Customer relationship management has recently become a process in which companies seek a competitive edge. Now, the latest movement finds companies searching for efficiencies in supply chain integration and compression. In addition to fully exploiting the current game through product, market, and technology extensions, high performers employ strategies that help them search for and exploit new opportunities as they arise. For example, there is heavy emphasis on business unit autonomy. But the better-performing companies in our study shared a unified vision among corporate, sector, and business unit management.
High performers have more than twice as many collaborative initiatives as medium and low performers.
They also have more than twice as many new market alliances as medium performers and more than three times as many new market alliances as low performers. The aim is to gain leverage with everything from joint product development to joint advertising programs. Things are moving too quickly. The Paradox of Deliberateness A surprising pattern emerging from our study is that high performers, despite their agility and flexibility for meeting changing market conditions, are actually more deliberate in their decisions to enter a new product market or adopt a new technology. In fact, decision-making speed in these strategic areas is inversely proportionate to success.