FROM OUR CEO

Restructuring Does Not Remove Silos! People Do!

February 23rd, 2023 | From our CEO

Many companies experiment with new organizational structures to gain more influence and impact from each customer engagement.  MyCustomer reports that 55% of participants in a recent survey said that organisational silos were one of their biggest obstacles in 2022, and 32% said they had experimented with company structure to grow more customer centricity.

Leading Companies Restructure in the Name of Silo-Busting

Companies like McDonald’s, General Motors and Volkswagen reorganised parts of their business in the name of customer centricity. McDonald’s as an example pulled its global marketing, global development and restaurant solutions, data analytics and digital customer engagement departments together as a CX team.

Silo-Busting is about Connecting People. Not Drawing Lines and Boxes

Restructuring might be the go-to solution for many organizations but drawing new boxes and lines in an org chart will not de-silo your organization and create customer centricity. People working with people will. Which is why silo-busting must focus on connecting people. Also outside your own organizations.

To make your company customer centric you need your customers to join you as partners in an ecosystem built on trust. An ecosystem, where you collaborate and innovate seamlessly together.  Where fluid internal collaboration and knowledge-sharing benefits all parties. Where you connect seamlessly across information providers, influencers, and decision makers in the ecosystem, and make sure to circumvent potential gate keepers and blockers.

Silobusting Your Ecosystem is the Future of Customer Centricity

This was already envisioned by visionaries like Hemerson Paes of Roche in a 2021 interview with Hilton Barbour:

When I think about how we’re identifying and leveraging those internal connectors to accelerate change, my hope is that, in time, we’ll be able to do that externally too. Find the connectors across the healthcare ecosystem, the one’s that can really move things forward, and get them working with our connectors. That’s the dream. We do that and, maybe, I can consider we’re at the finish line.

To Bust Silos, Get your House in Order

Since then, Innovisor has done exactly that. Delivered evidence on how companies connect and collaborate with their clients in an ecosystem, showed them the change blockers for progressing customer centricity and how to mitigate them by orchestrating internal and external collaboration. Connecting the right people to each other on meaningful purposes.

The first step in the process is to get your ‘house in order’. Understanding who is connected to whom and how. Sadly, this is the most ignored step as organizations de-silo in the name of customer centricity.