What Reviewers Are Saying
Review by Jennifer Cuthbertson
Managing a company’s global accounts is not the same as managing national accounts, and any business that tries to move from national to global accounts without careful consideration and planning is doomed to fail. Managing Global Accounts presents a planning process and nine critical factors that any company must consider as it moves into the global marketplace. From how to change an organization’s structure, to how to determine what accounts to accept, to how to hire the right Global Account Manager (GAM), this book provides a blueprint for any company contemplating making the leap into the global economy.
Capon, Potter, and Schindler focus on achieving corporate success and organizational survival by focusing on developing and sustaining beneficial relationships with global customers. Today, many companies are finding that they are getting a higher portion of their revenue and profits from fewer customers. In fact, these customers can be considered to be core assets.
As a result many companies have developed strategic or key account programs as an organizational approach to revenue and profit concentration. These strategies have brought many companies great success, when they develop the appropriate strategies, line organizations, systems and processes, and human resources to serve them. But, many of the companies find they are not set up to handle a customer’s request to place a single global order, to purchase similarly.
The authors contend that the domestic strategic account management model does not work for this scenario, because the supplier does not have a framework, strategy, organization, or process to negotiate an arrangement with the global customer. As they put it, The multi-domestic (or multinational) supplier cannot satisfy the customer’s need for conducting business globally, even though the supplier itself may operate in many countries around the world.
Successful global account management may call for reformulating the line organization and accepting the inherent personnel dislocations. It will also mean changing systems and processes designed to serve domestic customers with ones that will work globally, and the human resources implications are enormous. Globalization is one of the key catalysts for change in today’s business world, and one of the biggest challenges is that most companies will still need to meet the needs of their domestic customers, while determining how to adapt for current and potential global customers.
The authors have outlined several hurdles that companies must clear before setting up a global account management system. They also lay out the rewards and risks in global account management and caution that, while it is very tempting to skip the extensive planning, it is not recommended. Indeed the benefits of “getting it right the first time are very substantial. If you are able to improve your relationships with a few global accounts, the rewards in additional revenues and profits should by far exceed your investment in the global program.
A successful global account program can mean increased profits through global coordination; development of global partnerships; better competitive positioning, and greater global dependency by customers, because customers also benefit. They receive better products and services that meet their needs, and they could gain process efficiencies and solve global supply chain issues.
But, as has been pointed out already, global account management is not risk-free. It is possible to create expectations, both with the internal sales force and the external customer, that are hard to meet. A company may experience additional price pressures from customers, and a company may need to invest in improvements to service in remote areas. Corporate culture may also interfere with the transformation to a global account management system.
Business Book Review™ Vol. 23, No. 17 - Copyright ©2006 Business Book Review, LLC. - All Rights Reserved
Rolf Dobelli (Luzern Switzerland)
Noel Capon, Dave Potter and Fred Schindler claim that how corporations manage their global accounts will determine nothing less than their "success and organizational survival in the 21st century." The authors present in reasonably clear (though not always grammatical) language the essentials of global account management. Stories at the beginnings of the chapters demonstrate the importance of the issues, and helpful summaries at the ends recapitulate the authors' main points. This is a practitioner's guide, straightforward and detailed. getAbstract recommends it to global account managers as well as to managers of sales and marketing units who are considering instituting a global account management program.
