This Perspective examines business process empowerment (BPE), a customer-focused, strategically driven alternative to traditional, back-office focused business process management, with particular applicability in service industries. BPE combines process architecture with a continuous improvement culture to drive sales and otherwise improve front-office operations.

1. Perspective Olaf Acker
Dr. Florian Gröne
Adrian Blockus
Keith Wheeler
Business Process
Empowerment
Powerful New Capabilities
for Front-Office Staff

2. Contact Information
Atlanta Delhi Milan
Ralph Alewine Suvojoy Sengupta Pietro Candela
Partner Partner Partner
+1-404-519-0184 +91-124-499-8700 +39-02-72-50-93-50
ralph.alewine@booz.com suvojoy.sengupta@booz.com pietro.candela@booz.com
Marjorie Taglieri Düsseldorf Munich
Principal Dietmar Ahlemann Dr. Johannes Bussmann
+1-412-956-4747 Partner Partner
marjorie.taglieri@booz.com +49-211-3890-287 +49-89-54525-535
dietmar.ahlemann@booz.com johannes.bussmann@booz.com
Manoj Pillai
Principal Frankfurt New York
+1-305-393-5759 Olaf Acker Jeffrey Tucker
manoj.pillai@booz.com Partner Partner
+49-69-97167-453 +1-212-551-6653
Beirut olaf.acker@booz.com jeffrey.tucker@booz.com
Ramez Shehadi
Partner Andreas Späne Sydney
+961-1-985-655 Partner David Hovenden
ramez.shehadi@booz.com +49-69-97167-408 Partner
andreas.spaene@booz.com +61-2-9321-1966
Berlin david.hovenden@booz.com
Dr. Florian Gröne London
Principal Hugo Trépant Tokyo
+49-30-88705-844 Partner Kazunori Hosoda
florian.groene@booz.com +44-20-7393-3230 Partner
hugo.trepant@booz.com +81-3-6757-8649
Chicago kazunori.hosoda@booz.com
Mike Connolly
Partner
+1-312-578-4580
mike.connolly@booz.com
Kenny Chan and Ronald Wade also contributed to this Perspective.
Booz & Company

3. EXECUTIVE Often highly touted, business process management, or BPM,
has been a disappointment for many companies. In most cases,
SUMMARY
however, this situation is the organization’s fault. Unsure of
how to get the most out of BPM, which is supposed to improve
processes throughout an organization, or overwhelmed by the
complexity, too many companies merely put it to work in the
back office, optimizing already stable processes and routines. In
other words, they use it where it is needed least.
Indeed, for service industries, the real value of process excel-
lence and agility lies in the front office, where the company’s
sales or customer service representatives meet existing or
potential customers. This customer-focused, strategically driven
implementation, which we call business process empowerment
(BPE), is much more than merely an enhancement to BPM.
Instead, it is a strategy that combines process architecture and
governance (structure, accountability, and oversight for critical
customer-facing processes) with a continuous improvement cul-
ture to drive sales increases, aid in cross- and up-selling, manage
service inquiries, and encourage customer retention.
BPE can drive flexibility and innovation into front-office sys-
tems and activities and serve as a distinctive competitive advan-
tage. It simplifies the tools available to the company’s front-line
knowledge workers and improves their capabilities to in turn
enhance the organization’s performance. Some companies have
enjoyed return on investment (ROI) in BPE in the high double
digits per year primarily by simplifying the processes, systems,
and product offerings that directly affect customer transactions,
sales, and communications. This is a welcome development for
many service-centric companies, which spend more than half
their time managing customer variability, performance quality,
and workflow efficiency.
Booz & Company 1

4. Key Highlights
WHY BUSINESS when these systems are dedicated
to nothing more than optimizing
PROCESS relatively stable back-office processes
• Business process
management has been a EMPOWERMENT? and routines. The gains from these
implementations are minimal and not
disappointment for many
particularly noteworthy anymore,
companies because it is
since they are enjoyed by virtually
usually a pure technology-
every company. By contrast, the front
based solution without
office is where process management
proper process architecture
In both concept and application, capabilities can make a significant
governance structures, and
business process management is difference in day-to-day customer
a continuous improvement
perhaps one of the most misused interaction—improving sales,
culture. As a result, it tends
(or little used) management tools. facilitating cross- and up-selling,
to be consigned to the back
Although BPM has been around since deftly handling service inquiries,
office for stable processes
the early 1990s, few people in major and driving customer retention.
and routines—precisely
companies have known what to do The dynamic nature of front-office
where it is needed least.
with it. Indeed, in most businesses, processes offers a remarkable set of
• The real potential of BPM has become a back-office opportunities for companies that are
BPM is in the front office, backwater, far from the strategic core creative enough to implement BPM in
under an approach that of the organization. that aspect of the business; the added
we call business process agility and flexibility in front-office
empowerment, a way to arm Ask top executives about their BPM systems and activities can make a
and mobilize knowledge systems and you’re likely to hear substantial competitive difference—
workers with the structures, responses like these: “I deal with a new wrinkle on BPM that we
incentives, skills, and tools strategy, not with the depths of the call business process empowerment
that enable and encourage engine room—I leave that to my (BPM).
them to do their jobs more operations experts.” “We have a
productively than before. dedicated staff function looking BPE is a resilient capabilities
after that, so we’re all set.” “My CIO system—an ongoing effort, not
• Business process empower- talked me into a BPM tool more than a one-off process reengineering
ment blends real gains in a year ago; I’m not sure if and how it approach—that combines process
process architecture and really works though.” architecture and governance with
governance with a continu- a corporate culture that lives and
ous improvement culture to Unfortunately, in today’s business breathes “continuous improvement”
increase sales, aid in cross- environment, those are costly and and is focused on harnessing
and up-selling, and encour- myopic responses, especially for the power of BPM technology
age customer retention by companies in highly developed, architectures for the company’s
driving flexibility and innova- high-touch service industries, like greatest gain. (For a close look at
tion into front-office systems telecommunications, health care, how business process empowerment
and serving as a distinctive travel and leisure, financial services, enhances recent improvements in
competitive advantage. or utilities. As these markets have BPM, see “The Technology of BPE,”
matured, demand has become more on page 6). It’s a way to arm and
and more dynamic, individualized, mobilize knowledge workers with
and constrained. Serving the the structures, incentives, skills, and
customer’s specific needs, which tools to reconfigure processes on the
can change radically over time, and fly and draw on automated routines
providing a satisfactory experience as needed—for example, to address
for customers are absolutely critical new patterns in customer service
for service-intensive companies requests, to agilely promote a relevant
to build loyalty and differentiate new product or service offering, or to
themselves from their many equally combine sales and service processes
hungry competitors. for maximum top- and bottom-line
impact.
In such a diverse consumer landscape,
the full potential of BPM is wasted
2 Booz & Company

5. COSTLY intelligently, has had a taste of why complexity of the service experience.
BPE is so important. Over the years, Indeed, a Booz & Company analysis
COMPLEXITY these knowledge workers have had to of service-centric industries found that
compensate for the shortcomings of the time spent managing customer
rigid standard procedures, inflexible IT variability, performance quality, and
systems, and lack of automation with workflow efficiency in these companies
individual resourcefulness to meet has surpassed 50 percent, well above
customer expectations or deal with the results in typical industrial firms,
Anybody who has witnessed a skilled a burgeoning landscape of business which deal directly with consumers
contact center agent juggling multiple processes. to a much lesser degree. This means
screens and data views in “frantic that service companies spend more
swivel chair mode,” leaning on But these jerry-rigged solutions are time coping with internal complexity
makeshift tools and work-arounds not sufficient anymore. They’ve than on productive activities at the
to answer a customer’s question been overwhelmed by the increasing customer interface (see Exhibit 1).
Exhibit 1
For Many Service Companies, Complexity Management Trumps Productive Time
COMPLEXITY MANAGEMENT VS. PRODUCTIVE TIME
100%
35%
41% 43%
49%
55% 58% Time Managing Internal
65%
Process Complexity
65%
59% 57%
51%
45% 42% Productive Time
35%
Dealing with Customers
Airline Manufacturing Automotive Industrial Telecom Retail Health
Maintenance Bank Payor
Source: Booz & Company research
Booz & Company 3

6. Business process empowerment 3. Process technology enablement: medical claims and improve policy
manages this complexity with new This provides a flexible platform utilization by leveraging BPE tools for
organizational capabilities targeted to absorb and automate business customer-focused disease management
at providing flexible and productive processes and to systematically and wellness programs.
structures and systems to deal with build a repository of reusable
customer demands and elaborate, services, procedures, and routines Back-office processes directly
multitiered product and service to meet modern service businesses’ associated with customer-driven
offerings. Essentially a transformation needs. transactions—for example, service
agenda, BPE comprises three and order fulfillment and billing
frequently neglected elements of Business process empowerment can and account management—are also
process management: have its biggest impact on processes profitable candidates for BPE. By
with high complexity and high contrast, most foundational processes
1. Process architecture and business value (see Exhibit 2). They are relatively static and of low
governance: BPE sets up a clear include those in the front office, complexity and can be optimized
pathway, decision-making rights, product and service creation (pricing, rather simply with traditional
management hierarchy, strategic promotion development, configuring automation models and standard
targets, and incentives to link offerings), sales and marketing, and lean tools.
the front-line service delivery customer services. For instance, in the
organization with the development financial services industry, competitive When targeted at the appropriate
of process systems to improve its advantage opportunities exist in front- processes, BPE can be a powerful
performance. office BPE applications that integrate transformational tool, providing
treasury services and cash management significant top- and bottom-line
2. Process transformation culture: portals to allow customers to manage returns, which span everything from
It monitors continuous process their working capital and liquidity improved customer service quality to
transformation and improvement without needing to sign into multiple, product and service innovation gains
and promotes and rewards process non-linked product systems. And to reduced process execution costs
excellence. in healthcare, insurers could reduce (see Exhibit 3).
4 Booz & Company

7. Exhibit 2
Business Process Empowerment Can Best Improve Processes with High Complexity and High Business Value
SERVICE INDUSTRY PROCESS CLUSTERS
High
Product/
Technology Delivery Service
Creation - Market- or customer-facing in nature, thus
Supply Chain/Logistics Front-Office
complex and dynamic (changing according
Processes
Sales & Marketing to market conditions and customer needs)
(empower for
- Less transactional, difficult to automate
Fulfillment Customer Service competitive
- Benefit from flexible, adaptable process
advantage)
architecture/technology enablement
General Operations
Billing &
Capability Complexity
Account
Management
Information Governance
Management - Stable with limited/predictable volatility,
Human Resources Back-Office but higher complexity
Finance & Accounting Processes - More transactional and traditionally
Legal (build/maintain technology-driven
excellence) - Benefit from standardization and
Facilities/Real Estate automation for operational efficiency
Materials Management
- Low complexity and mostly static
Foundational - Can typically be optimized using lean,
Processes standard definitions and enabling
(table stakes) technologies if transaction at critical
scale levels
Low High
Business Value
Processing Volume Low High
Source: Booz & Company
Exhibit 3
Enterprises That Adopt BPE and Embrace Continuous Process Improvement Achieve Results Through a Number of Drivers
BPE VALUE DRIVERS
- Increased product/service quality
Customer
- Improved level of service
Satisfaction
- Increased adherence to schedules
Revenue
Indirect Drivers Growth
(long-term impact) - Reduced time-to-market for new
products or services
- Reduced time to react to market Ability to
changes Innovate
- Higher level of information for Company
proactive decisions Result
- Reduced cycle times
- Less production of waste
Direct Drivers Operational Decreased
(short-term impact) - More reliable business processes Costs
Efficiency
- Reduced process execution cost
- Reduced capital consumption
Source: Booz & Company
Booz & Company 5

8. The Technology of BPE
At the heart of business process empowerment is still BPM software;
after all, BPE is also a way to enhance BPM relevance. Indeed, from a
purely technical point of view, BPM has actually come a long way. The
once cumbersome middleware tools that even IT departments struggled
to completely grasp (or at least “sell” to their business counterparts)
have evolved into user-friendly process modeling suites that quickly give
business users the tools they need to optimize their processes without
engaging in complex studies and arcane development efforts.
But taking advantage of the improvements in BPM so that the software
can be used to adapt quickly to new business conditions is where
business process empowerment comes in. Applied correctly, BPE
enables employees to self-configure processes in leading BPM suites
and, more important, join in creating a business architecture framework
as a counterpart to an IT platform. BPE establishes incentive structures
that effectively drive business users to seek ownership of BPM—in other
words, it implants continuous improvement into the organization.
For this system to work, the company’s chief information officer (CIO)
will need to be closely involved in the effort. He or she will have to lead
the technology enablement facet of the transformation drive, providing
the appropriate BPM architecture that allows the business side to, in
essence, develop its own application solutions as new issues and
problems arise. Among the challenges for CIOs is to implement best-
in-class BPM software—not as a stand-alone, one-off effort, but as an
integral element of the overall IT target architecture, and as an effective
lever to drive architecture transformation toward greater process and
service orientation. After all, BPM touches many areas of the functional
architecture, including process analysis, modeling and design tools,
new process deployment, and user interfaces.
A significant plus, the BPM vendor landscape is rapidly maturing
and consolidating, with household names such as IBM, Oracle, and
SAP providing BPM capabilities as a core part of their portfolios, and
established BPM champions like Pegasystems, Appian, and Software
AG, to name a few, going head-to-head with these companies. This
evolved market allows CIOs to make BPM purchasing decisions with
confidence that their provider will be in business for the foreseeable
future and that competition among the vendors is sufficiently intense to
spur innovation and unlock new benefits and capabilities in the years to
come. Also, the adoption of industry standards in BPM software, such
as business process modeling notation (BPMN) and business process
execution language (BPEL), is providing a solid and consistent platform
for companies to efficiently, inexpensively, and reliably piggyback new
internal applications onto BPM systems. This is critical to relatively easily
embed BPE throughout the organization and approach continuous
improvement in a collaborative, institutionalized way.
6 Booz & Company

9. DESIGNING A Business process empowerment is
not a single project or an initiative.
new process frameworks are not
developed in sync with the needs
BPE SYSTEM Although each BPE implementation, of the front-line workers and thus
if done correctly, will deliver fall short of their ambitions, or the
palpable gains, true success comes application is a pure technology
from a management philosophy play, driven out of the IT group,
focused on sustainable process and unable to generate traction or
excellence in a holistic fashion buy-in on the business side of the
that can be felt throughout the organization.
organization and its operations.
Business process reengineering
Historically, companies have often and lean or Six Sigma initiatives,
addressed their process issues by executed in isolation the way many
attacking only small portions of companies do them, suffer from
the overall problem, or at least the opposite condition. Although
giving lip service to doing so. Not effective in instilling continuous
surprisingly, the results are almost improvement practice and discipline,
always unsatisfactory. For example, these programs are usually
enterprise architecture initiatives business operations efficiency
that attempt to document and exercises, which frequently lack
standardize business processes sufficiently sophisticated technology
by applying a holistic framework to produce sustainable high-level
structure are often big and performance gains.
expensive undertakings that in many
organizations end up being little In contrast to these somewhat
more than theoretical exercises that incremental approaches (and
generate a lot of paper. Either the minimal returns), BPE requires a
True success with BPE comes from
a management philosophy focused
on sustainable process excellence
in a holistic fashion.
Booz & Company 7

10. comprehensive system built on an Process Architecture and Governance a clear set of rules for decision
organization’s interwoven capability This facet of BPE is the overriding making, process management,
layers that in combination drive management and reference structure and accountability, along with
process transformation buoyed by for a successful business process ongoing support of the BPE system.
tangible and ongoing ROI. Through empowerment implementation. It In addition, a measurable set of
three facets of BPE, these capability creates the frame of reference for goals should be developed here
layers are meant to provide structure the process landscape, defining to link process excellence to the
and direction; a continuous functional activities by their organization’s strategy and to
improvement culture, skills, and transaction inputs and outputs and institute incentives specifically tied to
capacity; and technology enablement establishing process documentation achieving the overall objectives.
and agile automation (see Exhibit 4). and modeling standards. It provides
Exhibit 4
Business Process Empowerment Framework
Capability Layers Capability System Components Objectives
Process Taxonomy
- End-to-end process map and domain logic
- Delineation of scope, inputs, and outputs
Process Roles & Decision Rights Structure,
Architecture & - Process owners, managers, and champions Coherence &
Governance - Responsibilities, accountabilities, information flows Direction
Targets & Incentives
- Process KPI framework and performance targets
- Process improvement incentive structures
Coaching & Oversight
- Six Sigma “black belt” methodology competence, guidance
- Process audits and transformation support
Process Community, Skills & Capacity Continuous
Transformation - Collaboration platforms, incentives, and champions Improvement
Culture - Process skill and capacity planning/development Execution
Continuous Reengineering
- Six Sigma “green belt” day-to-day process improvement
- Continuity through front-line empowerment
Modeling Workbench
- Business user tools for process design, simulation
- User-driven process deployment and review
Automation,
Process Orchestration Bus
Reuse &
Technology - Service-oriented architecture-based abstraction and integration layer
- Coherent service bus between back-end systems Systemic
Enablement
Learning
Rule Repository
- Common master data structure for process artifacts
- Reusable process objects, rules, and procedures
Source: Booz & Company
8 Booz & Company

11. To implement this phase, a large
retail bank put in place a process Case Example: A Retail Bank Cashes In
governance council that included
A good example of success with BPE is the retail bank that faced a
representatives from all front- and
stunning degree of inefficiency in its financial approval processes,
back-office business functions
which encompassed a myriad of systems and more than 2,500 required
that would be affected by the BPE
sign-offs across a broad portfolio of business processes and consumer
model, as well as IT and business
transactions, from loan applications to mortgages to brokerage services.
architecture experts. In regular
Such complexity led to frequent time delays and data inaccuracy.
review sessions, this council
approved a comprehensive target Adopting a business process empowerment approach, the organization
process blueprint and ratified established clear financial process accountability and improvement
updates and changes to this blueprint responsibilities at the management and staff levels, offered
in the face of new business needs. compensation and other incentives for gains in process simplicity and
This council also drove seamless, performance, and deployed flexible workflow systems to automate
end-to-end maintenance and support financial processes and give front-office workers appropriate analysis
for BPE processes by directing and modeling tools to work with consumers more efficiently as well as to
specific functional managers to identify and remove additional waste. Through this simplification effort,
be overseers or stewards of the fewer customer service staffers were needed and data reentry to fix
processes; in so doing, the council errors was virtually eliminated. Personnel costs were reduced, and cash
firmly embedded process excellence flow improved. The bank’s cost per transaction fell by a remarkable
as an explicit personal business 80 percent, resulting in an ROI from the BPE effort of 300 percent over
objective and a critical variable in two years.
annual compensation decisions.
This effectively eliminated the
“responsibility void” involving
business processes that is all too
common in many organizations.
Process Transformation Culture
This leverages Six Sigma and lean
principles to constantly monitor the
process landscape for improvement
opportunities. A team of so-called
black belts (in Six Sigma parlance,
people who devote all of their time
to implementing the lean process
approach) provides coaching support
and oversight and joins front-line
process experts to continuously
update the suite of business processes
and underlying technology, with the
goal of taking advantage of each
Booz & Company 9

12. opportunity for performance gains. improvement champions across the simulation, and deployment, as well
Ideally, in this facet of BPE, the organization was established to build as real-time workflow status displays
organization regularly revisits and grassroots momentum for team- or that identify process bottlenecks
reviews processes and performance department-level initiatives. An and inefficiencies. A repository of
metrics to seek improvements in intranet-based online community for reusable functions, process steps,
efficiency and effectiveness. Also, sharing best practices, exchanging and procedures should be created
departmental and business advocates information, social networking, and (in IT-speak, these process steps are
for BPE are identified to foster storing and retrieving institutional known as services and are a core
transformation culture adoption. knowledge supported these element of open, flexible service-
cheerleaders. Each month, “process oriented architectures). In turn, this
For example, one major global heroes” were recognized for their library of process building blocks
telecommunications provider tackled high-impact ideas—for example, should be made easily accessible
this facet with a team of black belts ridding the organization of yet through user-friendly design tools
with varied backgrounds (ranging another unnecessary form or sign- in order to give business users
from manufacturing to financial off point or the development and the ability to mesh these building
services) to coach the rest of the implementation of a more effective blocks into new process variants
organization on lean methods, lead business rule to identify the best that support, for example, a new
large BPE efforts, and manage the cross-selling offer in a contract customer service process for a new
development of a comprehensive renewal situation. product offering.
set of how-to guides, reminders,
and frameworks to motivate Process Technology Enablement A good illustration of how this
the front-line staff in executing This provides the flexible platform can be applied in the real world is
process improvements day-by-day. for BPE, including a user-friendly the case of a healthcare insurance
In addition, a network of process graphic interface for process design, provider that addressed the
BPE created real value for a health
insurance provider and transformed its
aging, inflexible technology landscape
into a more sustainable model.
10 Booz & Company

13. technology side of business process
empowerment by deploying a BPM Case Example: Untangling a Telecom Provider
system in just six months by stitching
Before adopting BPE, a telecommunications operator was anything but
together a host of different legacy
a streamlined model of efficiency. After extending its service portfolio
front ends that agents were using
beyond classic telephony to include data services, TV, and cloud
in their day-to-day handling of
services for business customers, just to name a few, the carrier was
customers. This new tool intuitively
stymied by a costly array of pricing and order management procedures,
guided customer service agents
customer activation requirements, and a vast range of customer service
from one step to the next and one
procedures required to support the complex and growing product and
databank to the next, eliminating
customer portfolio. Signing up customers and managing their accounts
the need to switch between systems
in a timely fashion became virtually impossible, and the amount of
numerous times in dealing with
personnel time devoted to explaining subscription plans to consumers
individual consumers or with one
was exorbitant—and expensive.
customer after another. And no
longer did these agents have to In choosing a BPE approach to solve these inefficiencies, the telecom
juggle multiple screens in parallel company first developed a standard set of end-to-end processes for
on their own. In the second phase dealing with customers from lead to order to purchase and payment,
of this implementation, IT worked which included a clear set of metrics for tracking transaction inputs and
closely with business process experts outputs and seamless policies for process ownership and management
to carve out reusable procedures responsibilities. In addition, the telecom company deployed BPM
and routines from the legacy software to wrap a wide range of legacy systems under an intuitive
systems and transition them into a front-end layer for front-office employees to use in customer
service-oriented BPM architecture, management activities.
giving more and more flexibility
and autonomy to agents dealing There were almost immediate returns from process improvements
directly with customers to make as the BPE model gained traction over the subsequent year: Overall,
improvements themselves. This not customer activation times across all product and consumer segments
only created real additional value were reduced from several days to an average of three hours, account
for the insurance company, but processing costs fell by as much as 70 percent, and total operational
also smartly transformed an aging, savings reached US$2.5 million per year.
inflexible technology landscape into
a more sustainable model. Over
time, the company was able to save
a substantial amount of money by
shutting down more than 40 percent
of its legacy systems and tools in the
transformed process domains.
Booz & Company 11

14. Conclusion Getting started on a BPE path need
not be a long, drawn-out process;
building challenge. Whether
involving people, processes, tools,
instead, it should be a quick, targeted or systems, business process
audit-type exercise, lasting no longer empowerment can raise the level of
than six weeks or so. This involves skills in the company while providing
what we call a BPE pulse check, a direct course for measurable
encompassing senior management performance improvement, greater
and knowledge worker interviews, efficiency, reduced waste, and
analysis of the capabilities in the elevated job satisfaction. Most
organization in relation to the three service companies have neglected
facets of BPE, and an assessment the importance of a holistic BPE
of the potential highest-impact system, preferring instead to dabble
processes that could be transformed in BPM or some lean techniques
by business process empowerment. or automation tools, with the
The pulse check in turn generates a outcome as attenuated as the effort
map of process opportunities in the and care put into these initiatives.
organization, along with specific Consequently, the opportunities are
top-level performance goals and key rife and lucrative for any service
performance indicators. company willing to make the
effort to put real business process
For service organizations, BPE is improvement on the organization’s
more than anything a capability- front line.
12 Booz & Company

15. Resources
“Leaner and Keener Telecom Operators: Eliminating Waste Boosts “The Next Wave of Digitization: Setting Your Direction, Building
the Bottom Line,” by Andreas Späne, Florian Gröne, Olaf Acker, Your Capabilities,” by Roman Friedrich, Matthew Le Merle, Michael
and Roman Friedrich (Booz & Company, 2010). www.booz.com/ Peterson, and Alex Koster (Booz & Company, 2011). www.booz.
media/uploads/Leaner_and_Keener_Telecom_Operators.pdf com/media/uploads/BoozCo-Next-Wave-of-Digitization.pdf
“Multi-Channel Customer Management: Delighting Consumers, “Succeeding with SOA: A Business-Oriented Approach,” by Enrico
Driving Efficiency,” by Michael Peterson, Florian Gröne, Karsten Strada and Tim Habermann (Booz & Company, 2009). www.booz.
Kammer, and Julius Kirscheneder (Booz & Company, 2010). com/media/uploads/Succeeding_with_SOA.pdf
www.booz.com/media/uploads/Multi-Channel_Customer_
Management.pdf
“Next-Generation Customer Service: The New Strategic
Differentiator,” by Klaus Hölbling, Thomas Künstner, Christina
Marsch, and Niko Steinkrauss (Booz & Company, 2009).
www.booz.com/media/uploads/Next_Generation_Customer_
Service.pdf
About the Authors
Olaf Acker is a partner with Adrian Blockus is an associate
Booz & Company based in with Booz & Company based
the firm’s Frankfurt and Dubai in Berlin. He specializes in
offices. He focuses on business IT strategy, next-generation
technology strategy and networks, process, and strategy
operating model transformation transformation programs
programs for global companies with an industry emphasis on
in the telecommunications, telecommunications network
media, and high-tech industries. operators.
Dr. Florian Gröne is a principal Keith Wheeler is an associate
with Booz & Company based in with Booz & Company based
Berlin and heads up the firm’s in Atlanta. He works with
CRM Center of Excellence healthcare companies and is
in Europe. He works with focused on the assessment,
telecom, media, and consumer design, development, and
players on building world- implementation of customer-
class front-office processes centric programs intended to
and information technology reduce operational costs and
capabilities on their path to improve customer service.
digitization.
Booz & Company 13

16. The most recent Worldwide Offices
list of our offices
and affiliates, with Asia Middle East
addresses and Beijing Brisbane Helsinki Abu Dhabi Detroit
telephone numbers, Delhi Canberra Istanbul Beirut Florham Park
can be found on Hong Kong Jakarta London Cairo Houston
our website, Mumbai Kuala Lumpur Madrid Doha Los Angeles
booz.com. Seoul Melbourne Milan Dubai Mexico City
Shanghai Sydney Moscow Riyadh New York City
Taipei Munich Parsippany
Tokyo Europe Paris North America San Francisco
Amsterdam Rome Atlanta
Australia, Berlin Stockholm Boston South America
New Zealand & Copenhagen Stuttgart Chicago Buenos Aires
Southeast Asia Dublin Vienna Cleveland Rio de Janeiro
Auckland Düsseldorf Warsaw Dallas Santiago
Bangkok Frankfurt Zurich DC São Paulo
Booz & Company is a leading global management
consulting firm, helping the world’s top businesses,
governments, and organizations. Our founder,
Edwin Booz, defined the profession when he estab-
lished the first management consulting firm in 1914.
Today, with more than 3,300 people in 60 offices
around the world, we bring foresight and knowledge,
deep functional expertise, and a practical approach
to building capabilities and delivering real impact.
We work closely with our clients to create and deliver
essential advantage. The independent White Space
report ranked Booz & Company #1 among consulting
firms for “the best thought leadership” in 2010.
For our management magazine strategy+business, visit
strategy-business.com.
Visit booz.com to learn more about
Booz & Company.
©2011 Booz & Company Inc.