Competing for growth

Creating a customer-centric, connected enterprise 

At a time when poor customer experience can go viral in minutes, companies live or die by the way they deliver services, respond to issues and manage customer expectations. 

Investing in an integrated architecture of eight fundamental capabilities is helping organizations achieve high performance for customers, employees, partners and shareholders. KPMG calls this capabilities architecture the connected enterprise—a holistic way of positioning your business to compete today and into the future to deliver differentiated customer experiences.

Eight capabilities of connected enterprises 

Product, pricing and customer strategy: The ability to deliver relevant, valuable and consistent products, services, experiences, pricing and offers that are targeted to their intended customer segments. 

Experience centricity: The ability to design and deliver a seamless and personal customer experience that continually meets evolving expectations across all physical and digital touch points to drive engagement, satisfaction and loyalty. Experience centricity applies to prospects, customers, employees and partners. 

Responsive supply chain: The ability for a customer to select, receive and return products/ services when, where and how it is convenient for them and in a way that is enabled through advanced, analytics-driven demand planning, inventory management and distribution. 

Partnerships, alliances and vendor management: The ability to effectively leverage third-party entities to increase speed to market, reduce costs or supplement capability gaps to deliver on the customer promise.

Advanced data and analytics: The ability to harness and use data, analytics and insights to engage and execute in a thoughtful and orchestrated manner across all touch points while also protecting customer data integrity, privacy and security. 

Technology architecture and enablement: The ability to leverage technology systems and expertise to effectively and effciently deliver cross-channel experiences, provide employees with enabling tools and synchronize with partners and the broader digital ecosystem. 

Seamless commerce: The ability to deliver a convenient, secure transaction experience that meets customer preferences while ensuring payment technologies are integrated and provide a consistent experience across channels. 

Organization alignment and people capability: The ability for an organization to marry outside-in customer perspectives with inside-out experience management processes and capabilities, including top-down executive vision, cultural alignment, matrixed and agile organizational structures and integrated, aligned performance management. 

Read our report and listen to the companion podcast to learn more.