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2. What is the context for customer relationship metrics? Before Frederick Winslow Taylor discovered what to measure—time and motion—manufacturing was as intuitive as sales and marketing is today. It was an art, not a science. From Taylor's work, the field of Industrial Engineering was born. Manufacturing processes were defined in terms of time and motion, and with the addition of materials to the concept, common manufacturing models (raw materials to semi-finished goods to finished products) were codified. Operations Research was created to broadly optimize the results. Decades later, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) was developed for planning in this environment, scheduling both materials and processes. Now manufacturing is much better understood and much more quantitatively managed. Interactions are to sales and marketing what motion was to manufacturing—the smallest unit of work. And as it was in manufacturing, time is a critical measure for sales and marketing. Time is money. But more than money is needed to measure interactions in sales and marketing, just as more than time was needed to measure motion in manufacturing. Taylor could see what actually happened with the motion—he could see what was being produced as it was produced. In sales and marketing, another metric is needed to see what is happening—a critical relationship metric that has been missing until now. Continuing the manufacturing analogy, sales and marketing compares more aptly to continuous process manufacturing than it does to discrete manufacturing. In continuous process manufacturing the "brew" in the semi-finished stage can be observed from control panels, its "temperature taken," and immediate adjustments made. Management needs a way to peer into sales and marketing's Black Box to take its temperature, to see what is happening. What is "happening" is that relationships with customers are being developed. What's needed is a Key Performance Indicator for relationship development. We call it Relationship Value. For more about Relationship Value, please see How can Relationship
Value be used? Or take a look at Chapter Four in our CEO's new book Customer Relationship Intelligence: A Breakthrough Way to Measure
and Manage Sales and Marketing. |
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