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Accenture A4 KAM Brochure v6!03!03
Accenture A4 KAM Brochure v6!03!03
Key Account Management is a systematic process for managing key interactions and relationships with most valuable customers. It focuses on the creation, implementation, execution and evaluation of an overall plan to guide the account team in developing new relationships at the C-level, aligning the best resources to the most profitable opportunities and delivering what was promised.
Everybody would agree on the strategy, even more when you know that the Pareto principle applies here also with 20% of the customers generating 80% of the revenue/profit. However when looking at our recent CSO Insights study, execution seems different:
51% More than half of the companies recognize that they need improvement in selecting key accounts 60% CSO interviewed understand they lose deals because their competitors have established a better relationship with their customer 52% Also recognize their Key Account plan need improvment
Europe and the U.S. where they must compete with already established key account competitors. In these circumstances, it is just not technology and low cost that wins the deal, but also the capacity to show product development roadmaps and ensure highly reliable service in a complex environment where risk tolerance is zero and where English is the first language. These examples and the increasing concentration of buying power in many industries have increased the level needed to improve key account management practices.
The 10 key success factors of Key Account Management. Accenture has identified what high performing sales organizations are doing to enhance business and relationships with their most important customers:
Process
5. Define a clear process of what is a key account, determining target customer needs, and implementing procedures to ensure that they receive customer service based on total value. 6. Conduct regular key account plan review meetings to monitor action plan and sales results that are integrated in company-wide review cycles. 7. Have maintenance process to maintain key account power map. 8. Have a partnership approach, joint process and product improvements with regular target measurement for strategic customers.
Strategy
1. Start with a customer-based segmentation strategy, implementing differentiated approaches for key accounts and other tiers. Criteria include existing and future revenue growth, strategic position in the industry. 2. Align sales organization (global versus local) and process steps with their key customers, establish longterm partnering agreements on an added-value-reward sharing basis and have intensive cooperation through mutual knowledge sharing.
Technology
9. Have access to a common repository of information the customer profile, relationship maps, sales data, won/loss analysis, internal organizational charts, etc. that facilitate coordinated communication at both tactical and operational levels to allow for one common message. 10. Embed your account plan in a sales tool that is visible to all team members. All aspects of planningincluding optimization of resourcesdeveloped, distributed, and tracked electronically.
Organization
3. Align organization to the customers organization, when possible: single account leads with similar functional heads for product, supply chain, marketing, and operations. 4. Carefully select the Account Planning Team with the right complement of skills to develop robust account plan. This is a cross-functional team composed of dedicated and indirect personnel.
3. Build a momentum
An effective key account management program calls for investments. However, as the benefits have shown, there are pay offs for these investments. Helping all companies to agree on the gains and make the investment when both time and money are in short supply. Nonetheless, it remains a challenge. A diplomatic way to enable sales force to realize their lack of global view of the account as well as strategic alignment, hence the opportunities they may be missing can be achieved by organizing a Sales Bootcamp. Bringing your best resources in the same place to simulate an Account Plan session and elaborating with them the best value proposition based on this new common understanding of customer needs is really powerful. This was done with many of our customers and therefore being able to identify in a few days new opportunities hitherto unexplored has often been a good stimulus for sales force adherence and willingness to change their way of working.
Given the benefits and value creation potential, Accenture sees it as wise to start implementing or further rollout Key Account Management, particularly in a transition from a difficult economy to an upturn. This is the moment of opportunity to improve the quality of key customer relationships. Accentures approach to KAM is broad, reaching strategic, tactical and operational levels, encompassing internal and external activities. It begins with building a vision, strategy and defining actionable KPI set, all of which are aligned to the overall company strategy. It also takes into account the current economic situation and recognizes that business benefits need to be quickly realized.
In Accentures experience, the rewards were to: increase customers intimacy and start moving the overall customer satisfaction index from average to high improve win rate and capture rate as well as deal profitability by up to 15% through improved opportunity qualification and value proposition development reduce companies competitor customer influence through the identification of new coaches and supporters at C-level
Develop a unique competitive advantage through quality improvements, innovation and faster time-to-market. For example, our recent success stories are: For an large manufacturer company, the deployment of an industrialized Key Account Management process combined with rigorous key account plan reviews helps to improve the win and capture rate by up to two digits. For an international company in electronic industry, the opportunities qualifications optimization, and the shared and detailed power map documentation impact the win probability ratio by more than 10 points.
1. Understand Customer
3. Execute Plan
Processes Enablers
6
The Accenture KAM approach is helping companies to achieve high performance in key account management. With its commitment to find the optimal solution for every unique situation, Accenture has successfully implemented this KAM methodology for several clients around the world in recent years. Putting our benchmarking data to work helps clients to pinpoint the areas where they have the most potential to gain and recommends leading practices to shape the solution. Accenture has developed an approach that considers all elements leading to successful Key Account Management (Figure 1).
This model, which is aligned to the generic CRM business process, includes the vision and strategy, all relevant processes and essential enablers. The vision and strategy: Account planning driven by a consolidated, common understanding of the customer and vendors presence at the customer. The processes: continuous closed loop process integrating customer relationship activities within account planning at each step and including clear Roles & Responsibilities definition for Account planning reviews. The enablers: crucial components to make key account management successful. From an organizational
point of view clear roles and responsibilities have to be defined and spread throughout the business. Employees need to be trained in the specific strategic account management tasks and should have personal goals clearly defined in order to align incentives with strategic direction and optimize results. From a technology point of view standardized tools and templates, including Organizational Power Map have to be defined and used. To turn the methodology into reality, Accenture has developed a set of strategic Key Account Management tools and templates based on Accenture standard practices, pilot projects and client experiences (Figure 2).
Process
KAM Process Descriptions of the key steps, Inputs and outputs and roles & responsibilities associated with the KAM Solution Describes how to use the enablers of KAM solution (CP, VP, AP, Workbook). Providing clear instruction on operation procedures in daily work and R&R assignments within the team Explain how to complete templates and provide examples with job aids
KAM Handbook
Enablers
Customer Profile Consolidated understanding of the Customer business, including industry environment, organization, strategy and financial analysis (ppt format) Consolidated view of Company engagement with the Customer including project history, competition analysis, market share analysis and relationship analysis (power map, ppt format) Tactics and plans to achieve the objectives for the coming year. Aligned to multi years strategy and based on a deep understanding of the Customer (Customer Profile and Vendor Profile). Incorporates Budget and Market space analysis output (ppt format) Centralized account management action plan to realize the objectives of the Account Plan: key dimensions include market target, relationship management, competition management (xls format) Graphical illustration of Account KPI providing a monthly breakdown of actual against targets to identify performance gaps (xls format)
Vendor Profile
Account Plan
Performance Dashboard
About the authors Fabrice Marque is a Senior Executive at Accenture, leading the CRM Service Line in France. He is responsible for our Service Transformation offerings at EALA level: multi-channel strategy, customer experience design, contact centre activities organization, etc. He has more than 15 years of experience within Accenture, and has worked across various industries: Telecom, Electronic and HighTechnologies, Public Service, Insurance, Energy, Health Mahfoud Chebboub is a Senior Manager at Accenture, leading the CRM KAM offering in France. He is member of the CRM Sales Transformation practice with a specialty on B2B industries.
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About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 204,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.