INDUSTRY

Harvard Business School Publishing will conduct an interactive 90-minute Web-based conference on Wednesday, June 8 that includes business insight from companies achieving success in technology-enabled customer management. Included among the firms studied in the two-year research initiative are Teradata data warehouse clients that have achieved exceptional business results from their customer strategy: Continental Airlines, Royal Bank of Canada, Harrah’s Entertainment and SBC Communications. The Web seminar will feature Ranjay Gulati, the Michael L. Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His article “The Quest for Customer Focus” appeared in the April 2005 issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR). The article outlined and defined four distinct stages that unfold as leading companies evolve in their use of customer information – with obstacles and hurdles at each step that require increasing coordination, commitment and sophistication between people and processes. “Gulati’s findings emphasize the need for not only the customer’s data and transactions but also the need for enterprise data, such as product and supply costs, to determine true customer profitability,” said Bob Fair, chief marketing officer for Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR). “That’s what we do best – consolidate data across the organization into an enterprise data warehouse. The leaders are operating at Ranjay’s stage four, ‘Integral Coordination,’ combining historical data with real-time data and events to make better decisions at the point of service or customer contact where it counts most. That’s Teradata’s active data warehousing, pushing intelligence throughout the enterprise, delivering on the real-time intelligent enterprise.” In Gulati’s HBR article, Continental Airlines, Royal Bank of Canada, Harrah’s Entertainment and SBC Communications are among the companies cited that, in true scientific fashion, segment, measure, predict and influence customer behavior and profitability by using sophisticated analytical tools on a centralized business intelligence platform. A link to the HBR article is available for viewing on the teradata.com Web site at www.teradata.com/t/go.aspx/index.html?id=133191. Gulati is a recognized specialist on business and strategy issues, with multiple book credits to his career as a scholar and author. He oversees ongoing research with numerous companies across many industries, in search of those that are best at leveraging information to make decisions that drive extraordinary business results. For details, times and to register for this Harvard Business School online event, please visit the conference web site at www.krm.com/focus1/.