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Forrester on Monday introduced Forrester Decisions, a new “customer-obsessed” research product portfolio designed to help businesses succeed in the post-pandemic world.

The new portfolio is geared at helping executives, functional leaders and teams across technology, customer experience, B2C and B2B marketing, sales and product management with their most pressing initiatives and priorities to drive growth, the firm said.

The pandemic has driven massive changes in consumer behaviors, experiences, work, technology and business resilience, forcing firms to adapt their business strategies and accelerate the need for customer-obsessed strategies. Forrester defines these customer-obsessed organizations as those that put customers at the center of their leadership, strategy and operations and increase revenue, profits and employee engagement and retain customers at more than twice the rate of other firms.

SEE: Forrester: Business resilience will help organizations attain competitive advantage (TechRepublic)

While the pandemic pushed many firms to digitize their offerings, only a small number of senior decision-makers rate their firms as digitally advanced—29% in Asia Pacific, 22% in North America and 15% in Europe.

The goal of the new practice is to help leaders successfully navigate these changes with insights, best practices and guidance “steeped in customer obsession and focused on the priorities they are tackling today, such as innovating with technology, designing experiences that drive loyalty and earning brand devotion,” the firm said.

Forrester Decisions’ services will be available in August 2021.

The move to offer the new services was based on input from clients who were looking for a trusted partner to help them future-proof their business strategy, fend off disruptors and grow faster, said Forrester CEO George Colony, in a blog post. “We heard that clients needed help tackling today’s business challenges today, not months from now. And finally, we heard a lot about speed,” he said. “Clients need to achieve demonstrable outcomes faster than they can with traditional, lengthy consulting engagements — they need a continuous feed of expertise.”

Global leaders have relied on Forrester for over 35 years “to see around corners and understand what’s next,” Colony said. “Now, with Forrester Decisions, we will help them anticipate those market-changing trends and tackle today’s priorities.”

Forrester Decisions aims to help executives, functional leaders and their teams plan and pursue their most pressing initiatives for driving growth in a post-pandemic world.

Additionally, these new services combine Forrester’s thought leadership with industry-leading frameworks, models and methodologies gained through the company’s 2019 acquisition of SiriusDecisions.

“SiriusDecisions research has been instrumental in helping shape our journey to transform our own business via alignment of our sales, product and marketing functions,” said Carrie Johnson, chief research officer at Forrester. “At a time when customer needs and expectations are changing more rapidly than ever, heightened agility and alignment across these three core functions can accelerate business growth.”

Forrester’s research shows that the organizations that successfully align all three core functions report 19% faster growth and 15% greater profitability, Johnson said.

Every Forrester Decisions service is built with the goal of addressing business priorities specific to a functional discipline, empowering leaders and their teams to move quickly, de-risk decisions and save time and money, the firm said. Forrester Decisions will offer:

  • Research. Stay ahead of changing customer and market dynamics, plan for the future, and set strategy with research such as customer insights, trends and predictions, forecasts, and technology and service provider landscapes.

  • Curated tools and frameworks. Conquer priorities and deliver on strategies with proven models, toolkits, and plug-and-play templates. Examples include the Forrester B2B Revenue Waterfall, to prioritize buyer engagement and maximize deal conversions, the CX Management Maturity Model, to plot maturity on the journey to CX transformation, and the Future Fit Technology Strategy Model, to build adaptive, creative and resilient enterprises.

  • Hands-on guidance. Accelerate progress and de-risk decisions with a curated and tailored experience that includes dedicated best practice guidance sessions from Forrester analysts.

The new portfolio will also offer an enhanced digital platform with tools for team members to collaborate within their function and across the organization, as well as new data and certification course content.

Forrester provides certification courses as part of its research services to help deepen team members’ understanding of its research and accelerate their work, Johnson said. The “Leading with Customer Obsession” and “Building Winning Business Cases” certification courses are available to all Forrester Decisions clients, she said. The firm also offers function and skill-specific certifications aligned to select services.

Editor’s note: The article has been updated with additional comment.