Companies intent on building customer value need to establish a dependable framework and processes for measuring customer profitability. While the cultural challenge of becoming a customer-focused (as opposed to a product- or transaction-focused) business certainly looms large, other challenges lie ahead, according to Jack Hafeli, VP and research director of Ventana Research's Customer Intelligence and Demand Chain Performance Management practice.

As he explains: "Most organizations encounter three common obstacles: difficulty in defining the 'customer'; problems in integrating customer-level data sources; and the tough challenge of establishing the component metrics needed to derive a useful, accepted customer profitability metric."

Hafeli offers an interesting roadmap for companies intent on driving performance gains based on enhanced management of and investment in customer relationships. "The execution of new strategies in any organization requires that people, processes, and technology be brought into alignment with the new objectives," as he sees it. "Building strategies on customer profitability is no different."