In today's highly competitive marketplace, customer management should start long before an individual actually becomes a customer. Stories of customer mismanagement abound. Too many organizations fail to see that the customer management supply chain process is an opportunity for brand recognition and differentiation, market penetration, and customer retention.

Establishing a solid performance metric around customer management is crucial to creating an efficient customer-focused supply chain. Our approach to customer management excellence generates incremental value on a number of levels that could include:

• Reducing order administration and customer service costs
• Decreasing total service expenses while increasing customer satisfaction
• Improving customer service quality through customer segmentation
• Increasing market share through improved channel management