Linking customer lifetime value to business value, powerful techniques for both executives and investors.

If where an organization allocates its resources determines its strategy, why is it that so few companies actively manage the resource allocation process? "Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy" goes beyond platitudes about why you should use corporate portfolio management (CPM) by offering a practical methodology to bring this powerful discipline to your organization. "Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management" takes an expansive view of where CPM can be utilized by demonstrating that it can be used across any business line, product group or functional area, e.g., IT, R&D, innovation, marketing, salesforce, capital expenditure, etc. CPM is appropriate anywhere discretionary investments are being selected and executed. As a result, other terms used to describe portfolio management such as IT portfolio management, enterprise portfolio management, and project portfolio management are all merely subsets or slices of CPM. The book is written by Anand Sanwal, an expert on CPM, who has led American Express' CPM discipline (referred to as American Express Investment Optimization). American Express' CPM efforts are widely recognized as the most extensive, substantial and progressive deployment of CPM across any organization. Sanwal avoids academic theories and consultant jargon to ultimately deliver pragmatic and proven recommendations on how to make CPM a reality. The book features a foreword by Gary Crittenden, former CFO and EVP of American Express, and several case studies from leading financial services, technology, and government organizations utilizing CPM. Additionally, the book has received significant praise from thought leaders at Google, HP, American Express, The CFO Executive Board, Gartner, Accenture Marketing Sciences, The Wharton School of Business and many others.

Customer relationship management (CRM) as a strategy and as a technology has gone through an amazing evolutionary journey. The initial technological approach was followed by many disappointing initiatives only to see the maturing of the underlying concepts and applications in recent years. Today, CRM represents a strategy, a set of tactics, and a technology that have become indispensible in the modern economy. This book presents an extensive treatment of the strategic and tactical aspects of customer relationship management as we know it today. It stresses developing an understanding of economic customer value as the guiding concept for marketing decisions. The goal of the book is to serve as a comprehensive and up-to-date learning companion for advanced undergraduate students, master's degree students, and executives who want a detailed and conceptually sound insight into the field of CRM.

The success of any organization depends on high-quality customer service. But for companies that strategically align customer service with their overall corporate strategy, it can transcend typical good business to become a profitable word-of-mouth machine that will transform the bottom line. Drawing on over thirty years of research for companies such as 3M, American Express, Chik-Fil-A, USAA, Coca-Cola, FedEx, GE, Cisco Systems, Neiman Marcus, and Toyota, author Goodman uses formal research, case studies, and patented practices to show readers how they can: • calculate the financial impact of good and bad customer service • make the financial case for customer service improvements • systematically identify the causes of problems • align customer service with their brand • harness customer service strategy into their organization's culture and behavior Filled with proven strategies and eye-opening case studies, this book challenges many aspects of conventional wisdom—using hard data—and reveals how any organization can earn more loyalty, win more customers...and improve their financial bottom line.

In the years since the now-classic Pioneering Portfolio Management was first published, the global investment landscape has changed dramatically -- but the results of David Swensen's investment strategy for the Yale University endowment have remained as impressive as ever. Year after year, Yale's portfolio has trumped the marketplace by a wide margin, and, with over $20 billion added to the endowment under his twenty-three-year tenure, Swensen has contributed more to Yale's finances than anyone ever has to any university in the country. What may have seemed like one among many success stories in the era before the Internet bubble burst emerges now as a completely unprecedented institutional investment achievement. In this fully revised and updated edition, Swensen, author of the bestselling personal finance guide Unconventional Success, describes the investment process that underpins Yale's endowment. He provides lucid and penetrating insight into the world of institutional funds management, illuminating topics ranging from asset-allocation structures to active fund management. Swensen employs an array of vivid real-world examples, many drawn from his own formidable experience, to address critical concepts such as handling risk, selecting advisors, and weathering market pitfalls. Swensen offers clear and incisive advice, especially when describing a counterintuitive path. Conventional investing too often leads to buying high and selling low. Trust is more important than flash-in-the-pan success. Expertise, fortitude, and the long view produce positive results where gimmicks and trend following do not. The original Pioneering Portfolio Management outlined a commonsense template for structuring a well-diversified equity-oriented portfolio. This new edition provides fund managers and students of the market an up-to-date guide for actively managed investment portfolios.

Headed by Bernstein, the quantitative equity and equity derivatives strategies group at Merrill Lynch is noted for their proprietary research on market segmentation and style investing. In this book, he highlights the macroeconomic, microeconomic and expectational factors that can affect equity market segment performance. The first section focuses on the definition and identification of market segments and reviews the major equity market segments that concern today's institutional investors. Part two analyzes the historical result of each segment of style strategy within the context of the economic and expectational framework. Lastly, it describes current issues and problems in equity markets and their implications for pension plan sponsors.