istening to the voice of the customer and as a result, understanding what they need and value, is the best foundation for the development of profitable strategy, products, services and marketing programs.

Customer needs & the competitive environment change constantly, so the ideal process for listening to the voice of the customer is one that gives frequent feedback. Customer advisory boards (CABs), in-person or via teleconference & web-based customer meetings, are an ideal way to listen to customers.

We have a rigorous methodology for developing and running our clients' CABs. This process starts with the segmentation of a client's market. After clearly identifying our clients' most important market segments, we develop a profile of representative customers. Customers are then recruited, and the CAB panels are formed. We moderate the CAB panels in-person or via teleconferencing and the web, analyze the results and report on what customers need and value.

Our complete CAB process from setup to reporting has been broken into 20 distinct steps or functions, and we are constantly updating and tuning this process to ensure that our clients' CABs are based on current "best practices".

The benefits of our CAB service are:

• Marketing departments, like many other areas in today's technology companies, have limited resources. Outsourcing CABs to an experienced service provider ensures that the important function of listening to the voice of the customer happens on a regular basis.
   
• Outsourcing to an experienced service provider that specializes in CABs ensures that listening to the voice of the customer is done using best practices.
   
• Goals, segmentation, panel agendas are all customized to meet the unique needs of each client. Our clients often have many constituencies who want to develop customer-driven strategy, products, services and marketing programs. These constituencies get the information they need, when they need it.
   
• The CABs we develop and run for our clients are cost-effective. We rely heavily on teleconferencing and the web to conduct the majority of our CAB sessions.
   
• Our CAB process is both flexible and scalable. Because we have a rigorous process that is mostly based on teleconferencing and the web we can quickly add more CAB panels, e.g. to cover new or emerging market segments.
   
• Following these CABs, a company should match what customers need and value with what the company can truly develop and deliver. This maximizes leverage of a company's strengths, and ensures that their strategy, products and services are most valued by customers and profitable for our client.
   
• Securing customer information and sharing it quickly with those in the enterprise who need to know can result in faster responsiveness to customer needs. Faster time-to-market means faster time-to-profit for our clients.
   
• Customers who get involved in defining strategy and the features of new products & services become more loyal ... "This company cares about what customers have to say, and as a result they build the kinds of products and services we want".
   
• Our CAB process has been developed as a result of our experience conducting thousands of focus groups, in-depth interviews and other customer research for our technology clients since January 1995. Because of this experience and our independence, the CAB process we've developed results in our clients receiving an unbiased, correct understanding of what their customers truly need and value.