One of thet greatest barriers to success in terms of leveraging customer intelligence is structural. Too often, companies organize to simply sell more products instead of enhancing customer growth and profitability. But there are reasons to believe change is on the horizon.

Corporate bellwether General Electric has just taken a step in the "customer- focused" direction by reorganizing around industries to reach its next level of growth. GE Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt stated: "This change allows us to leverage our exceptionally deep leadership team to accelerate growth and improve productivity."

As part of the move, GE will consolidate 11 divisions into six businesses: infrastructure, industrial, commercial financial services, NBC Universal, health care and consumer finance. While the decision is certained to reduce operational costs and rendundancies, it also lays the groundwork for new approaches to customer management.

As opposed to managing the client based on product, the restructuring potentiallly makes it easier for GE to mine and manage customer information in ways that help it expand its existing customer relationships. The focus is no longer the product, but rather, the customer's industry. Considering GE's influence on business in general, it will be interesting to see which companies follow suit and begin taking steps in this direction -- organizing around their customers as opposed to the products and business lines.