Let's face it—today, businesses and consumers are flooded with data. Data offers enormous opportunities to drive insight and customer satisfaction through hyper-personalized experiences. Yet our analysis shows that despite the billions spent on technology, customer satisfaction has only slightly increased over the past eight years. So what gives?
Existing technology and infrastructure fall short – for most
Many firms recognize the need to be customer-centric but rely on substandard systems, processes, and outdated ways of working with customer data to achieve this. They're missing out on a wealth of insights from non-traditional sources. Given the pace of technology change with agentic AI now in play, this needs to be addressed quickly because customer expectations will only accelerate. The risk for any enterprise is getting left behind.
But there's hope – and research to back it up.
That's why we are delighted to release the findings from our latest research, Beyond Customer Obsession: Engineering Data Mastery for What Comes Next. We set out to learn how effectively enterprises use customer data and surveyed over 300 U.S. companies in banking and financial services, healthcare, life sciences, insurance, and telecommunications. We learned what the most customer-centric companies do differently.
We found that 73% of companies were merely customer-responsive; they use their data on customers effectively, but only in marketing, sales, and service, while some others were even less effective with data usage.
So why should companies with the majority on the customer-centricity scale care more about their data? The companies at the top of the customer-centricity scale (what we call customer-obsessed and customer-clairvoyant companies) achieved 4x revenue growth compared to the others, which is a huge dividend. These companies do a few key things differently when managing their most important asset: data.
What enterprises are missing when it comes to data
Most enterprises gather lots of data but don't use it productively. What's missing is a solid data foundation.
A solid data foundation is essential for companies to use data to its full potential. The foundation helps establish data governance and unlock deeper insights. Moreover, our study confirms that more and better data matters and that productizing and sharing the data and insights across the organization impacts the bottom line (see our 4x figure above).
Generative AI is another missing piece of the data puzzle, and surprisingly, 78% of companies do not have the data foundation to support AI computing workloads. But these companies are missing out. This groundbreaking technology delivers time and cost reductions for companies that use it to transform their data - undoubtedly putting (and keeping) the customer-obsessed and –clairvoyant companies ahead.
Engineering beyond customer obsession with the right partners
The report details several vital steps organizations can take to become highly customer-centric. However, the experts enterprises trust to implement these changes are just as important as following these steps. Companies need data, analytics, and artificial intelligence experts to ensure they're covered every step of the way.
Virtusa's deep domain and engineering expertise allow us to be agile and build a team based on each enterprise's unique needs. The study conducted for our report confirms that the best companies drive revenue growth and improve efficiency by mastering their data.
Take the first step to becoming a customer-centric enterprise by reading the report.