing basic service connections.
solutions. A glance at the websites But many are struggling to rethink
of many mobile phone operators, for their long-held business basics. Even
example, reveals that their marketing the companies that have added
approaches are still very much about offerings to match their deep
selling handsets and tariff plans—as knowledge of customer demographics
it was a decade ago. are unsure of what to do next. For the
most part, they are still stuck with a
Communications companies are
product-centric view and they are
not the only ones to miss technology-
hard-pressed to craft truly customer-
led opportunities to win and keep
centric business models—let alone to
customers. Accenture’s High
build organizations that revolve
Performance IT studies show that
around the customer.
at most companies, end customers
are at the back of the queue outside
the CIO’s door. Of IT application
investments, only 28 percent were
focused on customers in the large
enterprises from the many industries
that we surveyed. Not only that, but
the High Performance IT research
found that customer-facing systems
were among the IT portfolio’s poorest-
performing applications in terms of 1. Source: “High Performance IT 2008: There’s
No Substitute for Substitution,” Executive
technical and business adequacy.1
summary results from Accenture’s second
global IT performance research.
Their shareholders have noticed. So And we give a view of the fast-
too have new disruptive competitors— growing importance of analytics
start-ups not unlike Last.fm. as a vital tool for supporting the
customer-centric approach and
We believe that communications,
achieving high performance.
entertainment and high-tech
companies must shift their emphasis
from product excellence to creating
business capabilities that forge
tighter bonds with customers over
time, with decisions based on fact-
based analytical insights and clear
ideas of what appeals to customers’
emotions. Accenture Information
Management Services—Accenture’s
cross-industry organization that
maximizes value from a client’s
diverse information assets—offers a
strategic framework for creating new
customer value. The five levels of the
framework explain the new principles
of understanding customer behavior
and show a practical path forward,
based on new ways of managing
and applying information about
how customers actually behave—
not what they say they want.

3
Who really understands the next-
generation customer?
Communications, entertainment and
high-tech companies no longer can
say with certainty what triggers their
customers’ behavior—and customer
behavior has changed dramatically
in the last decade (see “What customers
want now”). These days, it is the large
horizontal search engines such as
Google—or the social shopping sites—
that know more about customers
in real time than any traditional
manufacturer or service provider could
ever find out using traditional market
research and data mining techniques.
In this new market environment,
product or service excellence will
not stop being a must-have. It will
continue to be a differentiator early
in the life cycle of a wildly popular
product such as Apple’s iPhone. But
in general, it will not be sufficient
to differentiate a company from
its competitors for long.
There’s a fine example in the digital
camera market. Canon, Nikon and
Sony all produce first-rate digital
single lens reflex (SLR) cameras for
the demanding amateur. But their
products have attained such levels
of excellence that it is hard for
prospective customers to choose
between the three based on features
or performance alone.
So now there is an opportunity
to build enduring competitive
differentiation by moving away
from outstanding SLRs toward
solutions focused on the customer’s
images. Any of those camera
companies could forge enduring
bonds with customers by making it
easy for them to create and share
their own photo albums, to sell
photos online with one click, to tag
and securely store pictures online
for 20 years, or perhaps to be able
to create a life-sized poster of a
landscape scene at the touch of
a button.
4
Communications, entertainment and What customers want now
high-tech companies are trying to
• Communications solutions—
come to grips with the new customer
behavior—and then gauge how to not products
respond accordingly. Consumer • Abundant information
electronics players were the first to • The ability to share and create
notice how exposed they have become • The ability to be informed, to
in a world where the customer has compare and then choose
unprecedented power to search, inform, • Immersive participation in
compare, and shop products around the interesting experiences
world and around the clock. Many large • Social networking
retailers would now be disadvantaged • Personalized “customer of one”
if they did not offer mechanisms that experiences online and offline
let customers tailor their own product
• “Do it yourself” ability—being
comparisons online, create information
able to self-administer
in the form of user reviews, and share it
with others using social networks such
as Facebook. Participation, sharing,
creating and personalization are no
longer theoretical concepts; they are
becoming integral to the overall
offerings that the customer expects.
Consumer electronics companies are
not the only ones wrestling with these
challenges. Ironically, communications
carriers—many of the very companies
that can be credited for popularizing
Internet access and mobile phone use—
appear to be among the least ready
to use the new customer behavior
principles to their advantage. As
competing networks grow more akin
in coverage and quality, and as once-
novel tariff plans are easily copied,
communications providers’ offerings
are becoming less distinct from one
another—and more easily
commoditized. (see “Innovative
Approaches to Win the US Bundled
Pricing Game”2). Most communications
carriers certainly have customer
relationship management (CRM)
systems in place to make sure they
know when to renew a contract
or change a tariff plan, but their
information base is for the most
part static.
2. Source:”Innovative Approaches to Win the
US Bundled Pricing Game,” Accenture,
http://www.accenture.com.
Unexpected competitors
As a consequence, unexpected
competitors—businesses that are not
communications service providers—
have been attacking the carriers’ value
chains with significant success. For
example, Apple, with its iPhone, has
been the company that has reset
expectations of mobile offerings, as
did RIM before that, with its
BlackBerry e-mail service.
Indeed, Apple exemplifies how to
transition from a product or basic
service focus to a business model
with the customer at the core. With
its iTunes download service and iPod
players (even the case and labeling
are designed as customer experiences),
Apple has been steadily
disintermediating the music retail
industry. The company now has 50
million music customers with whom
it can communicate directly every
day; it recently surpassed Wal-Mart
to become the largest retailer of
music in the United States. And with
its enormously popular iPhone, Apple
is looking far beyond the sleekly
designed handheld itself to the
multimillion-dollar per month
services business it has created.
Apple not only knows its customers’
demographics inside and out, but
understands how those customers
think and behave, who they interact
with, and what makes them behave
differently. Apple and the few others
we can legitimately say understand
next-generation customers know
that customer value equations are
constantly changing. And they
clearly realize there are multiple
“touchpoints” at which to engage
with customers—touchpoints that
change in importance as markets,
technologies and competitive
circumstances change.
5
What is forcing change now

Several factors are combining to
force change on communications,
entertainment and high-tech
companies. For instance:
The Internet is ubiquitous
No other factor has had greater
and more sudden impact than the
worldwide penetration of the Internet.
This is not the place for a detailed
discussion of how quickly broadband
has marched into homes and
businesses worldwide; those stories
have been told already. But it is worth
noting how the application of the
Internet is changing as a consequence
of that penetration.
The Internet is rapidly becoming
the world’s preeminent broadcasting
platform—not only for conventional
broadcasting but for one-to-one
content delivery. It seems a long way
from the early “Web 1.0” days of
browsing; since then, the Internet
has added increasingly valuable
search and e-commerce capabilities,
richly layered social networking
functions, and soon, an entire layer
of geographic and location-specific
mobile services
(see Figure 1).
Deep broadband penetration and
rising memory chip densities have
turned many more individuals into
videographers and put more video
on more websites, generating healthy
business in Web video advertising.
Online ads in the United Kingdom
now attract far more spending than
the combined net advertising revenues
of top TV channels ITV1, Channel 4,
S4C and Five.
Customer behavior is changing
dramatically
These days, everyone with access to
the Internet has unprecedented power
to search—and new search tools are
making searches faster, more accurate
and more contextual than ever. At the
same time, consumers now expect to
be informed, with everything from
Facebook feeds to Twitter messages
conveying gossip as well as breaking
news. They also expect to be able to
compare, particularly for products
and services they are interested in
consuming. And they have, like never
before, the power to shop for products
that are personalized precisely to
their tastes.
Leading-edge providers
are responding
Consider the example of MyMuesli. The
German company allows consumers
to mix their perfect breakfast cereal
out of more than 100 ingredients.
That’s more than 566 trillion possible
variations—making traditional mass-
market approaches seem very
outdated indeed.
Companies like MyMuesli have grasped
the value of the Internet for reaching
“markets of one.” In fact, the Internet
grants everyone direct access to
customers, breaking down traditional
retail distribution models. Today, even
top luxury goods providers like Chanel,
Burberry and Hugo Boss have online
shops that give them “touchpoints”
directly to consumers. This new strategy
is much more than an attempt to
bypass the retail channel and enhance
profitability. The objective is to make
direct contact with customers for the
first time, to better understand and
anticipate their purchasing decisions,
and to begin building long-term
relationships with them.

Internet protocol (IP) ecosystem players position themselves

Communication Search & Share & create Content payment Geo business
browsing e-commerce community
Access Broadband Broadband Convergence GPS
access access & 3G

AOL Google YouTube Amazon mp3 OVI Nokia

Amazon.com Twitter Xbox Live Google Maps
Myspace.com World of Warcraft Yelp
Facebook

Web 1.0 Web 2.0

Very low penetration Moderate penetration Strong increase

Rise of e-commerce High penetration
Rise of innovative but and search Very high penetration
individual services Increasing the content Mobile Internet
Rise of the social and delivery network penetration will
networking Internet of choice start to increase

Household penetration—fixed Internet North America

Figure 1: Mapping the Internet’s growing influence

6
Moving toward a new concept
of customer value
It is encouraging that many consumer
electronics companies are starting to
sell directly to customers. Not only are
companies like Sony and Samsung
generating solid revenue streams online
and in their new “customer experience”
retail stores, but also they are gathering
invaluable information firsthand.
Other communications, entertainment
and high-tech giants are proving to
be quick studies. Nokia has clearly
learned from the success of Apple,
seeing that Nokia’s future value and
relevance will depend increasingly on
its ability to break with its traditional
model of selling handsets to mobile
operators and trade retailers. Nokia
has decided to “go direct” and is
currently building a delivery platform
named OVI that essentially mirrors
Apple’s iTunes.
Still others are moving in the right
direction. Microsoft, essentially an
original equipment provider since
its founding, has not lacked
opportunities through channels
as well established as its Internet
Explorer browser and with its array
of Xbox gaming products and Zune
music players. But with the growing
influence and rapid economic success
of relative newcomers such as Google
and Facebook, Microsoft is now
moving toward more customer-centric
models, investing heavily in prime-time
TV advertising and evaluating its own
retail store presence.
Analytics defined:
Your customer is talking to you
Whether your customer is visiting your
websites, using her loyalty card or
logging on to your self-service portal,
increasingly she is talking directly to
the company. That means there are
many opportunities to capture and
analyze data about the customer and
her behavior.
Properly managed, analytics is a
strategic process that involves the
extensive collection and interpretation
of data across all customer
touchpoints.
The discipline involves statistical and
quantitative analysis, explanatory and
predictive models and fact-based
management to drive decisions and
actions. Analytics helps companies to
better understand their customers
and to greatly improve and tailor
services to them.
Important analytical disciplines include:
• Descriptive analytics
• Predictive analytics
• Web analytics
7
The role of analytics
Such moves are to be applauded,
for sure. But they are not sufficient
to build solid strategic and operational
foundations for long-term success in
the communications, entertainment
and high-tech industries. What is
needed is a systematic approach
to deeply understanding the
characteristics and motivations
of next-generation customers.
In Accenture’s experience, the
communications, entertainment
and high-tech companies that truly
understand the next-generation
customer are marrying information
management to a commitment to
achieve consistent, comprehensive and
varied levels of direct interactions with
their end customers. They understand
that decision making has to be sharper
and better informed—which calls for
superior analytics and deeper insights
into customer behaviors. As a
prerequisite, they take a broad view
of the challenge across a range of
customer touchpoints and channels—
from the conventional web to face-
to-face interactions in retail stores
to long-term solutions only recently
enabled by technology and as yet
unimagined by most consumers (see
“Rising levels of bonding competence”).
At the heart of their efforts is their
application of sophisticated analytics
tools. Accenture’s studies show that
true high-performance businesses—
those that consistently outperform
their industry peers through multiple
economic cycles—are 50 percent more
likely to use analytics strategically
compared with the overall sample3
(see p. 7 sidebar: “Analytics defined:
Your customer is talking to you”).
Very few companies are actually using
analytics as a foundation for their
business strategies. For example, Netflix,
the movie rental company, employs a
movie-recommendation “engine” based
on proprietary software. Cinematch, as
the tool is called, analyzes customers’
choices and feedback on the movies
they have rented—more than a billion
reviews of movies they liked, loved,
hated and so on—and recommends
movies in ways that optimize both the
8
customer’s taste and Netflix’s integration of their analytics in three
inventory. Says CEO Reed Hastings: years. The fact that analytics is still a
“If the Starbucks secret is a smile relatively young management
when you get your latte, ours is discipline means that it presents real
that the website adapts to the competitive advantage for the
individual’s taste.”4 companies that master it earliest.
Analytics are also at work in the
world of sports. AC Milan, one of
Europe’s top soccer teams, has a
not-so-secret weapon in its Milan
lab—a proprietary biomedical
research center for gauging players’
performance and injury potential.
The club considers the lab a crucial
tool for improving returns on the
investments it has made in its high-
priced players. The lab tracks 60,000
data points on a player (200 data
points on one jumping motion alone)
and analyzes the statistics to ensure
the player’s health and fitness.
Operational performance can also be
enhanced through analytics, as the
Formula One race circuit proves. As
F1 drivers jostle to be first past the
checkered flag, technicians now
scrutinize dense streams of real-
time data that pour from hundreds
of sensors on each car. It is
commonplace to see trackside
engineers collecting gigabytes
of data from each race, monitoring
everything from engine oil pressure
to the stability of their cars’ chassis.
Rapid data analysis helps managers
decide whether a car can come into
the pit early, whether it can take on
less fuel or whether its gearbox is
heating up—just a few of the factors
where the right data at the right time
can help determine whether the car 3. Source: “Winning with Analytics,” Outlook
finishes the race and where it places. Journal, May 2007, http://www.accenture.com.
4. Source: Netflix quotation from Jena McGregor,
On the whole, the use of analytics “At Netflix, the Secret Sauce is Software,” Fast
is hardly commonplace. Recent Company, October 2005, p. 50. Other Netflix
research by Accenture found that information comes from the company website
while more than 57 percent of CIOs (www.netflix.com); Mark Hall, “Web Analytics Get
want to position business intelligence Real,” Computerworld, April 1, 2002; Timothy J.
Mullaney, “Netflix: The Mail-Order Movie House
as a core component for competitive that Clobbered Blockbuster,” Business Week
differentiation in three years, they Online, May 25, 2006; online at
have some way to go—60 percent of http://www.businessweek.com; and a telephone
survey respondents admit that they interview with Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt
do not use business intelligence for on July 7, 2006.
competitive differentiation today.5 5. Source: “Cultivating high performance through
information management; Findings from the
However, there is positive movement: Accenture CIO survey 2007: Business Intelligence.”
more than 76 percent of CIOs say
they are targeting enterprise-wide
Richly detailed views of customers
The communications, entertainment
and high-tech leaders that are
applying analytics solutions are
starting to build up richly detailed
views of their customers. With
multiple touchpoints feeding in data,
the analytics algorithms are helping
the companies to understand how
their products and services are used—
and how they are likely to purchase
and use other offerings in future.
For example, a mobile phone carrier’s
analytics engine might learn, based
on a customer’s playing of a game
on the handset, that the customer
has a fondness for numerical puzzles,
so it initiates a text to the customer’s
phone with a 20 percent discount
voucher for a soon-to-be-released
numbers game.
These leaders are also using their marketers to grasp the relevant
analytics tools to develop deeper information at a glance and make
market insights and more detailed the decisions necessary to drive
competitive landscaping. The effects revenue. The processing speed of the
of competitors’ pricing and product analytics tools provides immediate
attacks—simulated and real—can feedback on value outcomes. For
quickly be analyzed in real time. example, the success of promotions—
Importantly, the results of such online, offline and cross-promotion—
analyses are filtered through graphics can be gauged in real time and the
engines and displayed on interactive results applied in a continuous-
dashboards that help the marketing improvement feedback loop. And
managers scan and evaluate the key successful marketing campaigns can be
indicators and make rapid, well- rolled out globally in a very short time.
informed decisions. Accenture has
developed a convergent business
intelligence solution that suggests
appropriate bundles of communications
products for different customer
segments, based on deep product-
mix analysis and taking into account
margin optimization and product
cannibalization. The results are
displayed on a dashboard, enabling
9
Rising levels of bonding competence
But analytics tools are just that:
tools. They cannot engender the
necessary “outside in” customer-
centric thinking. To help foster that
kind of mindset, Accenture believes
it is helpful to view the connections
between provider and end customer
in terms of a scale of increasing value
delivered to the customer (see Figure
2). In the very simplest terms, think
of it as the difference between an
arrive late, leave early, one-night
stay in a no-name budget motel
and regular stays, including private
executive meetings, at the Four
Seasons hotel chain. While our scale
is by no means a blueprint for a
strategic realignment with next-
generation customers, it is a
valuable framework for starting
the discussion. Each level of the
scale merits a closer look.
10
Level 1
A basic sales transaction sits at this
end of the scale, where the customer’s
loyalty to the provider is rooted almost
entirely in his or her perceptions of
the features or value for money of the
product or service. A better product
from another provider, or the same
product at a lower price, will quickly
lure the customer away. The emphasis
is on a “one-off” transaction; the seller
and buyer cannot be said to have a
relationship, at least not in any way
that will meaningfully affect the
seller’s chances of selling more to that
buyer in future. So the first level of
what we call “bonding competence”
is excellence in product building—table
stakes for being in the market
in the first place.
Level 2
Moving up a level, providers can
consciously use competence in product
bonding to build strong differentiation
in design, brand and emotional
features into their products. Toyota’s
hybrid Prius car is a classic case in
point; buyers select it not only for its
low fuel usage but for what its design
telegraphs about their environmental
credentials. Another example of
product bonding is found in Apple’s
iconic iPhone—a “status symbol”
despite well-publicized drawbacks
such as spotty voice reception and
the lack of a keyboard. At this level
of the scale, products are much
more difficult to replicate.
The new value engineering paradigm for the next-generation
customer in communications, entertainment and high-tech companies

Customer intimacy
Brand-building power

5
4 Deep customer
Touchpoint bbonding
di
3
bonding ccompetence
ompe
2 Solution bondingg
Product bonding competence competence
1
Excellence in competence
product building

Need for information management capabilities & customer insight

Power to differentiate & build business value

Figure 2: Five levels of bonding competence

Level 3 Level 4 Level 5

Companies can demonstrate
competence in solution bonding. There
is a classic example in the aerospace
industry, where jet-engine maker
Rolls-Royce generates at least half of
its corporate revenues from servicing
many of the engines it sells. Its value
to airline customers is in more than
just providing propulsion systems;
Rolls helps ensure high asset
utilization and cost containment over
the planes’ lifetimes. Dell is pursuing
similar thinking with its new Remote
Access service, which makes the files
on one Windows PC remotely
accessible from other devices. An ideal
service from a personal computer
maker could involve an “always ready”
solution that backs up the hard disk
drive. If the drive fails, the customer
receives, overnight, a complete hard
disk containing all his programs and
data, with all settings intact.
At the next level comes competence
in touchpoint bonding, where the
provider is able to develop and exploit
new touchpoints with its customers.
For example, sports apparel maker
Nike is developing shoes equipped
with sensors and packaged with a
low-cost radio transceiver. After a
workout, the “shoes” automatically
transfer data about distance, pace
and other workout factors to a
computer, which could be part of a
handheld device such as a BlackBerry.
The display shows customized data
such as fitness coefficients, recent
running history, etc. If a provider has
visibility of the customer through
several touchpoints—for instance, a
mobile-phone carrier whose customers
use the carrier’s retail store, download
ringtones from the website, and
provide monthly usage data—the
carrier can develop and use a single
view of the customer across its
channels and offerings.
The highest level of bonding
competence involves deep customer
bonding experiences. It helps to foster
excellence in managing customer
relationships and in mastering the
customer agenda to significantly
improve the bottom line. Invoking
our Nike example, Level 5 might
involve Nike sending the customer a
new training plan every month based
on the runner’s current fitness stage.
Global positioning system (GPS)
coordinates managed by Nike might
translate into text messages about
sports facilities close by; social
networking tools administered by
Nike might see the customer’s
running colleagues recommending
new exercise tracks. The system might
dispense nutritional advice and it
could remind the customer about
gym appointments.
In short, Nike gradually becomes
the essential fitness coach.

11
Examples of analytics at work
Help customers to focus
Imagine a mobile-phone service
provider that tracks all incoming
Internet traffic; the carrier understands
how its customers engage with its
website and which products they look
at before they buy. Knowing that most
customers visit a site several times
before they place an order, the carrier
ensures that they can find previously
viewed products easily without further
navigation, just as Amazon.com does.
And it can automatically measure the
correlation between the new
customer’s clickstream patterns
and the usability of the site.
12
Offer relevant products
Employing analytical algorithms,
the mobile phone company sends its
new customer an e-newsletter that
features the top 10 music picks,
ringtones, wallpaper, games and
software clients of all the customers
that have the same handset. The
analytics tools also track what
interests our customer and helps
predict the “next best” content to
sell to him based on the purchases
of customers with similar tastes—just
like Last.fm does. When content that
matches his interests becomes
available—it’s a new game, say—he
gets a text message plus a coded
e-voucher for a discount on the three
new games due to be released in the
following three months. Our customer
pays for the new game and agrees to
be pinged when the next new games
debut. The big marketing advantage:
the more relevant and tailor-made
the offer is, the better the uptake of
products and services and the more
likely it is that the customer will
eagerly open virtually all of his
newsletters in future.
Support customers by making
intelligent predictions about them
Let’s say the new customer logs on
to the carrier’s site two weeks after
signing up. The site’s analytics engine
recognizes that customer is very
unlikely to be interested so soon in
handsets and tariffs, so it connects
him directly to information about
content offerings for his phone. Now
imagine that the customer’s contract
is up for renewal; the system will
automatically give him information
on the top handset picks that other
customers with his profile have been
choosing; he can also see community
feedback on the phone’s quality and
style. The site also has learned which
mobile websites are relevant for our
customer so it suggests other
interesting sites with products and
services that he may like to buy.
Imagine that he’s a camera buff:
visiting an online camera store to
which the carrier’s site has referred
him, he purchases a new camera case
and larger memory card. The carrier
receives a fee for the site referral.
So how could analytics play out to help
communications, entertainment and high-
tech companies achieve consistently high
levels of bonding competence? Here are
some examples of analytics at work.
The carrier also allows the customer
to purchase phone accessories at some
of its franchises by using PIN codes
generated by text message; the charge
goes on the customer’s next monthly
bill. Not only does this create a very
user-friendly shopping experience, but
it gives the carrier a richly detailed
real-time view of the customer across
multiple touchpoints.
In summary, the insights created with
sophisticated analytics will be used to
provide the appropriate products and
service to specific customer subsets
at the right times and in the right
situations. One important point: There
is a major difference between familiar
CRM systems and next-generation
analytics solutions. With conventional
CRM systems, the approach usually
involves selection of a product,
followed by identification of likely
customers from a database, and then
outreach to those target customers
with newsletters, etc. But when
analytics solutions are used, the
customer relationship becomes
real-time and very close to one-to-
one marketing. If the system identifies
other customers with profiles similar
to those of its primary targets, it
will push the relevant marketing
information to them in real time
whenever they come in contact
with any of the provider’s customer
touchpoints.
One example
Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile unit
is teaming with innovators such as
Google in order to bring exciting
new products to its customers and to
enable services that increase customer
bonding as well as revenue. Knowing
that Google was soon to launch its
own G1 mobile phone as a rival to
Apple’s iPhone, T-Mobile began
working with Google to integrate
some of its mobile customers’ favorite
features—such as the Myfaves call-list
offering—into the G1 phone and,
further, to add the T-Mobile automatic
address book update feature to the
new device.
13
14
Not long ago, communications, entertainment
and high-tech companies that found
themselves overtaken by upstart competitors
were able to catch up. No more. Fast-follower
strategies no longer work. In a Web-pervasive
world where customers have more and more
power, new ideas can easily appear, take off
and reshape entire industries before the
incumbents can mount effective responses.

It is difficult to overstate the However, getting to Level 5 High-performance

challenges facing incumbents
in the communications, media,
entertainment and technology
sectors. There are already wide
performance gaps between the
companies that absolutely “get”
the next-generation customer—
companies such as Apple and
Dell—and those that really don’t.
Accenture fully expects those gaps
to widen in the next few years.
We have observed that several
communications, entertainment
and high-tech players are hamstrung
not so much by their unwillingness
to accept the need to center their
activities around the customer but
by their inability to do so. Some
large corporations are so
decentralized—particularly by
geography—that it will be difficult
for them to change fast enough.
is a journey, not an overnight
destination; the good news is that for
most players, the bulk of the moves
they need to make are low-cost and
require little in the way
of significant reorganization or
reallocation of resources. The tools
are within reach: analytics solutions
are available today. The new
customer touchpoints are easy to
identify. What’s needed now is the
initiative to act on what managers
already know.
businesses—those that
substantially outperform
their competitors over
the long term and across
economic, industry and
leadership cycles—are
twice as likely as the
typical organization to
make strategic use of
analytics. And they’re five
times more likely to do
so than low-performing
businesses.6
6. Source: Davenport, Thomas H. and Jeanne
G. Harris, “Competing on Analytics: The New
Science of Winning,” Harvard Business School
Press, Accenture, March 2007.

15
 About Accenture About Accenture
Information Accenture is a global management
Management Services consulting, technology services and
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Accenture Information Management
unparalleled experience, comprehensive
Services is a global cross-industry
capabilities across all industries and
organization focused on bringing
business functions, and extensive
clients solutions to better manage
research on the world’s most successful
their business, interact with customers
companies, Accenture collaborates
and make strategic, financial and
with clients to help them become
operational decisions. Working across
high-performance businesses and
Accenture’s service lines and industry
governments. With more than 187,000
groups, this network of 16,000
people serving clients in over 120
professionals specializes in information
countries, the company generated net
management services including
revenues of US$23.39 billion for the
business intelligence and analytics,
fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2008. Its
portals and content management and
home page is www.accenture.com.
data management and architecture.
For more information about Accenture
Information Management Services,
visit www.accenture.com/information
management.

Copyright © 2009 Accenture To learn more about how Accenture

All rights reserved. Information Management Services
helps organizations achieve high
Accenture, its logo, and performance by applying advanced
High Performance Delivered data analysis techniques to drive
are trademarks of Accenture. decisions and actions, contact:

Astrid Bohé, Executive Director

Accenture Information Management
Services—Communications & High Tech
astrid.bohe@accenture.com

Since 2004, Prof. Dr. Michael Paetsch

has held academic tenure for
International Marketing at the
University of Pforzheim, Germany.
Prior to this role, he spent 15 years
in senior executive positions at
leading global communications and
high-tech companies.