Category Strategy – Customer Experience Management

Customer Experience Management (CXM) includes interactions with customers (both external and internal) and involves a structured multi-channel and remote communication approach. These interactions can be direct or indirect. CXM services go beyond the traditional Contact Center Outsourcing (CCO) model to help organizations create a digital customer experience.  This category strategy template is ready-to-use, with editable frameworks for internal assessment and detailed industry and market category overviews to assist category managers, procurement professionals, and CPOs in creating an informed category strategy for CXM. A category strategy is a planning document that helps define what needs to be done to drive effective management of category spend. The creation of this plan requires close collaboration between procurement and business to define internal needs and category objectives and drive the development of a category action plan. Multiple tools and techniques, such as total cost modeling, make vs. buy assessment, buyer profile assessment, and supply market analysis, are used for this process. Best-in-class procurement organizations effectively leverage such tools and techniques to drive continuous improvements in their categories. The template can be customized by category managers with internal category information, such as spend, suppliers, and subcategory overview. The category manager can also use industry and market insights provided in this template to build a strong supply base understanding. The goal of a category strategy is to create an action plan for effective category management, and this template provides the requisite tools, frameworks, and information to create a robust strategy.