Technology refers to the technology platform that empowers an organization to collect, understand, and take action on insights and data. A powerful XM platform is an essential component of any XM effort as it allows the company to capture, analyze, and distribute a constant flow of insights to the relevant people and processes. Without such a platform, companies won’t be able to scale Experience Management capabilities and practices across the entire business.

Competency refers to the skills and actions that establish XM as a discipline. At the end of the day, to realize value from Experience Management, companies are going to have to alter the way they operate in a number of different ways – from how they collect and use insights, to how they design experiences, to how they engage leaders and employees in their change efforts. This element is made up of six XM Competencies: Lead, Realize, Activate, Enlighten, Respond, and Disrupt.

Culture refers to the mindsets and beliefs that encourage and nurture XM-centric behaviors across the organization. A company’s culture will either accelerate or inhibit the spread of XM-centric behaviors and practices. So, if XM is going to thrive across the business, organizations must create an environment that fosters XM-centric mindsets and behaviors in its leaders and employees.

To effectively manage the experiences of suppliers, customers, employees, and partners, an organization needs to articulate a clear XM strategy and then coordinate the execution of that strategy across a number of different people and projects over multiple years. This Competency is about architecting, aligning, and sustaining successful XM efforts, and the Skills associated with it are XM Strategy, Program Roadmap, and XM Governance.

For XM efforts to have a lasting positive impact, they need to generate strategic and financial value for the organization. This Competency is about identifying and tracking the right metrics to ensure XM efforts achieve well-defined business objectives, and the Skills associated with it are Value Planning, Value Delivery, and Metrics Management.

People tend to gravitate towards the status quo, so a successful XM program must overcome people’s inertia and their natural resistance to change. This Competency is about making sure that the organization has the appropriate skills, support, and motivation to achieve desired XM results, and the Skills associated with it are Ecosystem Communications, Expertise Building, and Role-Based Enablement.

To improve the experiences it delivers, an organization must be capable of collecting and processing a constant flow of X-data and O-data, and then transforming all that data into useful information. This Competency is about capturing, analyzing, and distributing actionable insights, and the Skills associated with it are X&O Data Integration, Experience Monitoring, Insights Discovery, and Insights Distribution.

Gathering and disseminating insights is all well and good, but ultimately, value is only generated when an organization acts on what it learns. This Competency is about building organizational mechanisms to continuously take action based on insights, and the Skills associated with it are Immediate Response, Continuous Improvement, Strategic Decision-Making, and Process Integration.

While finding and fixing problems is necessary, just responding to explicit issues is not sufficient to capture people’s hearts and minds. This Competency is about identifying and creating experiences that differentiate the organization from its competitors, and the Skills associated with it are Experience Visioning, Experience Design, and Experience Integration.