Don Peppers and Martha Rogers have introduced a new business metric aimed at driving towards better management and a better return to the shareholder. Their argument is that capital is not the scarcest resource available to a company; the scarcest resource a company has is the customer.

I've long felt that a lot of our current metrics push towards short sighted and foolish moves that may generate short term profits but usually at the sacrifice of long-term growth or value. It would be nice to see companies begin to adopt practices that prevent this from happening. It would be nice, as an investor, to have a clear idea of the value of the company's customer base and how that's changed year over year.

'Return on Customer'[Image] may or may not see a place in financial analysis - but it's definitely an idea worth exploring. Having read the excerpt of the book, I'm intrigued enough to put an order in to Amazon.ca. I'll likely have a lot more to say on the subject when the book arrives.