Strategic Account Management Blog
A global dialogue of strategic account management and customer value
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Hat tip to Walker:
A article in the January/February Harvard Business Review makes the argument that the corporate strategy of maximizing shareholder value, championed prominently by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, has failed as a driver of sound long-term business practices. But author Roger Martin does not shed a tear bemoaning this failure. Instead he heralds a coming era when corporations increasingly will place maximizing customer value at the top of their priority lists. This will be the age of customer capitalism. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s as corporate executives and boards of directors began to name maxed-out shareholder value as their number one goal, Mr. Welch became arguably the most celebrated businessman in history for championing this approach. But after 30 years, the companies that emphasized maximizing shareholder value (Coca-Cola and General Electric) fared no better than companies that clearly put customer value ahead of shareholder value (Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson), Martin writes. And ironically 2008-2009 saw a historically unprecedented plunge in shareholder value (and after all those years of executives and their boards “putting shareholders first”!) We hope Martin’s article is just the beginning of a discussion on better business practices in the 21st century. Highly recommended!
Article here (membership or subscription required):
Over at the Wall Street Journal blog “Technology Business,” Don Clark noted the reluctance of many in business to use Web-based virtual meeting and role-playing spaces like Second Life (http://secondlife.com). Clark specifies two reasons: 1) These worlds are closed-off islands the Web. Part of the promise of the Web is interconnectivity. Running around in Second Life effectively closes you out from the rest of the Web. 2) Security: Companies want to be able to house a virtual world on their own servers for security reasons. http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/10/20/linking-the-real-web-with-virtual-worlds/
We agree that Second Life et. al. have not yet matched the hype that surrounded their emergence on the business scene back in 2006. But our members reacted positively to a SAMA Webinar Series event by Anders Gronstedt, a Web 2.0 consultant who counsels businesses on how to use Second Life. And frankly, we were surprised to learn the degree to which one of our corporate member companies is currently using Second Life to bolster its strategic account management program, along with plans to encourage greater participation in Second Life among its account managers. So, is Second Life an effective tool for account management and customer collaboration? Are account managers at your company using virtual online worlds?
Companies that survive and thrive in the coming years will be “innovative beyond customer imagination,” “globally integrated,” and “disruptive by nature,” according to the latest edition of IBM’s Global CEO Study: The Future of the Enterprise.
IBM interviewed more than 1,000 CEOs of companies worldwide, and the results are well worth a strategic account manager’s or executive’s time to study. For instance, “more (CEOs) are starting to price based on value to the customer, rather than cost plus” . . . “some companies are bundling to create more valuable solutions, while others are unbundling to offer customer a menu of choices.” And “interestingly, CEO are also using revenue model innovation as part of their geographic expansion strategies.” The report, which is full of such insights, can be downloaded at:
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