Leveraging Knowledge in Global Key Account Management

Global account management elevates the organization’s need for knowledge significantly. Similar to business managers, global account executives have to carve future business fields together with the global customer and, at the same time, stay on top of operational issues.

Generating knowledge in marketing has usually been associated with compiling data from marketing research, collecting annual reports or tracking sales figures. Software vendors promise to solve all problems with technologies like CRM systems, data warehouses and data mining. Nevertheless, knowledge management requires a more comprehensive approach.
In a six-month benchlearning group project, four manufacturers from diverse industries, including specialty chemicals, pump systems, steel production and electrical technology, were researched in-depth.

The research methodology combined several instruments:
• a global telephone survey inside the companies and among key customers (seventy respondents in total)
• three workshops with senior level executives from the four companies investigated
• in-house research in the companies
• a case research of the Palo-Alto-based technology manufacturer Hewlett-Packard (HP)

Globalizing customers are driving the pressure to act. Purchasing power is becoming more concentrated, and, at the same time, strategic components are increasingly bought centrally an effort substantially supported by global information systems.

Knowledge management should comprise solutions to generate, disseminate and respond to knowledge. Especially, information systems that enable knowledge transfers should be designed.