European Industries Customer Centricity Roadmap Stage - Business Process Management Aspect

This research compares customer-centric strategies against product-centric strategies as different dimensions of competition, from a need for a more purposeful and clear concept of customer centricity (CC). It aims to contribute to a general roadmap for CC, as one strategic management direction and to prevail over the key managerial challenges to achieve it. The goal of the paper is to examine current maturity in adopting CC to scrutinise business process management (BPM) - a key dimension of transformation in the CC roadmap. This paper uses deductive analysis to constitute an analytic theory and structure for evaluation then uses 18 case studies as an evaluation of the analytic theory. Evidence of movement on the customer-centric roadmap is found. BPM in European telecommunications, banking, utility, and retail sectors support the roadmap for CC from the process view, the process alignment and the process optimisation. However, the movement is partial and not flawless, as BPM has not been examined in terms of supporting many of the customer-centric dimensions. Companies have a need for clarity, feedback, and the tools to succeed in an increasingly competitive and demanding world which, in the years to come, may demand a customer-centric approach in order to compete. In parallel, the work theoretically contributes to the importance of the relationship between CC and BPM and provides the first data analysis of its intersection.