Jan Ropponen

Revenue Growth Platform

We used to live in a product-centric world, where companies were built in siloes to effectively pump out products in a transactional fashion. Companies did not need to be so connected to customers to succeed. We have now moved into a service-oriented world, because customers demand results and outcomes, instead of products. Expectations towards companies have increased and products aren't any longer the only element considered when buyers make their decisions. According to a study, buyers are 5.2 times more likely to purchase from companies with a great customer experience. We truly live in a time where customer-centric companies flourish, a time which Forrester calls "The Age of the Customer." To succeed in this new world, companies need to have an increased focus on the whole customer lifecycle and they need to become more connected with customers in all stages of the journey. This means that both how the organization and technology are set up need to change, to be able to deliver a differentiated experience. To deliver on this differentiated experience, successful organizations are built with platform thinking, where roles, processes and technology steer customers as predictably as a factory line creates high-quality products 99.9% of the time. How do you build a B2B organization that is connected to customers and also predictable and scalable? To answer this question, we dive into these topics in this book: How are services and software fueling growth for B2B companies? What are new roles and responsibilities in a modern organization? How should marketing and sales be aligned? What is the technology that is needed? What is the role of customer support and customer success? What can and should be automated and what still needs humans? What can small agile companies teach larger organizations?