Creating A Customer-Aligned Organization

Organizing Around The Customer Journey

It is important to reduce customer frictions across the customer journey by removing silos and improving communication between departments in order to align the digital marketing organization around the customer journey. In that ways can the customer journey be improved when the flow of information is more effective? This information is useful when considering how organizations can align themselves internally in a strategy way to respond to the changes brought about by digitalization.

The PARC Framework

Think about organizational frictions as a potential hindrance to effective digital marketing strategies. The PARC framework outlines the four factors that will help determine what an organization needs to concentrate on as it embraces digital marketing. PARC is useful to think about how these factors can be combined to create a seamless experience for customers. It also gives the organization a chance to ask what needs to be done about each of the elements to ensure that it is aligned for digital transformation.

Using the PARC framework to think about the changes that an organization needs to put in place may help that organization avoid being too focused on certain areas and overlooking others. It also gives those in the organization a chance to think about how each of the important elements fit together.

People

Leaders in an organization must encourage all employees to think about and understand the reasons why embracing digital marketing is important for the organization. The organization is likely to introduce new resources to support the digital strategy, and employees must be prepared and motivated to use these resources. Once an organization has decided to embrace digital strategy, it also needs to think about the kind of skills of mindsets it wants the people it hires to have and what kind of training the people in the organization should receive.

Architecture

The second element on the PARC framework is architecture; this entails looking at the structure of the organization and includes the available technologies, hierarchies, and other enabling infrastructure. The organization will also need to consider how its activities are structured and how they relate to each other.

If the organization embraces digital technologies and introduces digital marketing without putting the right structures in place, it is likely to end up with a mismatch between the desired goals and the enabling processes. Digital marketing efforts are linked to different digital levers. How these levers work together to create a consistent experience for the customer depends on the ability of the organizational infrastructure to integrate them into a seamless experience for the customer.

Routines

If the organization wants to embrace the technologies that make digital marketing possible, then it needs to consider how its routines can enable the organization to embrace these technologies. Routines include all the daily behavior in a business, such as the processes, policies, and procedures that impact how information is collected and communicated. The organization’s routines affect how it connects the different pieces that constitute digital marketing. Routines also determine who responds to customer queries, when they respond, and how they do so. To get an idea of what needs to be done to become a digitally aligned organization, the organization needs to ask an important question: how do we change our routines so that we can embrace digital technologies?

Culture

In business, culture refers to patterns of behavior that can be observed within an organization. The culture within an organization determines how the organization perceives itself and how it interprets what happens around it. How the relationships between people inside and outside an organization are managed depends on the organizational culture. This culture also determines that way employees behave and the way customers think about and perceive the brand. While routines are the formal rules and processes that employees follow in situations that occur often, culture helps guide employees’ choices in infrequent and unique situations where they need to use judgment.

For example, in a digital context, a customer-first culture or an innovation-first culture can help employees figure out how to represent themselves, their products, and their organization to customers in the context of social media or in customer service settings, when faced with non-routine situations. With a customer-first culture, the instinct would be to solve the customer’s problem, rather than sticking to some company rule.

Applying The PARC Framework

With a idea of the elements involved in thinking about organizing a company around the customer journey, consider the types fo questions an organization would need to ask as it thinks about its transformation goals.

Conclusion

Even though the PARC elements are separate concepts, they are all interlinked. For instance, the people and routine in an organization are a result of the organization’s culture. On the other hand, the architecture of the organization affects the way people behave and the routines they form; this becomes the culture of the organization. Thinking about the organization’s digital strategy should involve looking at what your organization thinks about these PARC elements and how to use them together to organize around the customer journey.

Author

Ysobel Rose, Digital Strategy, Yale School of Management Executive Education, 2020.