Key account management: Overcoming internal conflict

Abstract

The need for an integrated, cross-functional approach to customer management is well recognised. Managers have tried numerous structural and cultural adaptation methods to achieve it, but with limited success. Strategically important customers are becoming more prevalent and are demanding more sophisticated, integrated (often international) solutions. As a result, the internal conflicts that naturally arise from attempts to integrate across functional and national barriers now risk leading to customer dissatisfaction on a critical scale. Key account management (KAM), developed to meet the broader needs of those large, strategically important customers, has succeeded in overcoming internal conflict where other approaches have failed. KAM success relies on cross-functional teamwork and key account managers with a unique blend of boundary-spanning qualities. Not only does this combination help to solve the problem of internal conflict within the KAM team itself, it also extends beyond the KAM team, reducing cross-boundary conflict and infighting in the wider organisation. While not an easy or simple solution, and not one that is necessarily suitable for all companies, it seems that where KAM is strategically appropriate the benefits are culturally as well as financially profitable. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT