Study On Project-based Key Account Marketing About Z Company

Project products are created and designed to meet individual account’s differentiations.Therefore,when project-driven enterprises are dealing with different requirements of each individual account,it means every account is a segment market.Like most enterprises,project-driven enterprises also come cross with key accounts having significant meanings toward their survival and development.To establish and maintain a good relationship with key accounts is essentially crucial for project-driven enterprises in order to reduce marketing costs and increase successful marketing rates.Taking Z Company,a system integrator with a business history of over 20 years,as the main research object,based on the theories of key account marketing,relationship management and project marketing as instructions,using insightful interviews and Customer Journey Map(CJM)as research tools,this article is meant to explore the buying and decision-making process of key accounts,different requirements in different collaboration stages,as well as evaluations on Z Company’s services.Thus,to find out questions,then provide conclusions and marketing suggestions.Main conclusions as follows:sourcing process of Z Company’s key accounts could be included into 10 stages.They are requirement acknowledgement,requirement confirmation,sourcing goal confirmation,targeting goods’ value analysis,milestone delimitation,opinion solicitation,sourcing plan verification,vendor filter,vendor confirmation and project performance evaluation,respectively.According to the key accounts,Z Company performs well in the stages of requirement acknowledgement,requirement confirmation,sourcing goal confirmation,milestone delimitation,vendor filter,and vendor confirmation,but need to improve in the processes of targeting goods’ value analysis,opinion solicitation and sourcing plan verification.Meanwhile,Z Company is also facing challenges on costs efficiency,products operation method not suitable towards clients’ habits,unable to discover and remove the potential danger,as well as defective organizations during operations and implementations.To deal with above problems,it is recommended that Z Company should establish a common goal of achieving sustainable clientele’s satisfaction among all the participants of the projects involved.At the same time,Z Company should also authorize key account managers to build up their own project departments.In addition,it is important too,to involve the clientele’s evaluation and satisfaction into the employee’s KPI.Z Company is also suggested to make further improvements to solve the clientele’s pain points during different stages of the projects implementations,for example,to add internal evaluations into the targeting goods’value analysis stage based on the clientele’s perspective;during opinion solicitation,to invite clients to join the goods selections and vendor filter;to provide samples for clients to try out;as well as to provide operation training based on the try out experiences.During sourcing verification,to sign the "back to back"sourcing contract with vendors.During performance evaluations,the major project leader should accompany the client’s visit the whole time.At last,it is important to deliver high level after sales service based on the signed "back to back" contract.