March - 2014 - issue > CXO View Point

THE AGE OF THE CUSTOMER RESHAPES TECH SPENDING PATTERNS IN INDIA

Manish Bahl

Vice President, Country Manager-Forrester Research India

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Forward

Forrester Research Inc. (NASDAQ: FORR) is a global research and advisory firm serving professionals in 13 key roles across three distinct client segments. The firm has a current market cap of $715.45 million.

Coupled with the current economic trends in India, the increasing demands and expectations of digital customers are redefining the way business is done. Forrester believes that three trends warrant special attention from Indian CIOs looking to transform the role of technology in their firms.

The age of the customer is forcing firms to redefine customer engagement strategies: Digitally empowered customers are forcing firms to redefine their engagement models to survive in the age of the customer, which Forrester defines as:

A 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers.

Indian CIOs' top business priority is to address the rising expectations of customers and improve customer satisfaction; 87 percent of those we surveyed consider it a high or critical priority. Lowering the firm's overall operating costs is much further down the list of priorities. This highlights the general shift in spending patterns at Indian firms, as improved customer centricity overrides lower operating costs. Business leaders want to leverage technology to better engage digitally enabled constituents, fueling a fundamental shift in the way firms interact with customers. Targeting the customer experience requires CIOs' organizations to radically shift focus. CIOs must alter governance processes, job descriptions, IT performance metrics, and even the technology management organization's culture.