Our Projects
Reflecting the breadth of potential work described in our Approach, HCG can present multiple illustrations of successful project experience particulaly within Healthcare and Financial Services but also across a breadth of industries. Since any one project can have multiple categories of consulting work within them, we have called out the various consulting categories and associated projects separately to present that expertise and those experiences individually.
| Category | Project Description |
| CEM | CEM stands for "Customer Experience Management" or "Customer Engagement Management" depending on their context and usage. These are umbrella terms that describe the holistic set of disciplines across the breadth of the Customer Lifecycle and all channels to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty (Experience), and/or specifically change customer behaviors (Engagement). |
| Customer Process Management | While there is significant overlap with CEM which tends to focus upon the strategy of customer management, customer process management focuses on the customer lifecycle's operational aspects - specifically those managing the customer through the phases of attract, convert, service and extend. Thus processes such as client on boarding, customer due diligence (anti-money laundering, credit, other regulatory, etc), customer service, and retention are included in these types of projects. In addition other perspectives that bridge CEM and Lifecycle Management such as Lifetime Value of the Customer and Life Stages/Life Event marketing are considered in this category. |
| Market Research | All customer experience and customer engagement programs rest on a foundation of customer understanding. Thus market research plays an integral role. Typically taking the form of some type of segmentation, HCG has developed deep expertise in market research to include other research vehicles such as a focus group, survey, longitudinal research, and ethnographic research. Beyond the academic exercise of conducting the segmentation HCG works with his clients to operationalize the research into their daily business. Thus HCG brings expertise in developing practical application of segmentation to its clients in the form of developing usable personas, and incorporating those into the call center, the sales force, management planning and other relevant servicing aspects of business. |
| Market Entry | Projects that entail the introduction of a new product/service or entry into a new geography or customer segment fall in this category. Often these projects also combine with partnering or acquisition projects as a means to facilitate entry. |
| Product Management | Projects oriented around some or all of the stages of product lifecycle management. Stages include new product development, market introduction, product growth management, product portfolio management, and product retirement. |
| Salesforce Effectiveness | Projects oriented around the design of new customer acquisition as well as cross sell and upsell of existing customers. Typical projects move beyond strategy and include implementation around organizational change, process redesign, system/data enablement, and training. Projects also include building tighter integration with other channels to ensure maximum effectiveness. |
| Program Management | A typical requirement necessary to develop an effective customer experience or customer engagement capability is business transformation. Thus HCG provides significant expertise and experience in the area of large scale/enterprise program management to help clients make the new customer strategy a reality. |
| Revenue Growth | HCG understands revenue growth is a function of three factors: market share, share of wallet and retention. Market share is the result of growth strategies around two types acquisition plays: organic growth and purchased growth. Share of wallet, by HCG's definition, is really a measure of loyalty in that HCG defines loyalty as the
propensity of a customer population to buy additional products/services
or upgrade additional products/services with the company. HCG defines retention as the propensity of a customer population to stay with a company. While this is not a good measure of loyalty (the two terms are often confused) retention is however an extremely important component of growth and one too often missed. |
| eCommerce | While the Web is only one channel of many, HCG has found that the Web can serve as an important catalyst for the development of world-class customer experience programs that rely upon a network of fully integrated and coordinated channels. Thus HCG has developed uniquely deep expertise around eCommerce and Web to provide leadership in this regard. |
| Acquisition/ Merger | On occasion the process of developing the capabilities to support a new customer strategy entails the need to obtain some of those capabilities through acquisition. As a result HCG has developed expertise to support its clients in this regard in two areas: first, identifying and planning the merger strategy, and second, merger integration. The latter being the more important of the two as our experience is this is where the vast majority of all mergers/acquisitions fail |
| JV/Startup | On occasion the process of developing the capabilities to support a new strategy entails the need to obtain some of those capabilities through partnership -- such as in the form of a joint venture. HCG has developed expertise in this regard and has proven successful through the launch of companies which are currently publicly traded. Similar in many ways to new joint ventures, "startups" require some of the same early-stage architecture and planning. Furthermore both often require multi-stage, multi-partner buy-in for resources such as funding, operating assets, or client bases necessary for the venture's success. HCG also brings experience and expertise in setting up these networks. |
| IT/Data | All customer experience and customer engagement programs rest on a foundation of client understanding. Thus information technology and data are critical aspects of every one of these programs. Since data is the cornerstone of a successful customer experience HCG has developed expertise in helping to design the information technology and data architectures necessary to support the various functions working together to provide a world-class customer experience or customer engagement program. |