Accenture Marketing Transformation

Customer Analytics
Cutting a New Path to Growth
and High Performance
Customers have more information and more choices than ever.
Fortunately, marketers can employ powerful analytical tools to
understand and engage customers today and anticipate their
priorities tomorrow. The discipline of analytics can serve to identify
the segments that matter, uncover useful insights about behavior
and point the way to process changes that will truly make a
difference in customer loyalty and profitability.

Rethink
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 2
Staying a Step Ahead

In a time of changing consumer values and economic

uncertainty, the marketing function has a more strategic
role to play in driving growth and high performance. Are
marketers ready to step up? Accenture believes so—if they
are prepared to use the power of analytics to propel their
organizations to the next level of performance.

Consider this example: an electric existing energy-efficiency offerings.

utility developed plans for using
two-way digital technology to control
appliances at customer sites and
save energy, reduce cost and increase
reliability. Before investing, company
executives realized they would have
to improve their analytical capabilities
to understand customer priorities
better and segment them more
effectively. In particular: what were the
characteristics of customers who would
be most receptive to offerings built
around energy-efficiency and demand-
side management?
Working with Accenture, the utility
mined existing data and conducted
additional research. The resulting
analysis identified useful segments,
such as “green-minded” customers—
heavy energy users with an affinity for
advice about green solutions.
Using these new, actionable segments,
the utility was able to launch a highly
targeted marketing campaign for its
The results were quite favorable: The
customer response rate rose by 200
percent, even as marketing costs
dropped by 70 percent. Over the longer
term, the company will be able to use
the segmentation analysis to inform
both strategy and marketing as it
implements its plan.
Like this utility, companies seeking high
performance today contend with a
complex customer landscape. Two years
of intense economic turmoil have left
many people more apprehensive about
their future. Even before the recession,
customers’ priorities were changing
at a rapid pace and in erratic paths. In
one situation, people are willing to pay
for convenience; in another, they base
purchase decisions mainly on price.
They’re health-conscious here yet self-
indulgent there. They crave simplicity
but also want a rich experience.

Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 3

Customers have become more demanding,
better informed and less loyal.
Figure 1: Moving up the analytical curve
Optimization
Predictive Modeling
Forecasting/extrapolation
Competitive
Advantage Statistical Analysis
Alerts
Query/drill down
Ad hoc Reports
Standard Reports
Sophistication of Intelligence
Moreover, customers in general have
become more demanding, better
informed and less loyal to certain brands.
Complicating the marketer’s challenge,
customer segments have proliferated
as well. Some new segments arise
from attitudinal shifts: The greening of
political debate has driven the creation
of new category variations such as
hybrid cars and fair-trade coffee. Other
segments result from demographic
shifts, such as the aging populations of
many nations.
The experiences of analytical leaders
suggest four principles that have
proven the most effective in launching
or extending an initiative in customer
analytics.
New segments and growth
opportunities are appearing as well
in emerging economies, where more
and more families progress from
subsistence poverty to wage-earning
status, putting more goods and services
What is the best that can happen?
What will happen next?
What if these trends continue?
Why is this happening?
What actions are needed?
What exactly is the problem?
How many, how often, where?
What happened?
within their reach. This dynamic spawns
literally dozens of separate segments,
because China differs from India and
Brazil. Different income pyramids and
customer priorities in each region
have led to a great heterogeneity of
segments. Even within “rural China,”
the provinces of Inner Mongolia and
Guizhou exhibit quite different dialects,
customs and shopping behavior.
As these shifts in customer segments,
priorities and behaviors reshape
commercial markets, gaining a firm
grasp of what customers want and
then knowing how to address demand
profitably have become essential.
The discipline of analytics allows
marketers to build strong capabilities
in segmentation and customer insight.
By analytics, we mean an integrated
framework that employs quantitative
methods to derive actionable insights
from data, then uses those insights
to shape business decisions and,
ultimately, to improve outcomes.
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 4
Predictive
Analytics
Descriptive
Analytics
Deployed effectively, advanced customer
analytics allow marketers to play a more
integral, strategic role by setting and
steering the growth agenda. Powerful
analytical tools can help companies
create customer loyalty, improve the
return on marketing investment and
generate new revenue streams.
As managers become more fluent
and comfortable with analytics,
they can address progressively
more sophisticated questions about
customers, such as those shown in
Figure 1. A path to differentiation
among high performers, then, is to
move up the analytical curve, so that
they can use predictive analyses to
gain insights into what a company
should do in response to changing
customer scenarios. This involves not
just a competence with technical tools,
but also an organizational focus on
adjusting business processes to put the
insights to fruitful use.
As these shifts in customer segments, priorities and
behaviors reshape commercial markets, gaining
a firm grasp of what customers want and then
knowing how to address demand profitably have
become essential.
A new basis
for competitive
advantage
In a multi-polar world—a volatile,
interdependent, globalized marketplace
where upstart rivals can emerge quickly
from any corner—competitiveness at
speed remains imperative. But many
of the previous bases for competition
are no longer viable. Companies
offer mostly similar products and use
comparable technology. Proprietary
technologies can be copied quickly.
Physical location matters less when
customers use the Internet to search
and transact.
What’s left as a basis for competition
is to gain a deep understanding of
customer priorities by individual
segment and to make the smartest
business decisions possible about
serving those segments. In this new
environment, companies with weak
segmenting and customer insight
capabilities will struggle. Companies
that master customer analytics will
find abundant new opportunities for
profitable growth and will be able to
make wise decisions about investing
marketing resources.
Analytics can have a big payoff.
Accenture research confirms that high-
performance businesses—those that
substantially outperform competitors
over the long term and across economic,
industry and leadership cycles—are
five times more likely to use analytics
strategically compared with low
performers.1 High performers know that
technology on its own cannot make a
company into an effective analytical
competitor. Their managers are also wise
to the limits of equating analytics with
the collection and storage of data. High-
performing companies have embedded
strong analytical muscle and made it
central to the execution of their strategy.
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 5
The value of customer analytics has risen
in part because past behavior is no longer
necessarily a good predictor of future
behavior. Credit scores that tick down
when a homeowner loses his job have
served in the past as useful predictors of
likely backache or depression problems;
will they be equally useful now that
scores have fallen widely in the wake
of high unemployment and stagnant
incomes? Business-credit scores as
well have become a weak indicator of
repayment ability in the eyes of some
large lenders. Banks may now have to
rely instead on cash flow and collateral
to determine the creditworthiness of a
small business.2
The challenge of turning data into
actionable insights has become
exponentially more difficult even as it
becomes more essential. The deluge of
data promises to increase from new
sources such as social-networking
websites, mobile devices and built-in

sensors. Retail giant Wal-Mart already
handles more than 1 million customer
transactions every hour and Facebook,
the social-networking site, hosts
40 billion photos.3 According to the
research firm IDC, despite the economic
downturn, the volume of digital data
generated in 2008 increased three
percent more than forecasted and is
expected to double every 18 months.4
As more people enter the working and
middle classes, they become literate,
further fueling information growth.
The increasing importance of customer-
centric strategies, combined with the
advances in the technologies available,
has led a new generation of analytical
leaders to demand more insights about
customers before making final decisions
on target segments, price points,
product features, service levels and
channel partners. In a recent Accenture
survey of 400 senior executives
responsible for the marketing function
at large enterprises, customer analytics
Analyzing Your Analytics Capabilities
• Can you identify the gems in
your customer portfolio?
• Do you know which are
your highest-value segments?
Where future growth will
come from?
• How do you identify new
potential customers in emerg-
ing markets?
• As you expand abroad, how
are you managing the prolif-
eration of segments?
• What skills and tools do you
have in place to generate cus-
tomer insights?
was cited by 65 percent as critical to
their marketing strategy—more than
any other capability.5 Many were
planning to increase investment over
the coming year in such areas as
developing customer data management
and systems (41 percent); improving
customer segmentation and insight
(41 percent); and analyzing market
and customer trends (38 percent).
Tellingly, marketers at companies that
grew revenue in the past year were
significantly more likely to describe
their analytics capability as above
average than marketers at companies
that lost revenue: 68 vs. 58 percent.
Data and modeling are no substitute
for talking with customers and seeing
the market for oneself, of course. And a
few executives with enough experience,
intuition and luck may choose
strategies that pay off without the
benefit of data and analysis. But most
of us should be using facts to improve
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 6
• What processes are in place
to turn insight into action
across the company?
• How do you balance cost to
acquire and cost to serve?
• How are you defending the
current customer base and
extracting the most value from
it?
• How are you responding to
changing consumer priorities
and behaviors?
decisions. The discipline of analytics
augments personal experience and
judgment by providing a quantitative
structure to qualitative observations.
There’s gold in
(some of) those
motorcycle riders
Companies that are advanced in using
analytics have built up richly detailed
views of their customers. With multiple
touch points feeding in data, algorithms
help managers understand how their
products and services are used. Behavior
such as monthly cell phone usage,
payment histories, needs articulated in
surveys or focus groups, demographic
and income data generated in-house or
acquired from outside sources—all sorts
of data provide the raw material for
segmentation. Suppliers in business-to-
business markets also frequently possess,
or can construct, rich data on customer
preferences and behavior that can help
create segments that are far more useful
than “small/medium/large” customers.
Progressive Insurance has put analytics
and modeling to profitable use in
defining new segments. Mining widely
available insurance industry data,
Progressive defined narrow groups,
or cells, of customers—for example,
motorcycle riders age 30 and above,
with college educations, credit scores
over a certain level and no accidents.
For each cell, the company performed
a regression analysis to identify the
factors that most closely correlate
with the losses that group engenders.
It then set prices for the cells that
would enable the company to earn a
profit across a portfolio of customer
groups and used simulation software
to test the financial implications of
those hypotheses. With this approach,
Progressive was among the pioneers
to profitably insure customers in
traditionally high-risk categories.
Beyond the basic statistics, companies
can use modeling to predict how they
will respond to certain offerings. A
mobile phone carrier, for instance, can
track games that a customer plays on
his handset. From the type of game
played, the carrier can learn that
certain customers have a fondness for
numerical puzzles and will respond
favorably to a text message offering
a discount voucher for a soon-to-be-
released puzzle.
Cupid’s equation
Web-based businesses are fertile
ground for capturing customer
interaction data and using algorithms
to make valuable recommendations to
customers. Many companies migrated
to the Internet by simply plunking
a traditional business model into a
website. So there is ample opportunity
to differentiate a web-based business
by making customer analytics the
foundation of the strategy.
The online dating industry is a case in
point. Most dating websites don’t reveal
the details of their method or data
involved in making a match. In contrast
to this opaque approach, OkCupid,
founded by four mathematicians, uses
statistical tools to analyze how the
mating game plays out on its site and
publishes the results of its number-
crunching on a blog with charts to walk
members through the process.
OkCupid members answer questions
and the answers are analyzed by several
sets of algorithms to calculate the level
of compatibility with other users. For
example, OkCupid analyzed the first
messages sent by users to would-be
mates to determine which ones were
most likely to get a response. Messages
with words like “fascinating” and “cool”
had a better success rate than those
with “beautiful” or “cutie.”6 These data-
baring tactics have helped OkCupid grow
the largest membership in online dating.
Applied customer analytics can benefit
old-line industries that rely on brick-
and-mortar assets as well. Grocery
chains collect an enormous amount
of transaction data at checkout, yet
many grocers still give this data to third
parties to buy it back in the form of
relatively generic analysis.
Likewise in the aviation industry,
every airline has a customer loyalty
program, but all offer roughly similar
benefits and only some have used the
underlying data to create a distinctive
offering for certain segments. One or
two airlines could break away from the
pack with an analytics-based loyalty
program, yet currently they are perhaps
too preoccupied with fuel costs and
mergers to seize this opportunity.
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 7
Four principles for
reaching the right
customers
It’s easy to spend time and resources
on the wrong data or a tangential
issue. To help winnow the options,
the experiences of analytical leaders
suggest four principles that have
proven the most effective in launching
or extending an initiative in customer
analytics. These are the principles
against which marketers and other
executives can test their current
operations as they take a fresh look at
the elusive customer.
1. Analyze what’s most useful and
actionable, not just what’s at hand.
All too often, we find that managers
use data to justify what they were
going to do anyway, or they review only
data that’s already assembled because
it’s easy to access.
Consumer packaged goods manufacturers,
for instance, have long had access to
checkout scanner data from third-party
vendors. But relying solely on that data
and the executive summaries that come
with it has yielded few brilliant insights.
A few packaged goods manufacturers
have blazed their own analytics trails,
taking time to vet the data, augment
it where necessary and put it to use in
addressing new segments with better
offerings. Kraft Foods made an early
foray into customer analytics when
it collaborated a decade ago with
Information Resources, Inc., and Nielsen
to understand the food buying behavior
of Hispanics in the United States. That
led Kraft to create a line of cheeses
for Hispanic shoppers, many of whom
became loyal to the Kraft brand. And
those cheeses gradually found a broader
market among consumers who liked to
cook different ethnic cuisines.
The experiences of Four Principles Underlying Successful
Customer Analytics
analytical leaders • Analyze what’s most useful and actionable, not
just what’s at hand.
suggest four principles • But don’t ignore databases close by if they can be
that have proven mined with fresh eyes.
• Restructure processes and bring on new people to
the most effective in take full advantage of the new insights.

launching or extending • Embrace a rapid “test-and-learn” approach.

an initiative in customer
analytics.

Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 8

Netflix owes its success in online
video rental in part to the creation
and deployment of a recommendation
engine based on proprietary software.
Cinematch, as the engine is called,
analyzes subscribers' choices and
feedback on the videos they have seen—
more than a billion ratings and reviews
of videos they loved and hated—to
recommend videos in ways that
optimize both the subscriber’s taste and
Netflix’s inventory. The company had to
build that database from scratch and
convince customers to participate, but
it was well worth the effort. Netflix is
now working to improve Cinematch’s
effectiveness for new subscribers for
whom Netflix has only sparse data.
Online media and social networks
represent huge analytical opportunities
as well. Much of this information
arrives in new, unstructured formats,
but some big companies including eBay
and Sprint have been able to tap the
data in creative and useful ways.7
EBay, for instance, used online tracking
technologies to identify customers
who browsed or shopped for clothing
products on its site. With the help
of the start-up 33Across, eBay then
analyzed data from social-networking
sites to map out the connections
between the customers eBay had
identified and other Web surfers, to
serve up ads at the right time and
place. So if an eBay customer shared a
movie review with a friend, 33Across
identified that connection and placed a
cookie, or anonymous string of tracking
data, on the friend’s browser so that he
later could be targeted with a relevant
ad when visiting certain sites. Sprint
tested this approach to promote the
launch of its Palm Pre smart phone and
quadrupled related online sales.
2. But don’t ignore databases close by
if they can be mined with fresh eyes.
Existing streams of data—from warranty
claims, complaint letters and emails,
call center conversations—often deserve
a fresh look to help address customer-
related issues. Industrial products or
automotive companies, for instance,
could find opportunities to mine the calls
that come in for words such as “fire” or
“failure.” More organizations are coming
to realize that their operational data can
be an important asset.
Cablecom, a Swiss telecoms operator,
has reduced defections from one-fifth
of subscribers a year to fewer than
5 percent by crunching the data it
already had. Its software spotted that
although customer defections peaked
in the thirteenth month, the decision to
leave was made much earlier, around
the ninth month, as indicated by things
such as the number of calls to customer
support services. So Cablecom offered
certain customers special deals seven
months into their subscription and
reaped the rewards.8
Returning to the insurance industry,
Delta Dental of California realized that
by analyzing years of claims data, it
could begin to understand patterns of
behavior among insured customers and
the dentists it pays: Are a particular
dentist’s patients developing more
problems than others? Are root canals
more common in some areas than
others? Another health insurer realized
that it could identify older insured
customers at risk of diabetes from
inactivity and now works to head
off the disease through a program
called Silver Sneakers Steps (run by
Healthways, a disease management
company), which uses a pedometer to
measure daily steps taken.9
3. Restructure processes and bring on
new people to take full advantage of
the new insights.
Inertia or outright resistance among
pockets of the organization may stop a
promising analytics initiative before it
fulfills its potential or even gets off the
ground. Process changes may appear too
daunting or require a consensus among
too many players. A segmentation
exercise may have been commissioned
by one functional group and then
ignored by others. Or executives may not
have delved deeply enough into their
current processes to realize that these
may be inconsistent with the priorities of
new customer segments.
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 9
Cultural obstacles need to be addressed
head on. A retailer might have a
successful loyalty program that generates
vast amounts of data that the company
uses to tailor promotions to customers.
However, if the marketing organization
is structured by product categories,
each category manager acts in the best
interest of his or her category, even if it
hurts store performance overall. There is
a pool of money to offer customers, but
category managers want to use it in their
own areas, ignoring overall profitability.
The retailer will need to change the
organizational structure and incentives in
order to fix this fragmented approach.
Differentiated treatments of customer
segments will often require different sales
tactics, service needs and messaging—an
entirely new blueprint for a separate
customer experience. Identifying these
organizational implications early on is
essential for acting successfully on the
insights produced by analysis.
One electric utility that aspired to
expand sales in energy efficiency
products and services undertook a needs
segmentation study that showed the
variety of motivations among customers,
including the desire to conserve energy,
save on monthly bills and protect the
environment. All well and good, but
the utility found itself unable to act
immediately on these insights. Its
call center did not have interactive
voice-response scripting capabilities;
direct marketing channels did not have
the ability to print different mailers.
The utility had to solve these basic
process problems before it had a hope
of executing a set of energy-efficient
offerings to the newly defined segments.
This highlights why analytics must
be integrated with everyday business
decisions and processes and why it
may require hiring people with a more
analytical bent. The field should not
be relegated to a few pricing and
promotions experts or limited to a few
isolated applications. Instead, analytics
should be used routinely as a natural
part of daily work, bringing rigor and
discipline to such questions as: How do
we predict customer care needs?
Use Customer Analytics to: Keep an Eye Out for:
• Build a foundation for highly-targeted marketing • Expanding masses of customer data, from
multiple sources, that can confound attempts to
• Improve the ROI of marketing campaigns
zero in on essential insights
• Improve cross-selling through segmentation
• Varying levels of analytical sophistication within
schemes that reveal growth potential of specific
the firm
groups
• Organizational barriers to turning insights into
• Decrease customer churn by isolating loyalty
practical actions
drivers and optimizing retention offerings
• Lack of business intelligence and tools to move
• Improve decision making through dashboard
from ad hoc to ongoing analysis
reporting that integrates business intelligence
• Anticipate shifts in customer priorities

Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 10

Customer Analytics in Action
“A hit, a very palpable hit”
Royal Shakespeare Company
Theater companies, like any other
business, rely on customer loyalty for
their long-term success. The Royal
Shakespeare Company (RSC) in the
United Kingdom, despite its global
reputation, realized that it needed to
reach a much broader and more diverse
audience, while retaining its core, loyal
customers. The RSC needed to expand
its audience base and encourage more
repeat visits by theatre patrons while
diversifying the artistic program.
Improving audience analytics was critical
to achieving these goals. If the RSC better
understood its audience, it could use this
information to help plan productions
and target its marketing efforts more
effectively. By selling more tickets and
raising the share of regular patronage, the
RSC would achieve a stronger financial
return, which would bolster funding
appeals to patrons and sponsors.
Gaining a better understanding of its
audience posed a daunting challenge
for the RSC. Its basic ticketing
database offered few insights into
the demographics and behavior of
its current and potential audience
members. So the RSC worked with
Accenture to profile the current
and potential audience, an effort
that served as the foundation for a
comprehensive marketing strategy for
the theatre’s Stratford-upon-Avon and
London audiences.
The project started by examining
more than two million records over
seven years of box-office transactions,
creating an audience database
that could be easily and quickly
segmented by customer behavior.
Drawing on an alliance relationship
with Acxiom, Accenture factored in
more demographics in the audience
analyses including income, profession,
age of children and lifestyle indicators.
This level of data allowed the RSC to
understand how the characteristics
of its customers differed across the
various segments.
Eight different segments of bookers
emerged at Stratford-upon-Avon and
six segments in London. Four Stratford
segments had a significant number of
return visits. These segments included
“regulars” who attended performances
at least four times a year and
accounted for 59 percent of the RSC’s
revenue, “semi-regulars,” Internet users
and those who attended family shows.
Customers within these segments
became the marketing priority. Among
London ticket buyers, the core audience
group made up 17 percent of patrons
and 45 percent of the financial
contribution. In contrast to Stratford-
upon-Avon audiences, London patrons’
decisions to attend a show were
strongly influenced by casting.
With these new analytical capabilities,
the RSC produced a series of targeted
mailings and initiatives that have
increased the core audience base by 30
percent. Specifically:
• The number of Stratford ticket buyers
has increased more than 50 percent to
more than 320,000.
• The number of audience members
in the Stratford segment defined as
regulars, which makes the greatest
overall contribution to the RSC,
increased by more than 70 percent,
from 40,000 to more than 68,000.
• Preseason targeted mailings for
London audiences sold out much earlier
than previously. This allowed the RSC
to more accurately predict its revenues
and work toward attracting more
diverse audiences.
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 11
• The RSC has identified a new and
valuable London-based segment known
as “newcomers.”
“The audiences to target were so clear
cut,” said Mary Butlin, head of market
planning for the RSC. “We could tell
from the analysis exactly when to
communicate with different groups
to maximize response. As well as the
campaign planning being much faster
and more fact-based, it is easier to
predict likely response even in London,
which is notoriously difficult.”
Use Customer Analytics to:
• Build a foundation for highly-
targeted marketing
• Improve the ROI of marketing
campaigns
• Improve cross-selling through
segmentation schemes that reveal
growth potential of specific groups
• Decrease customer churn by isolating
loyalty drivers and optimizing retention
offerings
• Improve decision making through
dashboard reporting that integrates
business intelligence
• Anticipate shifts in customer priorities
Keep an Eye Out for:
• Expanding masses of customer
data, from multiple sources, that
can confound attempts to zero in on
essential insights
• Varying levels of analytical
sophistication within the firm
• Organizational barriers to turning
insights into practical actions
• Lack of business intelligence and
tools to move from ad hoc to ongoing
analysis
One obvious benefit of a rapid approach is the ability
to quickly focus on key issues at minimal cost.
How do we reequip the sales force?
How far should we push customer
self-service? How should we monitor
customer service phone calls?
4. Embrace a rapid “test-and-learn”
approach.
When data is incomplete and a market
is evolving quickly, speed may be more
important than completeness. An
iterative, “test-and-learn” approach
to developing initial segment profiles
makes the most of existing data. This
can work especially well for firms
with relatively immature analytical
capabilities as a base step for deeper
analytical initiatives down the road.
One obvious benefit of a rapid
approach is the ability to quickly focus
on key issues at minimal cost. For
instance, you don’t need to invest in a
data enterprise warehouse but can use
operational data stores, which are the
inputs to the warehouse.
Another benefit is being able to gauge
the attractiveness of potential offers
before customers have actually bought
them. The science of experimental
design enables rapid test and learn
from different combinations of
dimensions—what channel, message,
frequency, pricing, assortment and
so on. In contrast to data mining—
after-the-fact analysis of customer
behavior—experimental design uses
mathematical formulas to select
and test a subset of combinations of
variables that represent the complexity
of all the original variables. Marketers
can define and control the independent
variables before putting them into the
marketplace, trying out different kinds
of stimuli on customers rather than
observing them as they naturally occur.
Putting customer analytics to work
takes time, effort and concentrated
thinking. Managers will encounter a
variety of challenges, starting with
data challenges, such as scrubbing or
augmenting incomplete, low-quality
data. And data from multiple sources
will have to be integrated in ways that
allow marketers to construct useful
customer segments and insights.
Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 12
Organizational challenges crop up when
multiple functions or stakeholders have
competing interests, or when multiple
efforts to segment customers occur at
the same time. Senior management
will then need to step in to coordinate
these efforts and devise the right
segmentation framework.
There may be institutional or regulatory
challenges as well, such as firewalls that
make it difficult to get a complete view
of the customer. Banks in many countries
are required by law to have firewalls
between checking account and credit
card services; as a result, those core-
banking executives cannot access useful
credit card data for their own customers.
Despite the effort involved, most
companies have little choice but to
embrace analytics if they want to keep
in step with, or a step ahead of, the
changing customer landscape. More
data and new analytical tools become
available every day. Analytically savvy
people abound among the younger
generations in business and they will
gravitate to the firms that value their
work. Customers themselves value
offerings that precisely address their
needs and desires, and all else equal they
seek out providers whose offerings fit
like a glove. Whatever the customer issue
at hand, analytics can help to solve it.
How Accenture
Can Help
We have continually increased our
analytic sophistication and capabilities—
from batch reporting in the 1970s, to
pioneering information management
and performance management solutions
in 1992, to the creation of a dedicated
information management services
organization in 2005.
Today, Accenture works with businesses,
government agencies and other public
service organizations to develop the
predictive capabilities these fast-
changing times demand. We offer a
full spectrum of services from strategy
to execution to outsourcing of key
business processes.
The Accenture Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) service line helps
companies drive growth and achieve
high performance by evolving from
traditional descriptive customer
analytics to predictive analytics. Our
CRM professionals have deep skills in
segmentation and data management,
combined with extensive experience
in deploying advanced analytical
methodologies to improve revenue,
profitability and return on marketing
investment.
Proprietary Accenture
Innovations for Customer
Analytics
• Accenture Segmentation Methodology:
Encompasses nine distinct steps in
developing a segmentation model (value,
behavior or needs) each of which has
unique objectives and deliverables.
• Accenture Global Consumer
Segmentation Model: An aggregate
model, based on consumer data
gathered in 10 countries, that defines
15 strategic cross-region segments
that are critical to growth. It provides
insight on consumer motives, attitudes
and behaviors along key dimensions
such as financial well-being, technology,
entertainment and health.
• Accenture Customer Analytical Record
(CAR): A patented asset consisting
of a table that consolidates all data
at a customer level to make the data
available for modeling and analysis. CAR
shortens the model development cycle
by as much as 90 percent, increases the
quality of the modeling data set and
ensures that relevant industry-specific
customer data is validated and used.
• Accenture Customer Experience
Blueprint and Workbench: A process
to create a model governing how, why,
when and where interactions should
occur with each customer, while
balancing priorities such as marketing
objectives, customer satisfaction targets
and cost-to-serve targets.
1. Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris. Competing on Analytics: The New Science of
Winning Harvard Business Press, 2007, pp 46-47.
• Accenture Customer Lifetime Value
Methodology: Predicts product preference
and lifetime value as well as the
propensity of prospects and customers
to churn. Helps to align customer needs
and values at each specific life stage and
improve the targeting of resources along
the life cycle.
• Accenture Web Analytics: Monitors
your website and gathers data on
customer actions per impression, with
the primary objective of generating
useful statistics and reports for
improving the web experience.
With this powerful combination of
experience, insight, distinctive offerings
and market-tested solutions, Accenture
is prepared to help you compete on
analytics—in any industry or geography.
To learn more about how
Accenture can help you drive
growth and achieve high
performance through customer
analytics, contact:
Nick Smith
CRM service line
Marketing Transformation
nick.x.smith@accenture.com
Catherine Zhou
CRM service line
Marketing Transformation
catherine.r.zhou@accenture.com

Accenture also leverages the enterprise,
functional and industry capabilities of
our Accenture Analytics team. With more
than 20,000 professionals with analytics
experience, a network of innovation
centers, and a powerful alliance with
industry leader SAS, Accenture Analytics
has the knowledge, scale and global
footprint clients need for better decision
making and improved business outcomes
to accelerate high performance.
2. “When Business Credit Scores Get Murky,” The Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2010.
3. “Data, data everywhere,” The Economist, February 27, 2010.
4. John Gantz and David Reinsel, “As the Economy Contracts the Digital Universe Expands” (IDC
Multi-Media Report, May 2009). http://idcdocserv.com/EMC_MMWP_Digital_Universe (accessed
May 5, 2010).
5. “Onward and Up: How Marketers Are Refocusing the Front Office for Growth,” Accenture, 2010.
6. Jenna Wortham, “Looking for a Date? A Site Suggests You Check the Data,” The New York Times,
February 13, 2010.
7. Emily Steel, “Marketers Watch as Friends Interact Online,” The Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2010.
8. “A different game,” The Economist, February 27, 2010.
9. Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne G. Harris, and Robert Morison, Analytics at Work, Harvard Business
Press, 2010.

Accenture Marketing Transformation—Customer Analytics 13

About Accenture
CRM Solutions
Accenture’s Customer Relationship
Management service line helps
organizations achieve high performance
by transforming their marketing, sales
and customer service functions to
support accelerated growth, increased
profitability and greater operating
efficiency. Our research, insight and
innovation, global reach and delivery
experience have made us a worldwide
leader, serving thousands of clients every
year, including most Fortune® 100
companies, across virtually all industries.
Copyright © 2010 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
About Accenture About Accenture
Analytics Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
Accenture Analytics delivers the insights
outsourcing company, with more than
that organizations need to make better
190,000 people serving clients in
business decisions, faster. Our extensive
more than 120 countries. Combining
capabilities range from accessing and
unparalleled experience, comprehensive
reporting on data to predictive modeling,
capabilities across all industries and
forecasting and sophisticated statistical
business functions, and extensive
analysis. We have more than 20,000
research on the world’s most successful
analytics-skilled people with deep
companies, Accenture collaborates
functional, industry, business process and
with clients to help them become
technology experience. At the intersection
high-performance businesses and
of business and technology, Accenture
governments. The company generated
Analytics enables organizations to
net revenues of US$21.58 billion for
achieve the business outcomes that drive
the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its
high performance. For more information
home page is www.accenture.com.
about Accenture Analytics, visit
www.accenture.com/analytics.