Technological advances have changed the way the world does business. For instance, banking once meant going to a bank. Then along came ATMs, call centers, Internet, interactive TV and so on, but branches of banks did not go away. All that happened was that consumers got greater control over the way they interacted with banks. This article spells out some of the implications of this new world of commerce.

Peter Drucker wrote these words in 1952, and yet they still jump freshly out of the page as a challenge to today's organizations to reform their staid approach towards marketing. Although FMCG companies are often quoted as examples of marketing excellence, they find the current business environment that demands step-change innovations as tricky to operate. Being market-driven is not enough: Today, you have to be market driving.

We strongly believe that the dominant business themes, in the years to come, would be innovation, as the Internet supports for many digitisable products. Companies like Direct Line, First Direct and easyJet would compete with each other, by exploiting the remote channels to add value and by reducing the cost.

How organizations should respond to the opportunities and threats of these IT-enabled channels, and use them to build profitable customer relationships, is the subject of this article. Packages for sales force automation, direct mail, telemarketing, customer service, e-commerce and marketing analysis have been available for some time, both singly and in combination as integrated customer relationship management suites. But these packages, while providing an essential infrastructure, need to be supplemented by managerial processes to address such questions, as which channels to use and how they should work together, to deliver customer value.

Advertising Express Magazine, Competitive Edge, Technological Advances, Marketing and Innovation, Business Enterprises, FMCG Companies, Business Environment, IT-enabled Channels, Customer Relationship Management, Managerial Processes, Multi-channel Approach, Financial Advisers, Customer Acquisition.