On April 16th, 2021, Anni Ronkainen was the featured guest at the Customer Value Club, discussing the leadership of customer value.
Anni is the EVP (Executive Vice President) and Chief Digital Officer at Kesko, as well as a professional in board work. Prior to Kesko, she worked as the Country Manager of Google Finland. Leading customer value must unequivocally be on the top management’s agenda, Anni states. Leading customer value requires grasping the entirety and managing it so that things that don’t genuinely create value for the customer are not sub-optimized.
Who is the Customer?
Kesko has around 3.3 million identified customers, which is nearly the entire adult population of Finland. Extensive data allows for precise segmentation and modeling of customer behavior and future trends. Customer data has been collected in the K-Group for over 20 years, but only in recent years has its true value been understood and the data harnessed for beneficial purposes.
When I joined the K-Group six years ago, the primary focus was on the retailer. It was thought that Kesko would ‘take care of things’ up to the back door of the store, and the retailer would handle things from there to the customer. The cultural shift has been significant, Anni emphasizes. One of the key factors in our success has been that our focus is now on the customer – the customer is in the center, and the retailer has the tools to lead customer value.
Data Helps to Stand Out and Find Competitive Advantage
In retail, there is a limited selection where differentiation from competitors can occur. Kesko is not the cheapest, and it doesn’t offer unique products or services. Instead, the customer experience can be personal and difficult to copy, Anni justifies her approach. Store-specific dashboards, which are visual packages of data, help retailers understand their own customer base and create a store-specific business idea and atmosphere.
In the past, the retailer had an enormous amount of different Excel sheets, PDF reports, and a massive pile of folders, Anni explains and advises companies at the beginning of their journey to start utilizing data by bringing all the data together in one place where it can be refined. Information must be available to every employee when needed, Anni emphasizes transparency.
Customer Value is Managed from the Board Level as Well
In many boards, the customer is still only brought up through the income statement, and the discussion is too limited. Another area that receives too little attention in board-level discussions is the significance of technology as an enabler of change, Anni points out.
Anni calls for diversity of skills in boards and courage from board members to push things forward.
