Global customer management programs: How to make them really work

California Management Review

Volumn 52, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 32-55

  Capon, Noel ^a   Senn, Christoph ^a,b  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ST GALLEN   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950321591     PISSN: 00081256     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/cmr.2010.52.2.32     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Raymond Vernon, In the Hurricane s Eye: The Troubled Prospects of Multinational Enterprises (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
2. The Wall Street Journal, August 16, 1991;
3. The Economist, December 7, 1996;
4. Purchasing, November 18, 2004;
5. Financial Times, June 15, 2007;
6. CPO Agenda, March 12, 2008 .
7. Noel Capon, Dave Potter, and Fred Schindler, Managing Global Accounts, 2nd edition (BronxVille, NY: Wessex, 2008), p. 12.
8. For more information about the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) see
9. Global customer management (GCM) is a systematic process for attracting, retaining, and growing the firms most important global customers. Compared to domestically based key/ strategic account management, GCM is much more complex because it deals with multiple countries, multiple cultures, and multiple time zones.
10. For a general review of key/strategic account management, see N. Capon, Key Account Management and Planning: The Comprehensive Handbook for Managing Your Company's Most Important Strategic Asset (New York, NY: The Free Press, 2001).
11. For work on GCM programs, see Capon, Potter, and Schindler, op. cit.; H.D. Hennessey and J.-P. Jeannet, Global Account Management: Creating Value (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2003);
12. G.S. Yip and A.J.M. Bink, Managing Global Customers: An Integrated Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
13. For more on the shift from traditional structures like product divisions, geographic-area divisions, and product/geographic area matrices to global customer-centric organizations, see C Homburg, J.P. Workman, and O. Jensen, Fundamental Changes in Marketing Organization: The Movement Toward a Customer-Focused Organizational Structure, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28/4 (Fall 2000): 459-478;
14. J. Birkinshaw, O. Toulán, and D. Arnold, Global Account Management in Multinational Corporations: Theory and Evidence, Journal of International Business Studies, 32/2 (2001): 231-248;
15. J. Birkinshaw and S. Terjesen, The Customer-Focused Multinational: Revisiting the Stopford and Wells Model in an Era of Global Customers, working paper SIM15, London Business School, London, May 2002.
16. For further discussion of the challenges and issues of GCM, see D.B. Montgomery and G.S. Yip, The Challenge of Global Customer Management, Marketing Management, 9/4 (Winter 2000), 22-29;
17. D. Arnold, J. Birkinshaw, and O. Toulán, Can Selling Be Globalized? The Pitfalls of Global Account Management, California Management Review, 44/1 (Fall 2001): 8-20;
18. M. Harvey, M.B. Myers, and M.M. Novicevic, The Managerial Issues Associated with Global Account Management: A Relational Contract Perspective, Journal of Management Development. 22/2 (2003): 103-129.
19. G.S. Yip and T.M. Madsen, Global Account Management: The New Frontier in Relationship Marketing, International Marketing Review, 13/3 (1996): 24-42;
20. R.D. Buzzell, Citibank: Marketing to Multinational Customers, Harvard Business School, case no. 9-584-016, 1984.
21. Boeing and Airbus seem to be large domestic versus global customers but Rolls-Royces challenge concerns the global footprint of their directa customers - Rolls-Royces indirea customers. Because many airlines operate on a global basis and require 24/7/365 service, Rolls-Royce must have a more global approach than just dealing with large domestic accounts. P&G has a related situation with its major customer, Wal-Mart. It has developed strong inter-firm relationships and benefits from a global as well as a U.S.-domestic perspective. Furthermore, the increasing globalization of P&Gs other top-ten retail customers drives development of a well-orchestrated global account program.
22. During the consortia, the authors and sales leaders developed and grouped nine criteria (quantitative and qualitative) into two dimensions - program scope and program commitment - to describe global account programs. (See also Figure 1 and Section Appendix.) These criteria led to the four-stage program typology and alternate implementation paths. IBM clearly fits into the Embedded category: its program is large (> 60 customers) and generates significant revenues (>20 percent of total). IBM assigns full-time GAMs, requires successful completion of a certification program, leverages global customer insights, assigns senior executive sponsors, and demonstrates deep organizational commitment. By contrast, we identified one group of firms that embarked on small programs (5-10 customers) earning less than 10 percent of revenues with minimal investment in people, processes, or systems - Pilot. Another group had many more global accounts but also had limited organizational commitment - Dead-End. Our approach is sympathetic to Yip and Bink, whose organizational solutions approach indicates that the loose coordination of newly installed programs typically migrates to stronger control.
23. Other researchers have modeled global account management. Almost a decade ago, Montgomery and Yip [op. cit.] developed a framework of program drivers and explored performance outcomes. Arnold, Birkinshaw, and Toulap [op. cit.] explored program characteristics and developed implementation considerations. Wilson, Speare, and Reese described multiple program stages based on individual buyer-seller relationships - pre-GAM, early GAM, isGAM, partnership GAM, and synergistic GAM [Note: In this framework, GAM is a contraction of global account management].
24. K. Wilson, N. Speare, and S. Reese, Successful Global Account Management (London: Kogan Page, 2002).
25. Hui Shi, Zou, and Cavusgil developed a conceptual capability model and potential performance links.
26. L. Hui Shi, S. Zou, and S.T. Cavusgil, A Conceptual Framework of Global Account Management Capabilities and Firm Performance, International Business Review, 13/5 (2004): 539-553.
27. More recently. Yip and Bink [op. cit.] focused on supplier-customer integration abilities to determine best-fit organizational solutions. Our framework builds on these insights but takes an implementationoriented perspective to help firms master the transition to become truly customer-centric on a global basis.
28. Capon, Potter, and Schindler, op. dt, pp. 42-45.
29. For discussions of the different stages of organizational alignment, see G.S. Day, Aligning the Organization with the Market, Sloan Management Review, 48/1 (Fall 2006): 41-49. He argues that companies move through a series of stages of evolution, depending on a variety of strategic and operational priorities
30. For a practical example of a multi-item global customer selection criteria set, see G.S. Yip and A. Bink, Managing Global Accounts, Harvard Business Review, 85/9 (September 2007): 103-111.
31. Montgomery and Tip, op. cit.
32. Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman and CEO Schneider Electric SA, Keynote Address at the Strategic Account Management Assodations Pan-European Conference, Paris, February 11, 2008.