Customer portfolio and Strategic Account Management 04255 - Essay Example

This paper is focused on the concept of customer portfolio and its relevance to the strategic account management. Storbacka (2012) mentioned that the concept of strategic account management is based on the “co-creation of value”. The term strategic accounts or the key accounts indicate to the most valuable customers of the company (Ford et al, 2003). The process of value generation lies in the centre of the corporate goals that allows the firms to deeply focus on understanding the customers’ value creating process and how the firm’s strategies are responsible for it.

Homburg et al (2002) opined that the value generation through strategic account management program involves a long list of activities including product development, pricing, distribution, offering services along with manufacturing and sales. The integrated effect of these factors yields value for the customers, which creates a long term relationship between them and the firms. Piercy and Lane (2006) argued that there are significant levels of risks involved with the implementation of the strategic account management process.

There must be a proper alignment of the internal organizational activities and the organizational goals. To put it simply Guesalaga and Johnston (2010) described that the organisational activities of different departments must be holistically aligned to the goals and objectives related to the customer value generation. Sherman et al (2003) proposed that the strategic account management should be viewed as a process of conducting business and not simple a selling process. The concept of inter-organizational alignment suggests that the organizations should increase its overall understanding of the business concerns of the customers and creating value proposition through a “joint venture”.

Eid and Trueman (2002) have mentioned that the strategic or key accounts management has