Most large firms, typically with an extensive catalog of products developed or acquired over many years, start in the bottom left quadrant with traditional customer experience and operations. That’s where 51% of firms sit. They have a number of silos (sets of systems in a subset of a firm that support a business unit, a product, a geography, or a customer type) that are incompatible, or not integrated, with other systems. They added new silos when they introduced new products, new geographies, new customer types, or new service offerings (or had to meet new regulations) and left them unconnected. These firms then created spaghetti when their point-to-point solutions involved making connections from many systems to many others—particularly when they needed to extract data.

This results in a complex set of business processes, systems, and data supporting their products. The result is a fragmented, labor-intensive, and frustrating experience for both customers and employees. Frequently, the ability of such firms to provide an engaging customer experience depends heavily on heroics by employees. It shouldn’t be surprising that the revenue growth and net profit margins of firms in this quadrant were the weakest, averaging 10.5 percentage points and 6.5 percentage points below their industry average.