From listening to the customer to controlling with customer focus: facing the barriers in Nordic financial services

Increasing competition and demanding customers in the financial retail sector challenge the monitoring and control systems in banks and insurance companies, because traditional systems seem to be of little help in focusing on profitable customers. This article compares how Danish and Finnish financial companies are responding to the information-processing challenge of getting and using customer-related data. Results based on two nation-wide surveys among accounting managers indicate that companies are confronted with different barriers to customer-oriented management control, as Danish companies seem to have the more sophisticated market intelligence and control systems while the Finnish companies have the more focused customer-oriented strategies. Nevertheless, differences between companies seem more important than differences between countries. In both countries access to advanced information technology plays a basic but minor role in the development of the technology of listening and control, which in turn may lead to increased competitive advantages. Despite the differences, most companies are faced with major obstacles related to organisation and poor use of market research and it is argued that ‘supported empowerment’ is a viable road to improvement.