Building Influence and Increasing Competitiveness

The organization had a rich history of technical dominance in the market and the culture supported this with engineering competence in every corner of the business. The business intelligence department had grown from a function primarily relied on for competitive position, to one that was doing more customer data collection, analysis and trending. As the leader of this department pulled compelling ‘intelligence’ that customers were not satisfied or educated enough to continue to prefer ‘the best,’ she found an unreceptive audience in the halls of marketing and product development. SCG initiated its change process to begin to realize this executive’s vision of maintaining market dominance through data-based decisions.

Through a systematic approach to building personal and organizational influence, market intelligence data began finding its way into decisions. First to sales teams who could immediately link their success to customer segmentation frameworks. As the group’s internal reputation grew, the product development process began including consumer and customer data at various stages of development. Eventually demand for business intelligence became this director’s problem, and her team was able to support the realized vision of enhancing organizational competitiveness through market data.