Forrester: Customer Engagement Agencies, Report Q4 2012
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Transcript of Forrester: Customer Engagement Agencies, Report Q4 2012
Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, mA 02140 UsA
Tel: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.forrester.com
The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012by Fatemeh Khatibloo, november 19, 2012
FOR: Customer Intelligence Professionals
key TakeaWays
Customer engagement agencies are evolving From Two Legacy ModelsCEAs, in their evolution from database MSPs and digital/direct agencies, bring the best of the capabilities from their legacy models to their most strategic enterprise clients. Th e most mature of these agencies have made strides to strengthen their capabilities in areas like customer journey mapping and business strategy consulting.
The Cea Model Faces a Long Road ahead To Reach MaturityTh e agencies we evaluated are taking various approaches to acquiring the people, processes, and technology required to become leaders in the CEA landscape. However, fi nding the right talent and restructuring agency compensation, growth, and KPI models are proving especially challenging. As a result, these fi rms face a long road to maturity.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.
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Why Read This RepoRT
In Forrester’s 19-criteria evaluation of emerging customer engagement agencies (CEAs), we found that only OgilvyOne Worldwide has made a significant-enough shift in this segment of its business to be considered a Leader. Two clusters of Strong Performers, grouped loosely by legacy business models, have also emerged: Ansira, Epsilon, Havas Worldwide Digital, Precision Dialogue, Rapp, Rosetta, Targetbase, The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks, True Action, and Wunderman. Contenders Meredith Xcelerated Marketing and Quaero meanwhile bring unique capabilities to clients looking for a CEA-type partner within specific verticals.
Table Of Contents
Customer engagement agencies Connect Ci To The Brand
CEAs must Hone several Capabilities To meet Clients’ needs
Customer engagement agency evaluation overview
In An Emerging market, Vendors must meet Three Requirements
Evaluated Vendors Are Poised To Evolve The CEA Category
a Nascent Market Requires Further Work For Clear Leaders To emerge
Vendor profiles
leaders
strong Performers
Contenders
supplemental Material
notes & Resources
Forrester conducted executive interviews and case study evaluations, interviewed more than 20 client references, and conducted an online survey of more than 100 client companies during Q3 2012.
Related Research Documents
should Your Firm Work With A Customer Engagement Agency?may 10, 2012
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer engagement agencies, Q4 2012How 13 Vendors stack Up In An Emerging marketby Fatemeh Khatibloowith suresh Vittal, Dave Frankland, and Allison smith
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nOVEmbER 19, 2012
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 2
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
CUsToMeR eNGaGeMeNT aGeNCies CoNNeCT Ci To The BRaNd
CEAs help their clients marry data, analytics, marketing strategy, and customer experience to improve the organization’s profitability. Forrester defines CEAs as:
Agencies that focus on defining customer-oriented business strategies and mapping them to tactics and execution. They help clients maximize customer profitability and optimize customer experiences by applying data and analytics to every interaction.
CEAs focus on improving customer experiences, placing customers at the core of the business, and infusing customer intelligence (CI) and insights throughout the organization — beyond marketing and into areas like product development and operations planning. Organizations that work with CEAs look to them to:
■ Streamline their agency relationships. Clients tell us that they work with too many agencies to maximize efficiencies and ensure that everyone is working toward a common enterprisewide customer strategy. They look to their CEA to become the “hub of customer engagement efforts,” typically in one of two ways: 1) consolidating multiple agency relationships into one CEA with an expanded portfolio of capabilities, and 2) using the CEA to orchestrate and lead the other agencies the client works with, from public relations agencies to search engine optimization vendors.
■ Measure and optimize every customer’s value. A key mandate for CEAs is to help clients maximize customer value, which requires significant organizational shifts away from ubiquitous channel and line-of-business silos. CEAs, with their focus on data, measurement, and creating
“a single view” of the customer, can provide much-needed enterprise-level insights into how, when, where, and why consumers interact as well as the impact that each touchpoint has on the value of every customer relationship.
■ Inform strategy using customer intelligence and insights. In all but the most mature CI organizations, influencing business strategy beyond marketing is difficult. CEA strategy teams have deep and broad business management expertise, so they are able to 1) translate customer intelligence into practical and aspirational business objectives using business cases based on return on investment (ROI); 2) identify opportunities for product adjacencies, operational efficiencies, and organizational improvements; and 3) communicate these opportunities and objectives to the most senior leaders in the client organization.
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 3
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
Ceas Must hone several Capabilities To Meet Clients’ Needs
The nascent CEA landscape is emerging primarily from two sectors: digital/direct agencies and database marketing services providers (MSPs). Each vendor category brings a different set of strengths and weaknesses to the conversation — the agencies have stronger creative and cross-channel capabilities, while the MSPs deliver better technology and data strategies. But both groups must deepen their expertise in a few critical areas. They must:
■ Deliver management-consultancy-quality strategy. As CEAs evolve, they’ll need to supplement their existing strategy teams with individuals who can 1) manage business-line profit and loss, and 2) provide change management expertise. They will help client organizations meet the changing requirements of customer engagement, from key performance indicator and compensation planning to business process design. These business strategists must be part of the core client team, often embedded on-site, to deliver the kind of impact most often seen from firms like McKinsey and Accenture.
■ Develop customer-experience-agency-quality journey mapping skills. Customer journey mapping in CEAs today still tends to be a “bottom up” exercise. Their maps, while offering rich insight into the cadence and flow of marketing touchpoints, miss crucial experiential elements like product packaging and the quality of employee interactions at retail. CEAs need to augment their bench of customer experience/user experience professionals to bring a brand ecosystem lens to their contact-strategy-oriented journey maps.1
■ Increase their analytics expertise/staff and bring predictive analytics into every engagement. CI pros turn to firms like Buxton and Fractal Analytics for advanced analytics, because their agencies and MSPs typically don’t retain the same level of marketing and decision scientists. CEAs need to bolster their ability to deliver advanced techniques like causal modeling, spatial analysis, and entity analytics, especially when they are managing the client’s customer database in addition to delivering cross-channel strategy and execution.
CUsToMeR eNGaGeMeNT aGeNCy eVaLUaTioN oVeRVieW
To assess how well emerging CEAs meet the needs of a nascent but growing market, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of 13 agencies across a range of business, marketing, and technology criteria.
in an emerging Market, Vendors Must Meet Three Requirements
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a set of evaluation criteria and evaluated vendors against 19 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level buckets:
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 4
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
■ Current offering. Forrester’s criteria to assess the strength of a CEA’s offerings are weighted toward the enterprise customer. We evaluated each vendor against nine groups of criteria: business strategy, orchestration of customer engagement activities, technology integration, customer data strategies, customer metrics and measurement methodologies, analytics capabilities, cross-channel enablement and execution, cross-channel expertise, and customer journey mapping capabilities.
■ Strategy. We compared the strategies of each company in the context of Forrester’s forward-looking vision for strategically mature CI organizations to assess how each vendor is positioned for future success. We examined their market strategy, CEA vision, account management model, onboarding and change management strategy, pricing strategies, and customer satisfaction.
■ Market presence. To determine current market presence for our evaluation, we combined information about each vendor’s base of CEA-type engagements with the extent of revenues derived from those relationships.
evaluated Vendors are poised To evolve The Cea Category
Forrester invited more than 50 agencies that deliver cross-channel data-driven customer engagement strategy and services to provide us with details about their services. Thirteen of the submitting agencies met our selection criteria: Ansira, Epsilon, Havas Worldwide Digital (formerly Euro RSCG 4D), Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, OgilvyOne Worldwide, Precision Dialogue (formerly Metrics Marketing), Quaero, Rapp, Rosetta, Targetbase, The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks, True Action, and Wunderman. Each of these vendors has (see Figure 1):
■ Extensive cross-channel enablement capabilities. Vendors/agencies must exhibit a breadth of skills across digital, offline, and emerging channels. They must engage with both inbound and outbound channels and have experience managing customer-controlled channels like ratings and reviews, preference centers, and nonbranded social media. Finally, they must have marketing database hosting expertise.
■ Enterprise interest. Despite their varied capabilities, the agencies on this list find themselves competing against each other with increasing frequency. We selected the vendors that are frequently mentioned or inquired about by enterprises looking for a single agency to help them manage customer data, measure customer value, and build customer engagement strategies across channels.
■ Corporate revenues in excess of $50 million. Although cross-channel enterprise-level customer engagement accounts are not the sole revenue source for many vendors evaluated, Forrester reviewed firms that exhibit corporate sustainability, with more than $50 million in annual revenues.
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 5
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
This evaluation of CEAs is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage readers to view detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through the Forrester Wave™ Excel-based vendor comparison tool.
Figure 1 Evaluated Vendors: Vendor Information And Selection Criteria, Q4 2012
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
Vendor
Ansira
Epsilon
Havas Worldwide Digital
Meredith Xcelerated Marketing
OgilvyOne Worldwide
Precision Dialogue
Quaero
Rapp
Rosetta
Targetbase
The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks
True Action
Wunderman
Date evaluated
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Q3 2012
Evaluation criteria
Extensive cross-channel enablement capabilities. Vendors/agencies must exhibit a breadth of skills across digital, o�ine, and emerging channels. They must engage with both inbound and outbound channels and have experience managing customer-controlled channels like ratings and reviews, preference centers, and nonbranded social media. Finally, they must have marketing database hosting expertise.
Enterprise interest. Despite their varied capabilities, the agencies on this list �nd themselves competing against each other with increasing frequency. We selected the vendors that are frequently mentioned or inquired about by enterprises looking for a single agency to help them manage customer data, measure customer value, and build customer engagement strategies across channels.
Corporate revenues in excess of $50 million. Although cross-channel enterprise-level customer engagement accounts are not the sole revenue source for many vendors evaluated, Forrester reviewed �rms that exhibit corporate sustainability, with more than $50 million in annual revenues.
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 6
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
a NasCeNT MaRkeT ReQUiRes FURTheR WoRk FoR CLeaR LeadeRs To eMeRGe
As this is Forrester’s first evaluation of an emerging market, it’s not surprising that none of the evaluated vendors has fully realized Forrester’s vision of a world-class CEA yet. For CEAs to become the lead agencies for their enterprise clients, they must exhibit a breadth and depth of capabilities that compares with specialist providers in several categories. Interviews with nearly 30 reference clients and online surveys completed by more than 100 clients reveal that these agencies continue to have limited reach within client organizations (see Figure 2).
■ OgilvyOne is the current category Leader. Overall, OgilvyOne is the agency that’s closest to Forrester’s vision of a fully developed CEA, with a strong focus on developing business strategies, supported by change management, to drive customer engagement. These capabilities push it over the line from Strong Performer to Leader.
■ Ten of the 13 agencies evaluated are Strong Performers — in specific areas. Ansira, Havas Worldwide Digital, Precision Dialogue, Rosetta, The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks, and Wunderman are on the leading edge of the Strong Performers. They outperform their category peers in developing proactive business strategy and tend to have a slight advantage when it comes to cross-channel enablement and execution.
Epsilon, Rapp, Targetbase, and True Action, also Strong Performers, have a slight edge over their peers in data strategy and technology integration, but because they tend to be more tactical in nature, these criteria have slightly lower weighting in our standard evaluation.
■ MXM and Quaero are Contenders, with vertical-specific strengths. While Meredith Xcelerated Marketing (MXM) and Quaero lack some of the deep strategic and journey mapping mettle of their peers, they each make a compelling offering for certain clients. MXM is especially well positioned to help publishing and content-focused organizations succeed. Quaero, meanwhile, has developed strong expertise and proprietary solutions for the media and telecom industries.
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 7
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
Go online to download
the Forrester Wave tool
for more detailed product
evaluations, feature
comparisons, and
customizable rankings.
RiskyBets Contenders Leaders
StrongPerformers
StrategyWeak Strong
Currento�ering
Weak
Strong
Market presence
Full vendor participation
Ansira
Epsilon
Havas Digital
Meredith Xcelerated Marketing
OgilvyOne
Precision Dialogue
Quaero
Rapp
Rosetta
Targetbase
The Agency InsideTrue Action
Wunderman
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 8
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 (Cont.)
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
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CURRENT OFFERING Business strategy capabilities Orchestration of customer engagement activities Technology integration Customer data strategies Customer metrics and measurement methodologies Analytics capabilities Cross-channel enablement and execution Cross-channel expertise Customer journey mapping
STRATEGY CEA market strategy CEA vision Strategic account management Onboarding and change management CEA pricing strategy Customer satisfaction
MARKET PRESENCE Installed base CEA-derived revenues Key technology partners Other partners
2.982.00
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All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 9
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VeNdoR pRoFiLes
Leaders
■ OgilvyOne Worldwide. OgilvyOne is the sole Leader in the evaluation, primarily because the firm has successfully integrated a small handful of sister agencies into one division and leverages expertise across them seamlessly. The agency’s Fusion process underpins every CEA account, and the tools within that process are used across the agency to drive everything from strategy (business-challenge discovery and customer value calculators) to deliverables (briefs and journey maps). Clients point to its people, and their ability to think strategically at every level, as a core strength. The agency proactively incubates innovation around emerging channels and media as well as the opportunities those create for all of its clients
strong performers
■ Ansira. One of the few independently-held players in this evaluation, Ansira is a fast-growing boutique agency. The agency takes a holistic innovative approach to designing and deploying cross-channel customer engagement strategies and has an impressively long-term view of the tools and strategies its clients need to execute on its vision. Ansira’s digital work with some of its retail clients has resulted in several unique proprietary tools — like SocialStorefront — that stand out as best-of-breed. To stay competitive, Ansira needs to grow its bench of specialist expertise in areas like journey mapping and change management and ensure that it maintains the same level of quality as it scales.
■ Epsilon. Epsilon’s 2011 acquisition of Aspen Marketing Services was expected to bring a more deeply integrated service offering to clients on both sides of the house. While the technology and data integration has been largely successful — especially where clients leverage Epsilon’s loyalty offering — analytics and business strategy are still a work in progress. Some clients point to the need for more innovative thinking around emerging media and more focus on business strategies beyond marketing.
■ Havas Worldwide Digital. Until recently known as Euro RSCG 4D, Havas Worldwide Digital’s deep focus on using customer intelligence to drive experiences — not just transactions — is evident in two proprietary tools: its Customer Engagement Index and Customer Experience Mapping. The agency applies this thinking across a full breadth of channels, including those that are both nascent and consumer-controlled. However, like a few of its holding-company peers, the quality of the strategy (and subsequent execution) often depends on the quality and makeup of the account team.
■ Precision Dialogue. Until recently known as Metrics Marketing, this Ohio-based agency is a nicely integrated solution for clients looking for a midsize CEA. Clients praise the agency’s strategic thinking across marketing, operations, and customer management, which it supports
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with rigorous ROI-backed business rationale. As a smaller agency, however, Precision Dialogue will need to manage the growth of its CEA client base carefully to ensure that it can continue to deliver on these core strengths.
■ Rapp. Rapp, an agency within Omnicom’s Diversified Agency Services (DAS) group, is a well-rounded firm that shines when it takes on the role of customer engagement orchestrator — the agency that brings together the strategy and platforms to enable customer engagement across a client’s breadth of agencies. Accordingly, it is also one of the agencies with the strongest approaches to mapping the total customer journey ecosystem, including elements such as cultural trends and consumer-controlled media. As Rapp takes on this increasingly strategic role for CEA clients, however, it needs to be careful that basic blocking-and-tackling operations don’t fall through the cracks.
■ Rosetta. Rosetta, an independent brand within the Publicis Groupe, evolved from a legacy of marketing and analytics consulting. This is still evident in some of the agency’s core strength areas: creating holistic business strategies, managing technology integrations, and managing organizational change, from design to training. However, Rosetta seems to be increasing its laser focus on the interactive space, which could be a challenge for firms that are looking to integrate substantial offline customer engagement activities.
■ Targetbase. Targetbase is the data and customer measurement powerhouse within Omnicom’s DAS group. The agency evolved from its database marketing roots over the past several years to provide a full breadth of agency services and improved its cross-channel strategy and execution capabilities significantly. Clients say that Targetbase’s smaller size means that it’s more nimble than counterpart agencies and that they have significant access to agency executives. However, they also point to the agency’s need for more process orientation to improve technical delivery and project management.
■ The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks. The Agency Inside’s clients — especially those that it identifies as enterprise CEA engagements — benefit from a strong, well-integrated offering of cross-channel creative, strategy, and technology capabilities. Clients say that The Agency Inside is taking an increasingly proactive approach to delivering strategies that address operational business challenges, and we find that this is especially evident in the agency’s automotive business. However, as Harte-Hanks undergoes significant organizational changes, The Agency Inside needs to ensure that it can support its CEA clients’ data, analytics, and technology needs and prevent its non-CEA engagements from cannibalizing its capabilities.
■ True Action. True Action, a division of GSI Commerce’s Marketing Services group, is a full-service agency with a strong focus on digitally-minded retail clients. When it successfully integrates the solutions offered by its sister organizations, True Action delivers a unique blend of commerce, content, attribution, and digital deployment. The agency is also one of the few in the
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space that has formalized a risk-share model of compensation, which clients say leads to more transparency on both sides of the relationship. To continue its CEA growth curve, True Action will need to 1) gain more breadth in offline execution, and 2) execute on its integrated-services store more consistently.
■ Wunderman. Wunderman’s approach to CEA for enterprise clients is unique. The agency brings together the best-fit competencies from across its network — notably Blast Radius, KBM Group, MSC Software, and W3 — to function as an integrated team, under one client leader, and deliver strategy, data, analytics, and creative across a full spectrum of channels. When this team is operationally effective, the benefit to clients is tremendous. However, the network’s ability to scale this model is a challenge, and it needs to take a more standardized approach to how it can bring an integrated solution to non-enterprise clients.2
Contenders
■ Meredith Xcelerated Marketing. MXM, the agency arm of Meredith, provides a unique approach to CEA because of its focus on content creation. The agency tends to work with clients that heavily leverage original brand and editorial content to engage with their customers. It has some very innovative cross-channel capabilities for content creation and delivery. However, clients looking for a CEA with the technical chops to host a customer database, create transaction-oriented customer analytics, and provide business strategies that go beyond content may find MXM’s expertise lacking.
■ Quaero. Quaero, a division of CSG International, is different from the other providers in this Wave in two key ways. First, the agency’s legacy as a systems integrator means that it has some unique strengths to help clients ensure that the organization can successfully execute and deliver on its customer engagement initiatives, including areas like collections management and ad serving, where it has built connectors for existing telecom and media clients. Second, Quaero is the only agency in this evaluation that doesn’t retain any in-house creative services. On one hand, this makes the firm an attractive choice for clients that have internal creative teams or strong connections with smaller boutique creative shops. On the other hand, it limits the agency’s ability to control how its strategies are deployed.
sUppLeMeNTaL MaTeRiaL
online Resource
The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed offering evaluations and customizable rankings.
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 12
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
data sources Used in This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of four data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each agency:
■ Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation criteria.
■ Executive briefings. We asked vendors to present detailed case studies for at least two current CEA clients including: customer journey maps, advanced analytics work, creative deliverables, strategy deliverables, and structure of the account teams.
■ Customer online survey. To validate the vendor’s services and capabilities, Forrester conducted an online survey with at least eight of each agency’s current CEA clients.
■ Customer reference calls. To further refine the agency’s approach to business strategy, vision, and commitment to its CEA business, Forrester conducted reference calls with at least two of each agency’s current CEA clients.
The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have limited customer references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires, demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.
We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document — and then score the vendors based on a clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.
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The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 13
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited november 19, 2012
eNdNoTes1 To learn more about the customer experience approach to journey mapping, please see the June 22, 2011,
“The Customer Experience Ecosystem” report.
2 KBM Group actually manages its own subset of CEA clients, primarily in the healthcare sector. In these cases, KBM Group is providing strategy, analytics, data management, and execution under its own brand exclusively.
Forrester Research, Inc. (nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 17 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 29 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com. 80121
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