donderdag 6 augustus 2009
woensdag 1 juli 2009
maandag 29 juni 2009
vrijdag 26 juni 2009
dinsdag 23 juni 2009
The Social Web and Global Account Management
What is Global Account Management (GAM)?
In essence, these are programs designed to serve global accounts. According to Yip ‘multinational companies need to manage their relationships with multinational customers in a globally integrated approach’ (p.5) During the event various perspectives and theories were discussed.
During the event it became clear that one of the key dilemmas for multinationals is balancing between local autonomy and global integration. For example, how much autonomy do local sales organizations have to negotiate pricing and delivery conditions? During his address Yip gave an interesting example of a local subsidiary in Australia that, eager to close a deal with a customer, made a significant discount to a multinational customer. Of course, HQ was not involved in this local deal, but the implications were enormous. The main responsible for purchasing at this customer then made a call to the corporate account manager saying thank you for the significant savings. The account manager, having no information on this local deal, acted surprised. The customer explained to him that under the current agreement the local price was applicable worldwide. This meant that an individual local deal resulted in that the local pricing agreement, i.e. the discount, was globally applicable. In this example, local autonomy resulted in globally reducing priced prices. According to Yip, this was one of the key drivers for this multinational to initiate a global account management program.
During this day various approaches to GAM programs were introduced. The approaches different in the extent to which power and autonomy is transferred from local to global. The form which has the most power locally is the ‘coordination GAM’ - ‘the national sales organizations retain a great deal of power’. On the other hand the form which provides most power globally is the ‘separate GAM’ – ‘In this approach a supplier creates a separate business unit with total responsibility for global accounts’ (Yip & Bink, 2007, Harvard Business Review, September 2007, p. 110)
Diamond and bowtie relationship models
‘Customers love global account management programmes. The key is to get your organization aligned behind them.’ (Bart Logghe, Senior director of the international retail board, Royal Philips Electronics)
The above quote was taken from the book written by George S. Yip and Audrey J. M. Bink ( Managing Global Customers: An Integrated Approach, 2007, p. 68) It addresses the need to align the organization with the GAM approach chosen. During his inaugural Yip addressed two approaches, namely the bow-tie and the diamond model:
‘In a traditional sales-purchasing situation, the structure of the relationship between the two companies resembles a ‘bow-tie’ with all the activity within one company leading to one person who has contact with the other company (account manager at the supplier and purchasing officer at the customer). The integrated approach advocates a more integrated relationship structure that resembles a web or diamond shape in which employees from many different departments and functions have a direct relationship with each other and relevant people within the other company, as illustrated in the figure below’ (Yip, 2009, ERIM p. 27)
This diamond relationship model is quite interesting. It not only addresses a communication and collaboration challenge, but also a compliance and control challenge:
- How to facilitate better communication by giving all local and global stakeholders real-time access to relevant customer information based on a single source of truth? In many organizations customer information is scattered in many different systems.
- How to improve the way employees from local autonomous subsidiaries are working together with their coworkers in global account management roles? For example, how do local and global roles work together in responding to a tender.
- How to promote compliance with internal (global / local) policies and external regulations? You want to avoid cases such as the Australian subsidiary above.
- How to establish more control over GAM processes and related key indicators? (growth of margins, turnover, quality of relationship, payment behaviors, etc.)
During the day TNT Express discussed that they were using electronic workflow systems to unify everyone involved in for example a tender or a proposal. It shows that new technologies can facilitate GAM coordination models.
GAM from a customer intimacy point of view.
In addition to the presentation of Yip’s empirical work on GAM programs, the day offered a lot of views from the field. TNT Express, for example, presented their GAM approach and its evolution in the last years. Currently, TNT Express identified about 130 global accounts served by a dedicated group of 130 individuals in sales and sales support jobs. It fits the profile of a ‘coordination GAM’. Hugo Koppelaars, director of Solutions & Commercial at TNT Express addressed the fact that a GAM is all about people. Having the right people to execute a GAM program is key.
Earlier I defined customer intimacy as people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results. This definition can surely be applied to a GAM, to quote from the Shell presentation: ‘It is about making the pie bigger, not about slicing or dividing the pie’. In essence, a GAM should deliver both customer value and achieve results for the supplier.
One of the distinguishing elements in my definition is that customer intimacy is about people, and not necessarily about organizations. It is ultimately about people who build bonds and relationships with each other. The diamond model seeks to facilitate relationship building between various people from a supplier and customer. However, it seems that there is little information on how to evolve from a bow-tie relationship to a diamond relationship model.
Towards a social GAM perspective?
Social networks such as Facebook, Hyves, Twitter and Linkedin provide new ways for people to stay in touch with each. One of the key strengths of these social networks that they enable people to stay in touch with a level of regularity and intimacy that previously was not possible (see also earlier post).
Applied to GAM: Given that the success of the GAM depends on how people work together and form relationships, a GAM that leverages social networks outperforms GAMs that do not leverage social networks. In other words, a GAM that is built on a social network is more likely to be successful.
Social networks also facilitate innovation. A nice view is that of McAffee: 'Weak ties are sources of innovation, they are ways for you to get introduced to people who you would not know otherwise'. (see also earlier post on the strength of weak ties)
Applied to GAM: A social diamond model in which people can form both strong and weak ties among each other outperforms a relationship model in which people have only strong ties among each other.
Social networks have the potential to resolve problems in communication and collaboration. These are just two example of how social networks can potentially add value.
What about the compliance and control challenge? In order to execute a GAM program a supplier designs processes and assigns the right people to deliver on these processes. The supplier also makes choices in how to approach this GAM program (high local autonomy vs. high global integration) GAM processes also must have a degree of uniformity and measurability to maintain control over the process. In today’s connected world a large variety of solutions exist to get internationally distributed teams organized quickly. These can be customer relationship management tools or solutions focusing on business process automation.
The examples listed in this paragraph hopefully provide food for thought on how social networks can ‘make the pie bigger’ for both the customer and the supplier.
vrijdag 8 mei 2009
donderdag 7 mei 2009
Executive Social Marketing Bootcamp
dinsdag 5 mei 2009
Social Media the five-year forecast
"CRM solution providers such as SAP and Salesforce.com are quickly adapting to the demand for social relevance, the report says, by partnering with social-networking vendors and integrating application programming interfaces (APIs) that tap into public social data, such as Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles. Wherever possible, Owyang observes, vendors are working to establish "connective tissues" with communities. The networks themselves have the potential to transform into CRM systems. "They have the relationships -- people connecting to each other -- even sales and brands," Owyang says. "The piece missing is management. That's what's going to come next." Should Twitter, for example, offer tools for analytics and lead generation, the microblogging service could very well solve its quest for monetization, Owyang says"
Read the article here: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/Social-Media-The-Five-Year-Forecast-53635.aspx
maandag 23 maart 2009
Customer service in the cloud: the Orange Service Community by salesforce.com
dinsdag 10 maart 2009
Twitter in breaking news situations
donderdag 5 maart 2009
Enterprise 2.0 and the strength of weak ties
Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School about Enterprise 2.0 and its impact on business and startups - at the talk the future conference in Krems, Austria.
One of the topics addressed is his view on the importance of weak ties, a subject on which he published earlier. I liked the following quote from this video: 'Weak ties are sources of innovation, they are ways for you to get introduced to people who you would not know otherwise'. It show that new technologies can indeed strengthen relationships between people in ways that previously was not possible.
dinsdag 3 maart 2009
Ambient customer intimacy
‘Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because of time and space conspire to make it impossible’ (http://www.slideshare.net/leisa/ambient-intimacy)
Yesterday I was impressed by the way Skittles.com embraced Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and Wikipedia. It is a strong example of how a brand puts social media at the forefront! I would like to call this ‘ambient customer intimacy’. It opens up new possibilities of companies to be more intimate with their stakeholders. Especially in the B2C domain social media tools open up new ways of keeping in touch with your customers.
Ambient customer intimacy refers to the ability to leverage social media in such a way that customer intimacy emerges bottom-up. Skittles, for example, just created the platform, or unified various social media surrounding their brand. By unifying these media under the skittles.com umbrella they are strengthening the relationship with their stakeholders. The large number of twitter feeds mentioning skittles is already an indicator that they strengthen the ties between people associating themselves with the skittles brand.
Ambient customer intimacy furthermore provides food for thought of re-examining the customer intimacy definition of ‘people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results’. Especially, the structured part: ‘Every decision or every contact moment should be governed by processes that are designed with a customer focus. These processes structure the way people work together and prevent that customer related decisions are out of sync with each other.’ This definition implies top-down governance and imposed ways of handling customer related activities. Ambient customer intimacy refers to a new dimension where structure is not governed top-down but is facilitated by the community.
Any other examples of companies with an ambient customer intimacy?
maandag 2 maart 2009
donderdag 26 februari 2009
The cornerstones of the recession proof enterprise
The other day I heard the CEO of Akzo talk about the 3c’s that mattered most in challenging times: Customers, Cash and Cost. One of the key questions, however, how to execute and re-align your organizational processes to these 3C’s? In practice a large number of organizations are organized in silos that prevent effective collaboration and thus reaching cost efficiencies or customer centric actions. Recently, a book was published that provides a good read on this topic. It was written by David Aaker (2008) titled ‘spanning silos’.
Recession proof enterprises talk to customers
‘If you’re in management, you need to leave your office right now, put down all the reports and slides, and go talk to your customers. If you’re in B2B, talk to your customers’ customers. Get out from inside the battle and see the conflict from a different perspective.’ (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-win-in-a-recession-like-a-ninja/) This quote was taken from a recent blogpost on how to win in a recession like a ninja.
Recession proof enterprises focus on customer intimacy
In an earlier post I addressed customer intimacy as an effective recession proof strategy. I defined customer intimacy as people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results.
Recession proof enterprises focus on Communication, Collaboration, Compliance and Control.
A few years ago I wrote a paper on the arrival of new technologies that have a promise of improving the way people work together and structure their processes. These new technologies were enabling new ways of working and structuring processes in way that was previously not possible.
One of the key ideas behind this paper was to step aside from functional silos but to provide cornerstones to get organized around processes. In order to align people and achieve results one must take the following into account: communication, collaboration, compliance and control:
- Facilitating better communication by giving all stakeholders real-time access to relevant information based on a single source of truth.
- Improving collaboration by integrating business processes throughout the value chain
- Promoting compliance with internal policies and external regulations via highly standardized and transparent systems
- Establishing more control by providing real-time access to key performance indicators at the push of a button
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