Integrating “Experience Management” capabilities to take more effective capital allocation decisions
The CEO of a large corporation recently asked me how he could communicate to the financial world and to his shareholders about the investment and the Company’s commitment made into creating superior Experiences.
This question is legitimate: companies with better Customer satisfaction scores enjoy greater shareholder value. In its article “CEOs need a Customer Experience Revolution – not an evolution”, the BCG highlights for instance that companies with the highest satisfaction scores returned double the shareholder value over ten years (starting with a similar cumulative return index of 100 in Jan 2009, the 20 companies with the highest satisfaction scores have reached in 2019 a cumulative return of $672.79 while the S&P 500 reached $360.10).
Moreover, a recent study from the XM Institute shows that bad experiences represent a total sales business at risk of €155 Billions (source: https://www.xminstitute.com/blog/bad-experiences-risk-sales/).?
As a matter of fact, there are many ways to evaluate the capabilities of a listed company to perform: its leadership profile, its financial figures, its industrial equipment, its process efficiencies, its market shares…
What if investors would integrate Experience Management into the evaluation process of a company to take more effective capital allocation decisions?
Experience Management is the process of monitoring any experience (customers, employees, brand and products) to create value and spot opportunities for improvement.
Since the 90s, companies have sought to develop their competitive advantages around “Process transformation” (business process re-engineering, ERP…), then in the 00s around “Infrastructure transformation” (eCommerce, virtualization, BI, marketing automation…) and at last in the 10s around “Digital transformation” (Cloud, big data, everything “as a service”, enterprise mobility…).?
Since 2020, global megatrends and disruptions are reshaping the world. For instance, Employee and Customer switching costs tend to Zero, Brand promise is being core to Customer and Employee decisions, hybrid work is becoming the norm, shortage of talents makes competition for resources high, and all services and experiences is being delivered “Digital first”.
Companies have thus entered in the era of “Experience transformation” where they need to focus on hyper-personalization, connected experiences, experience automation and a single view of their customer.
Experience Management is the process of monitoring every emotional, physical and intellectual interactions, people (Customers, Employees, Suppliers, Partners…) experience with an organization to create value and spot opportunities for improvement.?
There is no formal definition nor a consensus on what are the priority topics in Experience Management. We can nevertheless highlight some key areas such as:
The question here is how do we evaluate value creation through experiences, more specifically for a listed company?
?An Annual Report is a standard way to evaluate the performance of a company but it has a lot of limitations when it comes to evaluate “value creation”.
To start with the evaluation process, a financial analyst or an investor would usually thoroughly examine the company’s annual reports.
The intent of the required annual report is to provide public disclosure of a company's operating and financial activities over the past year. It became a regulatory requirement for public companies following the stock market crash of 1929, when lawmakers mandated standardized corporate financial reporting.
?Typically, an annual report contains the following sections:
In a perfect world, investors, board members, and executives would have full confidence in companies’ financial statements because the presentation of figures are following precise rules. Regulations require all listed companies to prepare their consolidated financial statements in accordance with a single set of international standards. These are the IFRS (international financial reporting standards), previously known as IAS (international accounting standards) or the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
A financial analyst can hence rely on the numbers to make intelligent estimates of the amount, timing, and uncertainty of future cash flows and to judge whether the resulting estimate of value is fairly represented in the current stock price. Based on this financial statement, alone, could an investor make wise decisions about whether to invest in or acquire a company? (source: https://hbr.org/2016/07/where-financial-reporting-still-falls-short)
A frequent criticism regarding Financial Statements is that there is not a lot of information about the company’s intangibles such as its strategy, its business model, or its impacts on its internal and external stakeholders. As a matter of fact, it focuses a lot on past performances without clearly articulating how the company is prepared to future challenged and what would be an expected return on investment
It is also often said that executives’ incentives to hit short-term targets stay strong (there is hence a temptation to “cook the books”). So, investors and directors will have to demand more disclosure on those operating decisions that are most susceptible to manipulation to determine whether they are being made for sound business reasons or to artificially boost financial results
It is true that we can find in many annual reports, here and there, information regarding for example the Net Promoter Score or the Employee Satisfaction score but those are “just” scores. Investors want above all to understand what the strategy and the system of actions implemented are, for instance to attract and/or retain Clients and/or Employees, and what is the expected return in the mid and long term.
The Integrated Reporting to communicate about value creation, preservation and erosion
?The International <IR> Framework and Integrated Thinking Principles have been developed since 2010 and are used around the world, 75 countries so far, to advance communication about value creation, preservation and erosion.
The International Integrated Reporting Framework (the Framework) encourages organizations to improve their reporting by focusing information more clearly on the business model and how the company creates value for?capital providers.?
The primary purpose of an integrated report is to explain to providers of financial capital how an organization creates, preserves or erodes value over time. It benefits all stakeholders interested in an organization’s ability to create value over time, including employees, customers, suppliers, business partners, local communities, legislators, regulators and policy-makers (source: www.integratedreporting.org).
“We need to understand not only the immediate financial performance, but the strategy of the business, the key resources and assets to which it has access and how it intends to maintain access to these resources and maintain or improve its assets.
This gives rise to a need for businesses to explain their business models and strategies so that we understand how they earn their returns. We need them to tell us about the key resources on which they rely, to understand the cost of maintaining or growing them or, where necessary, of switching to alternatives. We need to understand what they do to maintain their access to those resources, and how they fulfill the needs of their staff or customers”.
(source: ?https://www.integratedreporting.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CreatingValue_Benefits_to_InvestorsIIRC.pdf?
For example, if a company is using water as a resource but is doing nothing/little to preserve it over the long term (if not destroying it), then we can deduct that the value creation process of this company is not viable.
Replace “water” by “Customer” or “Employees” and you should understand how this approach applies to Experience Management.
Typically, an integrated report includes eight elements fundamentally linked to each other:
Experience Management should be part of an integrated report as it is a fundamental lever of Value creation.
Unless the IFRS or the GAAP, Integrated Reporting is not prescriptive about what measures should be provided but asks that management explain how their performance measures relate to the key inputs and outputs of their business model.?
Companies are for instance encouraged to present the interrelations between “activities”, “interactions” and “relationships” that create Customer Satisfaction, Supplier’s willingness to trade with the organization, positive Employee experience (the “Human Capital”)…?
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This would provide relevant information around their value creation process through Experience Management, their performances, opportunities, risks and trade-off toward their Customer, Employees, Partners…?
For example, an investor should precisely understand how many Customers or/and Employees leave and the underlying reasons why they are ending their relationships with the company.
To go further, we could have the following topics presented:
The case of DBS (The Development Bank of Singapore Limited, awarded numerous times as one of the best banks in the world) is interesting. Since 2012, DBS has incorporated the framework and guidelines of Integrated Reporting directly into its Annual Report. DBS is thus clearly presenting its value creation process from the CEO reflections (very interesting section on how they are handling the “Future of Work” with their employees) to its 2020 priorities (excellent illustration for me of what could be an Experience Management Performance dashboard: we are far from presenting a single NPS score!). Step by step, DBS describes thereby its system of actions to be “a force for good in society” (Source: https://www.dbs.com/annualreports/2020/files/media/dbs-annual-report-2020-p70.pdf)?
In 2020, I have counted that 55% of the companies in the CAC 40 stock market index (the benchmark equity index made up by the largest French companies), and 33% of those in the SBF 120 index, issued an integrated report. In 2019, the publication rate in France was 29% higher than in 2018 and 220% higher than in 2017 (source : BNP Paribas).?
I have read with scrutiny the last Integrated Reports of French companies listed on the CAC 40. I can say that, although there are some discrepancies from one company to another (which is normal as there is no formal rule of presentation, only recommendations, for integrated reporting), we are well understanding how those companies are creating value through Experience Management.
If we look at the key Experience Management topics covered within those Integrated Reports, we have the following results (the % represents the number of companies covering a specific topic):
Customer Experience:
Employee Experience:
Brand Experience:
Product Experience:
We clearly see the focus on “Sustainability”, “Employee engagement”, “Talent Management” and “Digitalization” but few companies are focusing on “omnichannel experiences”, “personalization” and “new ways of working”. Most of those Integrated Reports being from 2020 (the first year impacted by the Covid 19), we can predict that those topics would be largely covered in 2021.?
The ability of Executives and Finance function in articulating Value Creation through Experience Management still need to be developed.
Experience Management is becoming a strategic topic for management boards and the Integrated Reporting is, according to me, an efficient mean to structure and present it. CFO and CEO interactions on organizational transformation have increased significantly during the COVID-19 crisis, and the data show that CFOs’ leadership in this area adds significant value (source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/mastering-change-the-new-cfo-mandate). Yet, there is still a lot to do to articulate “Experience Management” with “Value” at a board level.
For instance, how many CFO could answer questions related to the impacts of:
Few Integrated Reports are thus presenting which actions are taken to address these types of issues and what would be the expected return on investment.
If they would for instance focus on Customer attrition, Executives would be able to articulate what the company is doing to lower customer turnover, how the organization is better managing customer relationships to make sure it doesn’t happen etc… Depending on what industry you’re in, compared to an unsatisfying experience, after an extremely satisfying experience, consumers are 4.2x more likely to trust an organization, 5.2x more likely to recommend that organization, and 3.5x more likely to purchase more from the organization. (source : https://www.qualtrics.com/m/www.xminstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/XMI_DS_GlobalStudyROIofCX.pdf?ty=mktocd-thank-you).
And we still have companies that are presenting in their Integrated Reports a Net Promoter Score as a % (the NPS is not expressed as a percentage but as an?absolute number lying between -100 and +100)!...?
There are several reasons explaining why Executives are still not fully mastering Experience Management: maturity, alignment and technology.
First, the maturity level on Experience Management is extremely variable from one company to another. Different competencies are required to monitor experiences such as leading the Experience Management efforts, aligning these efforts with well-defined business objectives, ensuring the organization has the skills, support, and motivation to achieve desired results and creating experiences that differentiate the organization or driving improvement based on insights. Many organizations have started to initiate these competences and mobilize their teams on it, but most have not succeeded yet to scale it.
Second, there is little alignment between Finance and Experience Management. In a study on Experience Management professionals performed by the XM Institute in Q2 2021 (https://www.qualtrics.com/xm-institute/state-of-xm-profession/) only 9% of them have worked in a financial function. The reverse is probably identical with few Finance executives having worked in the Experience Management area. It is hence interesting to see that “Improving Customer Experience” is seen as a minor objective for CFO and is disconnected from other primary objectives for companies’ transformation such as “moving from good to great performance”, “reducing costs“ or “taking advantage of digitization - related business objectives”( source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/mastering-change-the-new-cfo-mandate). This alignment would be certainly improved for example with the raise of “Financial Strategic Value Advisor”, a function within Finance in charge of supporting each department to unlock the value of Experience Management activities.?
Third, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Monitoring Experiences requires a set of tools: analytics and insights (feedbacks, trends, operational data…) from the company’s eco-system (clients, employees, partners, suppliers, communities…), data visualization (e.g. real-time dashboards for key measures of experiences performance), integration with internal systems (e.g. CRM, ERP…), distribution/democratization of data to the thousands of employees to connect their daily jobs with their impacts through experiences and close the loop process to continuously improve. More and more companies are modernizing their Voice of the Customer and their Voice of Employee mechanisms, but it is often done in silos and with little coordination (it is not rare to see more than 20 different systems in large companies). When you are recommended to present the interrelations between “activities”, “interactions” and “relationships” that create Customer Satisfaction, Supplier’s willingness to trade with the organization, positive Employee experience (the “Human Capital”)…, this fragmentation of systems is clearly bringing a lot of confusion.
Conclusion
Going back to the question asked by the CEO, I will answer that the Integrated Report Framework would be the best format to share with the financial communities their efforts put into Experience Management (right now, this company is not providing an Integrated Report).
I will advise him to clearly articulate the Experience Management initiatives presenting (a) the expected outcomes (e.g. customer acquisition, recruitment of talents, optimization of costs to serve…), (b) the experiential drivers (e.g. simplification of the onboarding process, digitalization of the Talent management processes, improvement of the 1st call resolution through agent coaching…) and (c) the system of actions in place to listen, understand and design and continuously improve experiences (this section would be the most important one for financial analysts).
I will at last recommend him to further integrate the Finance function into this exercise. The CFO (like all the other C-suite members) should be role-modelling on what Experience Management means in terms of behaviors, mindset and competencies and he should ensure that the company is setting high-level goals and delivering with the support of Experience Management Value Advisors.
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You want to share your thoughts? Suggest any other dimension of how experience management can help? Ask a question? … Do not hesitate to use the comment box below.
Full disclosure: any views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Strategic Account Manager #Software, #SaaS, #Cloud, #AI
2 年?? Excellent paper Olivier, great insights on Value Creation and the measure of the "intangible" ?
Chief Digital & Marketing Officer | Customer Experience Management Expert | Digital Transformation Strategy & Operation | Innovation
2 年Very valuable insights Olivier Arnoux. It's all about Customer Experience & Satisfaction
Expert en Transformation Client, Founder & CEO Customer Focus Consulting | ex Directeur Monde Satisfaction Client Renault, Accenture, Ipsos | #customerexperience #experiencecollaborateur | Enseignant | Conférencier
2 年Nice one!