Delivering ROI-based journey management for the enterprise

Most large organizations are spending millions of dollars fixing problems they don’t actually have. It happens in the invisible gap between what gets captured on a journey map and the decisions enterprises make, or fail to make, in response to those insights.

Teams move fast without seeing the full picture. Initiatives get greenlit based on one slice of the story. Strategies are reshuffled to address what looks urgent in isolation, only to realize later that the issue wasn’t a crisis at all once the broader customer journey came into view.

That raises a practical question many enterprise leaders are now grappling with:

"What does ROI actually look like when organizations move from journey mapping to journey management?"

That question framed a recent webinar hosted by Jochem van der Veer, CEO and co-founder of TheyDo, featuring Joana de Quintanilha, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, and Daniel Hoffmann, service design lead at Lufthansa Group Digital Hangar.

Rather than revisiting tools or dashboards, the conversation focused on how enterprises can turn journey insight into coordinated action—and measure whether that action actually makes a difference.

From mapping journeys to managing outcomes

For years, journey mapping was the dominant way organizations tried to close the gap between insight and action. But that framing no longer reflects how enterprises are using or evaluating journey capabilities today. As Quintanilha explained, static maps don’t survive enterprise complexity. What does endure is a system that helps teams continuously improve journeys and demonstrate impact over time.

Within The Forrester Wave™, this shift shows up in the category itself. What was previously evaluated as journey mapping software is now assessed under the broader lens of customer journey management, a signal that expectations have moved beyond documentation and visualization.

The current evaluation focuses less on how well a platform helps teams map journeys, and more on whether organizations can:

• Use journey insight to drive concrete action

• Coordinate work across teams and systems

• Measure whether changes actually improve outcomes for customers and the business

Case study: Proving ROI in practice

As a global airline, Lufthansa receives an enormous volume of customer feedback every day across both digital and physical touchpoints. The challenge was in making sense of it at scale and using it to make decisions that teams could actually act on.

Journey management helped Lufthansa address three persistent problems.

1. Turning feedback into insight

   Rather than distributing isolated reports or PDFs, customer feedback was analyzed and replayed in the context of the journey itself. Patterns became visible. Issues could be understood in sequence, not in isolation.

2. Creating shared understanding across teams

   Journey work brought service designers, researchers, analysts, and delivery teams into the same conversation. Looking at the same customer reality reduced misinterpretation, duplicate effort, and competing narratives.

3. Preventing wasted effort

   In one case, a team was preparing to invest heavily in fixing what appeared to be a performance issue. A broader journey view revealed that the root cause lived elsewhere in the experience. That context alone prevented an entire quarter of unnecessary work.

What Forrester looks for when evaluating ROI

Quintanilha outlined how Forrester assesses business impact in the Wave.

ROI is not limited to CX scores. Forrester looks for platforms and practices that enable organizations to:

• Link journey improvements to business metrics such as cost, conversion, retention, or efficiency

• Track whether actions taken on journeys actually move those metrics

• Support cross-functional collaboration, which is essential for value realization

• Integrate with delivery and analytics systems so insight doesn’t stall

Importantly, ROI is contextual. What matters is whether organizations can define value on their own terms, based on the journeys that matter most to them.

Measuring the right things at the right moments

A recurring theme in the discussion was that not all journeys—and not all metrics—are equal.

Quintanilha described two complementary types of measurement:

• Journey signals: Metrics at critical steps in a journey that indicate whether things are working as intended, such as first-time completion, handoff efficiency, or error rates.

• Success metrics: Measures at the end of the journey that reflect goal accomplishment, perceived experience, and business impact.

Some journeys are hygiene factors. They must work, but won’t differentiate the brand. Others are signature moments, where organizations choose to invest more heavily.

Journey management helps teams make those trade-offs explicit—and measurable.

AI as an accelerator, not a replacement

AI entered the conversation not as a silver bullet, but as a practical accelerator.

Both speakers emphasized AI’s role in:

• Synthesizing large volumes of structured and unstructured data

• Surfacing patterns across journeys faster

• Supporting executive-ready storytelling tailored to different stakeholders

For Lufthansa, trust was key. AI worked best when layered on top of curated journey context as an assistant that augmented human judgment. The result is faster insight, clearer narratives, and less friction in decision-making.

Where journey management teams sit—and why it evolves

One of the most common audience questions concerned organizational placement. Both speakers agreed that there is no single “right” home for journey management. Some organizations anchor it in CX or design. Others place it closer to operations or even finance.

What matters most is that the work remains cross-functional and connected to where decisions are made. Quintanilha noted that journey teams often move over time as maturity grows, shifting closer to the P&L as impact becomes clearer. Pragmatism is what sustains momentum. 

The bottom line

The ROI of journey management shows up as less wasted effort, better decisions, faster alignment, and clearer accountability — all grounded in a shared understanding of the customer journey. For enterprises navigating complexity, journey management is no longer a CX exercise. It’s a way of working.