Christoph Senn

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.

Global Customer Management Programs: How To Make Them Really Work

Identifying the right business model for addressing global customers and formalizing that model into a global customer management program is a key challenge for any firm with global aspirations. The key to success is embedding the program firmly within the firms corporate strategy. Simply leveraging domestic or regional account management into such a program will not deliver the desired results. This article presents a framework for successfully introducing a global customer management program, describing key challenges companies face at each stage of the process. It also identifies specific strategies and key principles to help firms transition to becoming truly customer-centric on a global basis.

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.

The executive growth factor: how Siemens invigorated its customer relationships

Purpose – Many companies claim to have established senior executive relationship programs, but few have linked their account plans to senior executive actions, and consequently, only a few can report successful growth results. This article provides a systematic approach to create a replicable executive engagement process.Design/methodology/approach – During 1997‐2005, five research consortiums on global account management (GAM), involving more than 30 companies around the world, were conducted. The objectives were to explore current successful practices and future competencies in GAM. In addition to the empirical investigation of the effects of successful GAM implementation, several case studies were developed.Findings – The case of Siemens Information & Communication illustrates the benefits on both the supplier and the customer sides when companies make a systematic effort to link their account plans to senior executive actions. In the case of Siemens, the growth rate of the systematically “managed” acc...