Key Account Management: Critical Success Factors

Abstract

In the highly competitive market place, customer acquisition, retention and growth are turning out to be a big challenge for
organisations. Product and service differentiations are fast emulated by competitors which are leading to commoditisation
and in turn a price war. Significant budget commitments for product development and marketing are further stressing
company’s financial performance. Information at a click is making customers more knowledgeable and they continue to
demand more for same or less.
Key account management (KAM) is one relationship-driven approach leading organisations to successfully adopting to hold
on to their important customers. In essence, KAM is about building cross functional relationships cutting across hierarchies
with the objective of developing deeper understanding of customer’s stated and unstated needs and accordingly customizing
solution. This special relationship is based on trust and paves way for co-creation – be it in technology domain, market
and/or delivery end of business. It is this unique glue that is hard to copy and makes it difficult to break account Although very effective and well-intended KAM is far from easy to implement, given associated complexities in organisational set-ups, product portfolios and above all market forces. It requires significant investment and commitment of management time, budgets, resource allocation, IT systems etc. While concept of KAM remains same, each case is distinct from other and calls for differential treatment. It therefore is understood that there is not fixed formulae for success. However a deeper research and study of organisation who have successfully harnessed KAM, throws up interesting patterns. This research article has captured these trends and presented them as Critical Success Factors in Key Account Management.