• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, December 11, 2001

According to an Accenture study conducted to gauge business leaders’ outlooks on 2002, 91 percent of executives said a greater focus on customer service and building customer loyalty is critically important for weathering the economic downturn as well as strategically positioning for its eventual upswing.

According to the survey, thirty-eight percent of the executives surveyed in Fortune 1000 firms say CRM is their first choice for a top business strategy or technology for 2002. 26 percent placed new product development first, 17 percent picked enterprise resource management, and 15 percent supply chain management.

David B. Rich, Accenture, managing partner, says "The challenge is to take their (companies interviewed) investment in CRM to the next level by collecting customer data and then using this insight to make interactions across all touch points more efficient, to build loyalty and to generate revenue lift."

In addition to focusing more on customers, another priority for executives in the coming year will be outsourcing non-core functions. According to the survey, 27 percent will continue to outsource non-core functions and an additional 28 percent say they will consider additional outsourcing alternatives. Further, 17 percent say they are likely to explore outsourcing.

The survey provides some good news regarding layoffs. When asked if they see workforce reductions being much of a factor in 2002, more than half (59%) of the executives say that they expect to maintain current or near-current staffing levels. More than a third (39%) anticipate a reduction of less than five percent of their workforce and a fifth (20%) of all surveyed anticipate no layoffs at all in 2002. Moreover, almost two-thirds (62%) of executives say their company is likely to recruit new employees to balance short-term results and prepare for a market upswing.

Read more here.