Axel Michael Thoma

Customer-Centric Leadership : How to Manage Strategic Customers as Assets in B2B Markets

In this age of tough, global competition, companies in business-to-business markets need to rethink the way they manage their customer portfolio and interact with their customers. Customer managers with mainly sales-or relationship-oriented roles cannot leverage their business relationships with customers who seek co-creation. For such co-creation relationships, companies need to install network-oriented managers who systematically create value and reduce risk together with the customer. This article distinguishes three customer asset management perspectives (i.e., sales, relationship, and network) that may be employed by customer managers at the supplier-customer interface. Following an explication of the evolving network perspective, it describes how firms can nurture the network perspective and the corresponding customer manager role in terms of mindset, context, and competence.

Leveraging Synergies between R&D and Key Account Management to Drive Value Creation

OVERVIEW: Customer integration into the innovation process, including the fuzzy front end, is increasingly being adopted by firms in search of new innovation and value-creation opportunities. Through a case study of Altana, a specialty chemicals company with worldwide R&D and sales operations, we find that a closer collaboration between R&D and key account management (KAM) unlocks synergies and value creation potential while avoiding the negative side effects of customer integration. Specifically, we describe the motivation for leveraging synergies between R&D and KAM, the location of potential synergies in the innovation process, and ways to foster meaningful alignment and engagement. Following an explanation of observed outcomes of the collaboration, we derive managerial implications.