Customer Portfolio Mapping. How to identify strategic and tactical customers and evaluate the customer reciprocity relationship

“Each company has the customers it deserves” said one day a Ceo to his management. This is a very strict statement that forces companies to question the reasons why they have a specific customer portfolio and to distinguish strategic customers from tactical ones. The mapping of the customers, focus of this article, has the dual objective to measure objectively the level of “strategicity” of the customer portfolio and the level of business reciprocity between the company and its customers, in order to appropriately orient the decision processes of the company. In order to achieve the aforementioned dual objective, three sets of information are required: the economic and financial quality of the client, the level of utility of the client for the company and the level of utility of the company for the client. The combination of the two first set of information allows to evaluate the level of “strategicity” of each single customer, that is if the customer is strategic or tactical ad why. The questions to be answered are: how much competitive are the strategic customers for the company? How many customers are at the same time competitive but tactical for the company? The company’s goal is to select strategic customers that are at the same time competitive and useful for the company over time. A second combination between the above strategic level of the customer and the level of utility of the company for the client allows to measures the degree of business reciprocity of the customer relationship. The questions to answer are: how much is strategic the company for the strategic customers? How many are the strategic customers for whom the company is considered tactical? The company’s goal is to be strategic for strategic customers. Each set of information is based on key performance indicators that allow not only to map the customer portfolio in terms of customer strategicity and business reciprocity of the customers, but above all to identify the priority business figures in terms of management decisions and actions and therefore to plan and control the customer portfolio quality and through the latter the economic value creation.