Service Oriented Architecture as a Dynamic Enabler of Customer Prioritization

Today's dynamic marketplace demands firms to sense and respond quickly to customer requirements. Recent research has shown that customer prioritization leads to more sales and profitability. Though there are many tools such as CRM, statistical and data-mining packages that can help with customer prioritization, this paper bring to the fore-front Service Oriented Architectures' (SOA) potential as an underlying enabler of customer prioritization through dynamic customer relationships. SOA has the ability to proactively understand and enable the ability to deliver customer needs thereby improving a firms chance to retain its customer base and meet customer service expectations by optimizing the use of their customer service personnel. This conceptual paper describes how SOA holds promise as a form of business intelligence that dynamically 'informates' business activities and decisions. A case illustration concerning the use of a Customer Priority Index (CPI) outlines how SOA can be a powerful enabler of customer prioritization.