Page 131 - MYM 2016

fig. 1: Mri Pro les of 2 businesses: high Performer (left) and low Performer (right)
MarketiNg strategY
(Brown & Brown, 2014).
e MRI tool uses a database of more than
200 businesses that range from low to high market alignment on these seven behavioral traits. It may tell you, for example, that your company’s ability
to monitor, understand and respond to its com- petitors’ strengths and weaknesses is in the 80th percentile (better than four- hs) of all companies in the benchmark database. is may be considered a relative strength whereas customer insight at the 50th percentile could be improved signi cantly by introducing behaviors and processes designed to improve the current customers’ experiences with the business. Such benchmarking has long been used to compare one company’s operational e - ciency to that of best-practice companies, but has rarely been used to compare value-creation activi- ties and risks.
What do high performers and low performers look like?
Figure 1 above shows an example of the MRI results of two real companies – one for a high performing business and the other for a low per- former. e more color re ects a stronger customer focus that drives better business performance. e low performing business (depicted on the right side of Figure 1) shows low benchmarked scores
on customer factors, being the 34th percentile on customer insight and 4th percentile on customer foresight, indicating signi cant risk on those fac- tors. Collaboration is good at the 60th percentile, but very low scores on the competitor factors, peripheral vision and strategic alignment indicate a business that is predominantly internally focused. It would have many more customer detractors than advocates. It would have no competitive resilience and would experience declining pro t margins and pro tability if le unchanged. Since a core part of this business’s strategy is to provide enhanced value for existing customers and create new value for new customers, it is at high risk of losing custom- ers and not having the capability of acquiring new ones pro tably. Its cultural capability is completely unaligned with its strategy for growing its busi- ness through new customers, and its likelihood of achieving its objectives is very low. Low scores on customer insight and foresight suggest it has ‘weak’ behaviors around understanding the needs of cur- rent and prospective customers.
What do the risks look like for this low performer?
e lowest customer culture risk position would be 100% on all seven cultural traits, that is, at the top of the database in strength on each factor.
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