Leaders Must Respond To Changing Customer And Employee Needs To Maintain Growth Trajectories

ARLINGTON, Va., Dec. 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- From the changing nature of work to evolving consumer expectations, executives are facing new challenges as they seek to ensure success in a business climate marked by constant change. CEB (NYSE: CEB) the leading member-based advisory company, today released Top Insights for the World's Leading Executives to identify the shifts driving change and help organizations embrace the challenges they pose in order to realize meaningful growth in the years ahead.

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7291531-ceb-2014-top-insights/

"As information overload becomes more pervasive—and decisions become more complex—companies must think about growth differently," said Haniel Lynn, group president, CEB. "Executives have to anticipate and respond quickly to the shifts shaping business in 2015 if they want to overcome workplace disruptions and capture fragmented customer attention. Only by getting ahead of market and employees' needs, can companies continue to drive the levels of loyalty and performance required to meet their aggressive goals."

Shift 1: How Works Gets Done: Employees must be more flexible as they work with peers across geographies and disciplines. Employees that can accomplish tasks individually, as well as contribute to their peers work, can boost organizational revenue by 11 percent and growth by five percent. Organizations need to reengineer how they attract, develop and manage human capital to achieve these workforce gains.

Shift 2: The Changing Role of Internal Clients: Internal clients will be more challenging to serve and the speed at which they require solutions will increase. As a result, more business leaders will make decisions historically owned by internal services like HR and IT. Heads of shared-services functions will have to equip their partners to make good decisions as they take greater ownership tasks not previously in their scope.

Shift 3: Evolving Consumer Expectations: Brands must build new capabilities that allow them to be more agile and provide deeper, more intimate connections with consumers. Today's buyers are more informed than previous generations and their sophistication requires Marketing teams to rethink core processes if they hope to keep pace with their customers' digital savvy.

Shift 4: Focus on Consensus: Building consensus among B2B buyers will be pivotal as the number of stakeholder required to sign off on purchases has increased to six. In this climate, every decision is more time intensive, the impact greater and the ramifications of failure more pronounced. Marketing and Sales leaders will need to tap into the right values and foster an environment of collective learning in order to keep sales cycles manageable and win the support of diverse groups.

Shift 5: Information Value: Companies have more access to information than ever before making it hard for employees to process, interpret and use data effectively to make a decision. This leads to poor outcomes that can cost an organization upwards of $375 million. Companies will need to change processes and behaviors in order to make information valuable—not just available—to the workforce.

To learn more about the major business shift shaping the business climate and how to adapt for growth, please visit Top Insights for the World's Leading Executives.

About CEB
CEB, the leading member-based advisory company, equips more than 10,000 organizations around the globe with insights, tools and actionable solutions to transform enterprise performance. By combining advanced research and analytics with best practices from member companies, CEB helps leaders realize outsized returns by more effectively managing talent, information, customers and risk. Member companies include approximately 85% of the Fortune 500, half the Dow Jones Asian Titans, and nearly 85% of the FTSE 100. More at cebglobal.com.

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7291531-ceb-2014-top-insights/

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SOURCE CEB