Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel opened the event in Davos with emphasizing the urge for Europe to regain global trust and compete effectively on the world stage by reduce state debt and creating harmoniously functioning political structures. As she stated: “What we don’t want is that we promise something that we can’t deliver”. If there’s one word that sums up the mood at the WEF this week, it’s uncertainty.

In below video Accenture Executive Chairman ‘William D. Green’ discussed insights from several panel discussions on how technology drives growth and opportunity and on the importance of building talent and competitiveness.

Growth in Emerging Markets
One of the most discussed topics this year was the search for growth in emerging high-growth markets. The search for growth opportunities in emerging economies is no longer a matter of choice; it has become a necessity. In the current global economic environment many companies are renewing their interest in emerging economies as a springboard for their next phase of growth. The landscape of high growth consumer markets is changing fast. Household incomes in emerging economies will jump by more than US$8.5 trillion between 2010 and 2020—nearly 60 percent of the global increase over this period. As these incomes grow, so will consumption and demand.

During the event Accenture published it’s new research Fast forward to Growth involving the opinions of almost 600 executives from both emerging and mature economies. This research shows that although the vast majority of business leaders are focused on emerging markets to provide growth, forty percent of executives are not confident that their organizations possess the capabilities to fully grasp opportunities in emerging economies or believe their companies must accelerate their efforts to build share in these markets.

For the past 16 years, Accenture has worked closely with the World Economic Forum and the other strategic partner organizations to advance the Forum’s goal of driving positive change and improving the state of the world. Please visit Accenture Davos 2012: The Inside Story for more researches published during Davos 2012.

Tomorrow marks the kick-off of the 42nd edition of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting which will take place January 25-29 in Davos, Switzerland under the theme The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models.

Over 2,600 top officials from leading private-sector companies, governments, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions will gather to discuss the increasingly complex, interdependent and fast-paced era we live in whereby leaders return to their core purpose of defining what the future should look like, aligning stakeholders around that vision and inspiring their institutions to realize that vision. Ahead of the event Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme outlines 3 trends that are driving this global transformation.

Like last year, Accenture Chairman Bill Green was once again invited to share his vision and opinions and will moderate a panel session entitled A Smart Growth Solution that examines how technological advances drive economic growth and employment.

Accenture has an extensive program lined up for this week including the launch of a extensive research report from the Accenture Institute on High Performance on the importance of grasping opportunities in high-growth markets. Additionally, Accenture conducts year-round joint research with the World Economic Forum and this year was awarded a record number of four projects. During Davos, the project teams will share the latest results from these projects on the topics of Green Growth Partnerships, Driving Sustainable Consumption, New Energy Architecture and Supply Chain and Transport Risk.

I’ll discuss the key take-aways of this year’s WEF in my next post which will be published on Monday January 30. To read last year’s report, please read Mark Foster’s notes from Davos.

Accenture’s 2012 survey of more than 10,000 consumers across 10 countries shows consumers are making their networked lives more robust. They are connecting in more than one way and on multiple devices, consuming more content, and doing it all on the go. Specifically, this research has identified 5 trends for manufacturers and service providers to consider as consumers strive to be always connected. Below I will discuss three trends of these trends in more detail.

Smart and Mobile
Consumers are adopting mobile technology so rapidly that the mobility trend is in hyperdrive. While consumers still have strong ownership and usage of desktop or laptop computers (90 percent own them), purchase intentions for computers are slowly declining. At the same time, smartphone and tablet PC ownership are rising steeply. In fact, in the past 12 months, the percentage point increase in smartphone and tablet PC purchases almost equals the purchase decrease of computers and mobile feature phones.

Intentions to purchase tablets in the next 12 months have doubled from last year—the largest relative gain among the 19 technologies surveyed. Interestingly, as consumers buy highly mobile tablets, they increasingly view their laptop PC as a more stationary device.

Low Level of Engagement
Accenture recently surveyed executives at more than 200 companies to get insights in their social media attitudes and actions. The research revealed that 65 percent of survey respondents considered social media an “extremely important” or “very important” channel and only one in six (17 percent) of executives perceived social media as not very important or not important at all.

In addition to generally appreciating the importance of social media, B2B companies recognized that social media efforts should be driven by “proactive” motivations. More than half of all respondents cited improving customer engagement, enhancing the company’s brand and creating new revenue opportunities as prime motivators for launching a social media program.

Surprisingly, the acknowledgement of general importance stands in stark contrast to the low level of action and investment in this area. According to the research results, only 8 percent of B2B companies are heavily leveraging social media today. On the other hand, more than 25 percent are engaged only slightly or not at all.

From Vision to Reality
Successful social media programs share two important characteristics: 1) They are supported by executives across their respective organizations and 2) they are shaped by a thoughtful examination of what is needed to derive social media’s true value.

The most important factor in creating a successful and effective social media program involves developing a
robust strategy that aligns to and supports larger business objectives. Equally important is the ability of an organization to position social media as a centerpiece of a holistic customer strategy. By optimizing the use of social media and making it part of multichannel customer engagement strategies, companies encourage customers, business partners and other key stakeholders to participate in the company’s day-to-day business operations.

But, there are a number of reasons why B2B companies fail to successfully embrace the power of social media. Topping the list of barriers are the perceived challenges and needs for new tools and technologies, skill development and internal collaboration. Additionally, the research suggests that the lack of companies’ engagement is linked to the lack of confidence they have in making the right investment decisions to achieve their objectives. Executives understand the critical role that social media can play in organizational success. To a certain degree, they have identified the goals they would like their social media programs to address. Yet, many don’t know how to proceed. As a result, their lack of confidence translates into a lack of action.

Although B2B companies generally agree that social media is an important mechanism to bolster interactions, customer loyalty, revenues and brand reputation; few are using social media as a centerpiece of their customer strategy. To bridge the gap between confidence and action, companies need to ensure their social media initiatives align to larger business objectives. They also need to position social media as a cornerstone of a robust customer strategy that pursues opportunities in a variety of areas—from marketing, sales and service to partner collaboration and offering innovation to new areas such as supply chain, procurement and shared services.

To claim the potential value that social media can deliver, it is time to take the necessary steps to capitalize on the promises and overcome the challenges of this powerful medium.

For more information, please read the full research: http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/insight-making-social-media-pay.aspx

With clear headlines and “bold colors”, the campaign focuses on results-focused case studies featuring clients, which are being leveraged across a variety of marketing channels, including advertising. Prominent among these case studies, is Anglo-Dutch company Unilever, focusing on how Accenture helped the global consumer goods company to leverage technology to simplify, standardize and unify business processes across more than 100 countries — resulting in €1 billion in savings for Unilever.

In addition to leveraging engaging imagery, clever copy and a bold color palette, the new brand campaign features the Accenture symbol — “>” — which has been part of the company’s logo for more than 10 years. The campaign includes print ads, posters in 73 airports in 35 countries, outdoor ads, digital ads, social media and video clips of case studies. Images from the ads will also be displayed in 200 Accenture offices around the world.

For more information and visuals, please visit the advertising landing page on Accenture.nl.

Please help in the completion of the research by completing the survey: tinyurl.com/crossmediambathesis.

Transformation of engagement
When Howard Schultz returned to the CEO position at Starbucks in 2008, he stated rebuilding trust with the customers was the main priority for the company. At the basis of his approach: social media. “It has become paramount that brands understand that trust isn’t something you build through traditional marketing,” Schultz said. “You do that through integrating social and digital media. It is a science – as well as an art – to understand how to do this in a way that is authentic and genuine, and not just marketing. Because if it’s just marketing, (consumers) will see right through it.”

In recent years, social media has gone past the hype and became mainstream. In the U.S. for example, social networks and blogs now reach close to 80% of active internet users and represent nearly a quarter of total time spend online. Other countries follow closely, with users joining either local heroes and/or the global giants. But social media not only connects people with each other, but also with places they go, media they watch and items they like and buy. This phenomenon has great implications for business. As everybody and everything is connected and exchanges information real-time, organizations get flattened and leadership becomes more transparent. But arguably the biggest impact is that it has changed the old way of doing business forever.

The changes marketers face in the digital era are not incremental but fundamental. Social media brings a transformation to how consumers engage with brands, due to reach, speed and interactivity of digital touch points. In his book Building strong brands, Aaker (1996) asks the hypothetical question What if the Brand Spoke to You?. As people start connecting with brands and vice versa, and brand communities are formed, the brand is viewed as a contributing relationship partner with regard to the consumer. Here, the brand is considered an active member of the relationship through the activities of the manager that administrates it, rather than as a passive object. By being an active participant, the brand’s personality traits emerge, which should be in line with the intended brand personality the brand owner seeks to portray through all communications.

Research on Social Media and Brand Personality
Although the social media movement is a dominating subject nowadays on renowned websites and blogs as Harvard Business Review and BusinessWeek, the volume of academic research and articles is much more limited. Therefore, I started my MBA thesis research (in conjunction with VU University Amsterdam and Lemniscaat School of Management) investigating “the relation between contact with brands on social network sites (SNS) and the effect on perceived brand personality and on behavioral changes”. This can be summarized as in below conceptual model:

The end result will be a model which gives a clearer view on the effect of brand owners’ actions on social network sites, the perceived brand personality and ultimately consumer behavioral changes. An important part in the completion of this research is the survey contained several questions about your personal experiences with brands on social media. If you can find 6 minutes of your time, please complete the survey: tinyurl.com/crossmediambathesis. After completion, I will share and discuss the key findings and tested model in a new blog post.

Customer experience management is emerging as a critical component of success in business-to-business (B2B) industries. Despite its importance, customer experience management is just emerging as a formal program in most B2B companies. In fact, recent research reveals that half of B2B firms’ top executives say customer experience management is a competitive differentiator and influences major decision-making. The same research reports that just 28 percent of B2B executives base strategic decisions on customer experience or customer lifetime value. And, for many companies, investment in customer experience management is minimal—about half (48 percent) of B2B firms invest less than one percent of annual revenue in customer experience management.

Customers’ expectations

Blueprint sample

Accenture’s consumer research conducted in 2010 highlighted that the bar for acceptable service performance continues to rise. The expectations regarding customer service among consumers globally are higher compared with just 12 months ago and considerably higher than five years ago. For the first year since Accenture began its annual consumer research, customer service became the top reason (over price) that consumers chose a new provider.

So why haven’t companies tailored and optimized service to meet the needs and value of customers? It is difficult to know who should get what service treatment because many companies cannot determine the value of different customers now and in the future. Even if a company knows the current and future value of its customers, it can be expensive, complex and challenging to create tailored service levels for different customer segments. In most organizations, service is an afterthought.

Customer wants and needs become the footprint from which to build a differentiated experience strategy and channel-specific service capabilities. From a detailed perspective, the analysis identifies why customers want to interact and what they intend to do at those interaction points across each portion of the lifecycle. Then it maps how the customer wants to interact against how the company operationalizes to serve those intention.

Customer Experience Blueprint

Customers' perception

Based on customer needs and intentions within a given segment, the final step is to determine how the company should provide the experience. A business-to-business “customer experience blueprint” can lay the foundation for such differentiated treatment by illuminating where premium service opportunities exist and how to capitalize on these opportunities while maintaining an acceptable overall cost to serve.

The blueprint can drive the appropriate customer segments and service interactions to less-expensive interaction channels such as online self-service. In addition, the strategy can simplify the number of customer entry points, which also can boost customer satisfaction by easing navigation, but also can reduce maintenance and support cost for the business.

In an era where B2B service is becoming a significant differentiator and source of customer acquisition and retention, companies are compelled to create and implement a global customer experience blueprint that will further their pursuit of high performance. Without a service experience design to specifically enhance the brand, customer interactions frequently result in a customer experience that negatively reflects on the company and its brand.

For more information about the Customer Experience Blueprint, please read our report: “The B2B Customer Experience Blueprint: Reaping the Benefits of a Tailored Customer Experience”.

According to Accenture’s comprehensive research over 1,000 executives in 12 countries, most companies are still hesitant to believe in a full-scale recovery and operate in a position of strength from a cash standpoint. The research provided us various key findings including that price optimization is one of the three most important strategic priorities in the past 18 months for seven in 10 companies:

• Most companies are planning for growth, but that growth is likely to be modest.
• When seeking to drive competitive advantage and boosting revenue, companies use three of the most popularly levers for driving competitive advantage: service, innovation and pricing. Price optimization was one of the three most important strategic priorities in the past 18 months for seven in 10 companies in our survey.
• When it comes to pricing, companies tend to most frequently use actions by competitors and the balance between supply and demand as inputs in setting price. Comparatively fewer consider value-based and cost-plus strategies.
• Companies face a wide range of challenges in optimizing pricing, including sales execution, inadequate pricing analytics, unclear pricing strategy, inadequate decision support/analytics, and governance and accountability incentives.
• In most companies, cost-reduction efforts are viewed as having been a qualified success. Despite the success of companies in reducing costs, the focus on cost likely will continue in the foreseeable future. In the past 18 months, 82 percent of executives globally said their company has undertaken a significant effort to reduce costs, and these efforts were seen as largely effective in creating sustained cost reduction by the vast majority of executives.
• Companies believe there are still opportunities to capture in cost reduction and, thus, more cost cutting is planned for the next six months; with strategic sourcing and enterprise rationalization being the most popular cost management actions).

There’s no question that price is a leading competitive lever, but raising prices in the current environment will not boost sales, nor will dropping prices improve margins. Similarly, reducing costs eventually can have a deleterious effect on a company’s ability to support growth initiatives. As growth comes back onto the agenda, a more integrated approach that balances cost and price according to market segment is needed in the quest for high performance. Companies that are best positioned to capitalize on the growth opportunities today are those that use insights from the demand side to drive appropriate cost reduction efforts on the supply side. These enterprises will be the ones setting the agenda for competitive differentiation, profitable growth and, ultimately, high performance in a volatile world.

The required investment for bridging the gap between the future electricity needs and our ability to meet these needs are up to EUR 3 bln over the next four decades. This is essentially due to the country-specific approach of selecting energy sources and power generation. The relative autonomy of the EU member states has led some critics to question whether market liberalization is still the preferred method to achieve our energy goals. This question, however, ignores one key aspect: market operations are indeed crucial, but can only bring results if it is widely supported on a European level.

Energy security
EU liberalization has mixed results in terms of sustainability objectives, competitiveness and energy security. Europe is on track to achieving the 2020 targets for emission reductions and renewable energy. A more competitive market yielded efficiency and the proportion of ’old’ energy suppliers has fallen to less than one third. On the other hand, only 8% of consumers switched energy suppliers, compared to 20% who have switched from telecom providers or insurers. Also, the liberalization is proven powerless when it comes to lowering consumer prices as a result of fuel decisions.

Competitiveness has depleted the capacity reserves, resulting in a country like the United Kingdom that is below the level needed to deal with fluctuations in consumption. Admittedly, Spain and Italy have increased their energy security, but at huge costs. On average, the dependence on imports of primary energy has increased in EU countries.

Investments
Driven by organic growth and for example the emergence of electric cars -compared to the levels of today- the energy capacity has to be increased with 60% to meet demands in 2050. This has to be realized with stricter emission requirements and with less energy from fossil fuels. Despite the German and Italian decisions, nuclear energy will remain a part of the mix. Europe is facing two expensive options: maintaining the current share of nuclear energy of 30% and go for a 40% share of renewable energy. The other option is a reduction in the share of nuclear power to 20%, which requires an increase in renewable energy to 60% by 2050. Both scenarios imply that the EU needs an estimated EUR 410 billion investment in nuclear power plants and EUR 1.4 bln in renewable energy.

In total, above options for new capacity and replacement of obsolete plants will cost Europe for option 1: EUR 1.75 bln and for option 2: EUR 2.3 bln. And that does not include the additional costs for necessary backup energy, smart grids and transmission networks.

Change is required
It is obvious that all investors need stable incentives and mechanisms to minimize the fluctuation of returns. Indeed, the technical immaturity and the large number of irregularities in the energy sector require a change in the way we plan and support renewable energy. Success will largely depend on whether the market forces continue to do their  job or that we intervene at European level to improve market efficiencies.

In recent years, taxpayers have supported a disproportionate expansion of solar energy in Germany, while Spanish citizens had to pay for investments in large wind projects that may have been more efficient in Great Britain. When these imbalances continue to exist on a regional level, they can result in wasted capacity, greater dependence on gas imports and the need for backup power to compensate the fluctuating wind and solar power.

International mechanisms are required
It is about time that our power generation is defined on a rational EU-level by using logic, based on geo climate information. This needs to be done with the backup of the transnational networks. They support the regional markets by dealing with trading surplus energy, capacity shortages and disruptions. Only when we have realized that, will we be able to optimally use the energy we generate, bring back the need for backup fossil fuel and improve the viability of local investments.

This requires the EU to determine the capacity requirements by region in terms of renewable energy, back up energy and interconnections. Therefore international mechanisms are needed, to ensure that risks and rewards of cross-border investments are aligned so that investors are fairly compensated. And if the EU minimizes the emerged local distortions in several countries, they must also play a role in the standardization of indirect incentives such as emission lines and direct performance incentives like feed-in tariffs.

In short: Europe-wide coordination of our energy, capacity planning and incentives can only be successful if players in the private sector open themselves up for greater integration with business colleagues and competitors. Greater EU intervention does not mean that market forces should withdraw, but that it can be successful with an effective framework.

According to the Accenture Marketing Executive Survey 2011, nearly eight in 10 senior marketing executives noted growing profitably was most important to their current marketing strategy. To support this renewed focus on growth, improving customer retention loyalty was cited as the most important business issue to address by 79 percent of marketing executives. The most important key aspect of this transformation is a heightened focus on building customer-centric loyalty in a rapidly changing consumer context.

Changing playing field: Is consumer loyalty truly a relic of a past era?
Marketing has a greater role than ever when it comes to returning companies to profitable growth—and the key will be developing a new, nimble and customer-centric approach. With fewer than 50 percent of consumers declared themselves to “feel loyal” to the brands they purchase, Marketing executives acknowledge the fact that they are increasingly challenged by major changes in their customer bases. The economic downturn significantly altered customers’ overall purchase behavior and what they want and expect from (their) providers, especially in terms of product quality, more value for their money and customer service.

Today’s customers are generally better informed, less influenced by conventional brands, and more likely to assess brands based on their own experience or the experience of their acquaintances. Customers are also increasingly aware of their power, as well as their value, and are not shy about exercising this power.

To earn and keep customer loyalty, many companies have been developing loyalty programs that offer specific benefits based on how often or how much customers do business with the company. In the current context however, it is critical for companies to transform customer insights into innovative propositions and relevant customer experiences in order to solidify loyalty and engagement along the entire life cycle. To effectively drive innovation, companies need to establish the structure, processes, people, accountability and systems that enable them to profitably translate customer insights into products, services and experiences that inspire loyalty.

Building customer loyalty, trust and engagement
To become more agile, analytical, relevant and consistent, 2 key elements of building customer loyalty and trust needs to be delivered: Innovation and Experience.

Offering innovation is a key element of building customer loyalty and trust. The vast majority (89 percent) among executives rate innovation as equally (or more important than) other initiatives to help sustain customer loyalty and position their companies for future success. To effectively drive innovation, companies need to establish the structure, processes, people, accountability and systems that enable them to profitably translate customer insights into products, services and experiences that inspire loyalty. On the other side, delivering highly relevant experiences consistently—across multiple channels—is the essence of customer centricity and engagement. It is about ensuring delivery of the experience that was initially promised to consumers along all touch points and interactions, leveraging deep analytics and insights.

Like never before, marketing executives are in a unique position to lead the growth agenda for their companies. Relevant innovation and customer engagement are the key. By creating compelling new offers and enabling differentiated experiences, your company can strengthen loyalty and trust with existing customers and engage new ones.

For more information about Customer-Centric Loyalty, please read our recently published report.