Customer Data Doesn’t Create Growth. Customer Understanding Does.
Companies have never had more customer data than they do today. They know what customers bought, when they bought, how much they spent and which campaigns generated the highest response rates. Yet despite unprecedented investments in CRM, customer data platforms and Artificial Intelligence, many organisations still struggle to identify their greatest growth opportunities. The reason is surprisingly simple. Data describes transactions. Customer understanding explains people. Sustainable growth begins not with collecting more data, but with developing a deeper understanding of customers than competitors do.
CRM: Billions Invested. Trillions Still Untapped.
More than 30 years ago, researchers such as Frederick Reichheld and W. Earl Sasser helped establish what would become one of the most influential management disciplines of our time: Customer Relationship Management.
Customer Experience in B2B Sales: Why It Has Become a Growth Lever
Customer Experience is becoming a key competitive factor in B2B. Companies that successfully combine digital and personal customer interactions can significantly improve customer loyalty, efficiency, and revenue growth.
Travel 2026: Why Country-Hopping Is Redefining Business Models
The travel industry is not facing another evolutionary step in 2026 — it is facing a structural paradigm shift. As traditional, destination-centered vacation models lose their differentiation power, a new guiding principle is emerging: country-hopping as the mainstream.
Strategy in Uncertainty & Volatility
Volatility is no longer an exceptional condition — it is a structural reality. And those who use it as a justification for abandoning strategic clarity lose both orientation and responsiveness.
Leadership – a forgotten topic?
It is indisputable that leadership is the second top skill – next to strategy – when trying to describe successful (top) managers. It is therefore most surprising that, especially in times of disruptive changes, remarkably few new leadership strategies are discussed and published.
E-Commerce – small and medium-sized enterprises
The medium-sized sector is the engine of the German economy. Small and medium-sized trading companies (SMEs) with up to 250 employees and/or 50 million euros in revenue generate around a third of the turnover and employ well over half of the social security-insured employees in Germany.*
Local Heroes – in prime position for a lasting success story in retail
They still exist, those locally run specialty shops with one or very few branches, focusing strongly on either a purely brick-and-mortar or regional omni-channel market approach.
PRICING AS ONE OF THE VALUE DRIVERS FOR EBIT INCREASE
Adjusting the right levers in pricing can achieve an EBIT increase of 1 to 1.5 percentage points in a short time. This is demonstrated by numerous reference projects in the construction supply, medical, or retail industry.
Forward Focus: Key Marketing Themes Shaping 2024
The discipline of marketing has seemingly been in a perpetual phase of exploration and repositioning for decades. Despite many factors working in favor of marketing over the years, such as the measurability brought about by digitization and the acknowledged need for businesses to become more customer-centric (with “customer data is the new gold,” etc.), classical marketing disciplines have barely benefited from these developments.