Driving change: Unlocking data to transform the front office

Driving
Change
Unlocking data to transform the front
office

Driving Change Unlocking Data to Transform the Front Office 2
Data is the common
language that all front
office teams must speak
fluently—but that’s only the
beginning
• Building future-readyfront office teams (marketing,
sales and customer service).
• Eliminating data silos between the
front office teams.
• Using data to ask and answer the right
questionsabout what customerswant.
• Developing the rightinsights and goals from
the correctdata sets to extractgreater value
and optimizethe customerlifecycle.
More than half of front office leaders expect
greater than 11% growth in net profits and
revenues over the next
three years. Achieving this will require:
1

Driving Change Unlocking Data to Transform the Front Office
Using data as the lever
for future-ready
transformation

Front office leaders of marketing, sales and customer
service share one purpose: Enhancing the customer lifecycle.
Every interaction should be a seamless experience—after all,
the best way to achieve growth
is by offering new and better services to the customers
you already have.
But providing that seamless experience is challenging
when marketing, sales and customer service operate
in silos.
A future-ready transformation involves breaking down
these silos to turn the customer journey into a stronger
engine for growth.
4
Using data as the lever for future-ready transformation

Since the customerjourney
isn’t linear, uniting marketing, sales
and customer service allows for a
holisticapproach
to acquisitionand retention.
There are also a myriad pressures
on leaders across
the front office. Identifying and
solving for the push and pull of
these forces at speed and scale is
critical to compete effectively.
5

Aligning the customer lifecycle with growth goals
across the marketing, sales and customer service
teams requires using data as the lever for change
and looking for specific signals within that data.
What is the data lever? It’s the
application of data, analytics and AI to
enhance business performance and
stakeholder experiences.
But data is only useful if it answers the right
questions.When it does, organizations can
determine the right insights to transform
the organization.
6
76%
of front office
executives say the
organization has
data in wide use or
at scale, believe that
number will be 100% in
three years. 2

Widening the funnel is no substitute for a holistic front
office transformation.
Use of intelligent sales, for instance, can increase lead
qualification productivity by up to 75%.
And more than half (55%) of leading companies
say they can translate customer data into actions,
compared to 26% of everyone else.
But success may be short-term at best if companies
aren’t asking the right question
they want the data to answer.
7

Sharing and using the right
data across marketing, sales and
customer service will ultimately guide
the technology, talent and processes
needed to create real-time and
relevant interactions across all
customer touchpoints.
8
Still receive annual service calls
about the car you traded in
three years ago?Or marketing
emails from vendors you last
worked with at a different job?
These are typical signs that
front office teams aren’t sharing
data and operate in inefficient,
ineffective silos.

The steps for
transformation

Accenture’s 2021 reports, Make the Leap, Take the Lead and Fast-Track to Future-Ready
Performance showed that:
10
The steps for transformation
• Leaders in technology adoption and innovation are growing twice as fast as Laggards.
• Future-ready organizations, just 7% of the sample, operate more profitably and efficiently than
those at lower operations maturity levels.
New research modeling has discovered a Multiplier Effect—that is, certain strategic steps
can accelerate the journey to operations maturity and quickly realize the benefits that come with
it.

Pressing the data lever is particularly impactful in terms of
leaping from the predictive to future-ready tiers:
11
There are four main levers that
organizations can press to accelerate
operational maturity: technology (adding
automation and solutions that enhance
collaboration between IT and the business),
process (adding leading practices), data and
talent (workforce strategies, including
human + machine capabilities). Pressing the
data lever has the greatest impact on
achieving future-readiness.
*Percentage of organizations at this maturity level today. N=1,100.
Source. Accenture Research and Oxford Economics Intelligent Operations Survey, 2020.

Organizations must take a holistic approach to transformation using data
as the lever. Every element of operations (such as IT) should be advanced
without hurting brand trust. Here’s how:
12
Identify and coordinate
Conceptualize what a future-ready state looks
like and strategize how to reach it by applying
transformation to each area, harmonizing the
process across operational teams and silos. Do
the same with the customer journey in mind,
allowing for each front office leader to work
across silos with heads of the other teams to
achieve shared KPIs and goals.
Collaborate across business and tech
Only 50% of all organizations say they will have
business-tech collaboration at scale in three years'
time. Just 15% of marketing executives say that
business-technology collaboration is happening at
scale currently.3 For sales it’s 9%. Reducing these
barriers to data and connection improves
communication, connects organizations on goals and
allows for the teams to share and act on the same
insights.

Accelerate change
Automate at scale to augment human talent, commit
to making data-driven decisions (with better data),
and scale cloud investments to speed up
transformation. Data needs to be the common
language that connects front office teams and drives
collective action toward business goals.
Position yourself to get—and stay—ahead
Build ecosystem partnerships with companies that
innovate in terms of speed and service. Just 46% of
front office leaders said they’ve improved their
ecosystem partnerships over the past three years.4
Seek out partners that can help deliver the seamless
experience
that customers want.

Achieving these transformational steps begin with using, reading, translating and
acting upon the right data.
• Marketing can tailor campaigns to strengthen the brand
and connect customers to new products and services.
• Sales can see why some prospects became customers and
others did not and can refine the process accordingly.
• Customer service can have greater visibility into customer’s
data to predict and anticipate needs.
For example, today’s banks need to be able to identify where their
customers are in their financial journey, so that:
Having and sharing data won’t help if organizations aren’t using it to be more customer-centric.

Achieve the art
of the possible

Achieve the art of the possible
Accenture Research has found that 71% of future-ready organizations prioritize
data over intuition when it comes to designing their operating model. That number
drops significantly as you look at the predictive,
stable and efficient tiers.5 Pulling the data lever, as future-ready organizations do,
requires:
• Accelerating the aggregation of internal and external data and using the cloud to
power analytics, data science and AI.
• Scaling analytics, on-demand, to drive insights and support decision making.
• Establishing anAI roadmap with a talent and tech strategy to help scaleAI deployments
broadly across the organization.

Athletic company Nike uses its
Nike Fit app and its combination
of computer vision, data science, machine
learning andAI to create
foot morphology based on 13 data points.
This allows Nike to designbetter-fitting
shoesandpersonalizedproduct
recommendationsbasedonreal-world
customerbehaviorsandactions.What’s
more,Nikehasinvestedheavilyin
predictiveanalyticsanddatavisualization
toensurethatinsightsareeasilydigestible
andactionable.
Case study
6

Addressing the lifecycle conversations across front office teams requires
predictive tools and talent, to achieve incremental value and to strategize for
transformational change across the enterprise. But just accumulating and sharing
more data isn’t enough. First, leaders need to ask themselves a few key
questions:
• What can I learn from other industries?
• What tech is my industry adopting?
• Can I avoid “throwaway” tech investments?
• How quickly and at what cost can I modernize?
• When and to what degree do I expect to see an ROI?

1. Determine whatyou want the
data to tell you about your
customers.Narrowit to a set of
10-20 basic questions.Otherwise,
you’llhave more data but fewer
answers and clear insights you can
act upon.
2. Create a new data ecosystemthat
hinges on self-awareness—thatis,
envision a platformthat enables
marketing,sales and service to
understand their
markets in real time.
Once there’s alignment on the key questions, it’s time to start working backwards:
Evaluation
& Research
Selection
& Conversation
New
customers
Awareness
& Influence
Activation
& Adoption
Support
& Optimization
Customer
attrition
Advocacy
& Loyalty
EVALUATION &
PURCHASE
ADOPTION, EXPERIENCE
& EXPANSION
1
2
3
4
5
6

Once this framework
and the technologies
to support a new data ecosystem
are in place, leaders can
encourage
a change in mindset
and ways of working,
in five pragmatic steps:

1. Turn data into insights, using AI
In many cases, marketing, sales, customer service and
other teams already have, but aren’t sharing, the data
to drive intelligent operations.AI tools can transmit
the datasets—and the insights they yield—across
silos.
Intelligent sales can
improve lead gen and
conversion by
35%
or more.

The insights gleaned from an integrated
front office can be used to target
customers—both new and existing—
for sales, determine proper marketing
strategies or offer a stronger customer-
service focus.
Cross-function insights are key.
Sales needs to hear from marketing which
tactics connect with customers while
customer service must provide marketing
with the best tactics to build brand
advocates.
2. Drive opportunities through insights

3. Prioritize clear victories
Front office leaders should direct resources toward “easy wins.”This will unite the
entire organization around the efforts while also achieving growth.
• For marketing, it’s driving plans that will reach the right customers at the right
time.
• For sales, this means prioritizing the strongest leads.
• For customer service, it’s taking approaches that provide the greatest
improvement among the most valuable customers.
Opportunities must be prioritized based on their customer-lifecycle impact,
not on what individual teams produce independently.

The more the entire front office learns as a
unit, the faster the transformation.
Results of insights and tactics for sales, for
example, should be shared with all front
office teams. By establishing a common
repository of account information with front-
line insights,
the entire organization can see which tactics
work, and which don’t.
4. Learn as one unit

Using the insights and results, the front office
can then match the right people to the right
tasks, leading to more effective long-term
change.
Rich, analytics-based data can reveal what
types of skills or personalities are needed to
attract the right customer.
Front office leaders can then match
the expertise of marketing, sales or customer
service talent with the
right customer or goal.
5. Match and empower talent

Company-wide
change starts
with data

Company-wide change starts with data
Several organizations are already taking this new, smarter
approach to data as a growth lever, by:
Asking the
right questions.
Aggregating the
data.
Transforming the front office
organization accordingly.
1 2 3

Case study
A telecoms manufacturer operating in
more than 90 countries uses a “warranty
as a service” solution that accelerates
warranty claims processing, end-to-end.The
company can accurately forecast consumer
demand for spare parts and manage
inventory more effectively.
Using machine learning to predict when,
where and who will need spare parts has
increased accuracy in demand forecasting to
75%, and warranty
claims are processed 40% faster,
which has streamlined operations
and boosted customer service. 7

Know your customers:
Deeplisteningiskey,
forinstance;toseeifthe
needsofSMBsandlarge
customersdiffer.
Know your portfolio:
Understandwhichofferings
inyourportfoliowillappeal
towhichcustomers.
Beyondthat,aretheregaps
differentcustomersare
facingthatcanhelpinform
yourownbusiness
developmentefforts?
Serve your customers
through digital channels:
Evenifyouhavemillionsof
customers,largeandsmall,
youcanbuildascalableway
toconnectwithallof
them—whenandhowthey
prefer—throughan
omnichannelexperience.
Ensure an amazing
customer experience:
Offeringasuperior
customerexperience
throughallchannels,
includingdigital,
isnon-negotiable.
Make success
frictionless:
Everythingmusthappen
seamlesslyandeffortlessly
acrossthefrontoffice
functions.Whileahedge
fundinNewYorkanda
bakeryinBangaloremight
havedifferentITneeds,
theybothrequireasimple
waytounderstandand
purchaseyourproductsor
services.
1 2 3 4 5
There are five areas of focus
for building a future-ready front office:
8

Data is a key component
of the Value Multiplier.
Together,data,talent,technologyandprocessesrepresent
theopportunitytoachievefuture-readinessandallthebenefitsthat
comewithit—primarilythegreater likelihoodofenhancedefficiency
andprofitability.
Whileallfourlevers areimportant,for manyorganizationsdataisthe
onetoapproachfirst,withafocusonautomation,newtechnology
solutionsandcollaborationacrossthefrontoffice—aswellaswithIT.
Theinsightsthey’llget caninspiresmarter strategiesforaddressing
theotherthreeaspectsoftheValueMultiplier.

Better data,
better decisions

Better data, better decisions
The key to remember: growth doesn’t come from accumulating
more or different data.Success comes
from accessing and analyzing data to answer simple,
straightforward questions about what customers want, when
and how.
Do that effectively across front office teams,
and experience an accelerated journey
toward future-readiness and an enhanced
customer lifecycle.

Here’s where to start:
• Remember that less is more—determine which questions
you want the data to answer.
• Unleash data into insights.
• Drive opportunities through insights.
• Prioritize clear victories.
• Learn as one unit.
• Match and empower talent.
Front office leaders understand the destination; it’s time to pull the data
lever and start the transformation journey.
Better data, better decisions

Authors
Danielle Moffat
Managing Director –
AccentureOperations,
Intelligent Sales and
CustomerOperations,
Offering Lead
Dave Jones Managing
Director,Accenture
Interactive
Nigel Gilbert Accenture
Operations, Marketing
Operations, Offering
Lead
Shannon Copeland
ManagingDirector-
AccentureOperations,Digital
InsideSales,CTO
Jeff Laue
SeniorManagingDirector
AccentureOperations,Digital
InsideSalesBusinessLead

Fast-track your journey to intelligent operations
and prepare for a future-ready front office.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud
and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40
industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations
services—all powered by the world’s largest network
of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 674,000 people deliver on the
promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120
countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients,
people, shareholders, partners and communities.
Visit us at www.accenture.com
About Accenture Research
Accenture Research shapes trends and creates data-driven insights about the
most pressing issues global organizations face. Combining the power of innovative research
techniques with a deep understanding of our clients’ industries, our team of 300 researchers
and analysts spans 20 countries and publishes hundreds of reports, articles and points of view
every year. Our thought-provoking research—supported
by proprietary data and partnerships with leading organizations, such as MIT and Harvard—
guides our innovations and allows us to transform theories and fresh
ideas into real-world solutions for our clients.
This content is provided for general information purposes and is not intended to be used in place of consultation with our professional advisors. This document refers to marks owned by third parties. All such third-party
marks are the property of their respective owners. No sponsorship, endorsement or approval of this content by the owners of such marks is intended, expressed or implied.
References
1. Accenture Research and Oxford Economics Intelligent Operations
Survey, 2020.
Survey, 2020.
Survey, 2020.
Survey, 2020.
5. “The Value Multiplier,” Accenture, Manish Sharma, December 2021.
6. “The . AI, Data and Predictive Analytics: A look into Nike’s Formula for
Growth,” AI Data & Analytics Network, November 2020.
7. “Telco dials up growth with aftermarket operations,” Accenture.
8. “Five focus areas for building future-ready sales,” Accenture, Shannon
Copeland, December 2021.

Driving change: Unlocking data to transform the front office

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