Don Peppers

Podium Intro

This keynote presentation is based on the thinking in two books by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. Enterprise One to One: Competing in the Interactive Age was published by Currency/Doubleday in January, 1997. Tom Peters named their first book, The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (Currency/Doubleday 1993) as his choice for "book of the year," calling it a "revolutionary prescription for putting customers first that makes my 'close to the customer' axiom from In Search of Excellence pale by comparison." Inc. Magazine's editor-in-chief called it "one of the two or three most important business books ever written," and Business Week called it "one of the bibles of the new marketing." The basic theme of this presentation is that computer technology has made it possible for businesses to compete in a totally different way -- a way that integrates the use of customer databases, interactivity, and mass customization. These three capabilities, taken together, enable a business to create a "feedback loop" between the individual needs of a particular customer and the actual output of the enterprise. This allows a business to increase customer loyalty, improve unit margins, and increase customer satisfaction at the same time. By competing in this way a company can halt or even reverse the "commoditization" trend that threatens its business. On one level, the presentation explores the pace and direction of technological progress, reviewing in nontechnical terms the kinds of capabilities that are already available to marketers. But on another, more important level, the presentation proposes and explains a logical, theoretical basis for understanding and utilizing this totally new competitive dynamic -- a dynamic that has significant implications not just for marketing, but for customer service, manufacturing, distribution, and even the enterprise's organizational structure. The ultimate measure of success, in this new competitive system, is not market share but share of customer, one customer at a time.