9.2 Future outlook

As illustrated in chapter 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and 5.1.3 each market organisation will select their 15 key accounts according to the respective scoring model. There is a strong likelihood that some market organisations will cover manufacturing sites of the same multinational corporations. A typical example is BASF, the chemical giant, which has big manufacturing sites all over the world. This situation offers synergy potential between the individual MTPRO market organisations. For instance, a successful MTPRO collaboration with BASF in Germany might be leveraged for a better access at BASF in China. This requires data and information exchange between the Key Account Managers of the various market organisations. In addition, there might be a request for a global preferred supplier agreement from the headquarters at BASF. This in turn would have an impact for all global BASF sites. These considerations shall be taken into account for the subsequent implementation of a Global Account Management. It shall be evaluated after the national key account management will have been running successfully for about two years.

The GAM shall be built on the national key account management organisation. It would require a new position, the Head of Global Account Management. She/he would be based at the headquarters of the SBU Ingold/ Thornton in Switzerland. The head of GAM supervises the newly appointed Global Account Manager (GAM) via a dotted line, which means it involves coaching and supervision without managerial authority. The Global Account Managers, who manage one or possibly more global accounts, are simultaneously existing National Key Account Manager. The global accounts need to be carefully selected according to a new scoring model. The Global Account Manager is allocated to those selected global accounts, whose headquarters are located in his/her country. She/he only calls on the manufacturing sites of the global account(s) in his/her country. However, she/he controls and coordinates the strategy and actions of the National Key Account Manager who cover the manufacturing sites of the global account(s) in the other respective countries.

Figure 26 demonstrates a possible organisational structure for an integrated national and global key account management within MTPRO.

Management MTPRO" class="wp-image-9154 size-full" height="476" src="https://sgbs.ch/wp-content/uploads/Figure-26-Future-Global-Key-Account-Management-MTPRO.png" width="610"> Figure 26: Future Global Key Account Management MTPRO (Source: On the basis of Belz Christian/ Müllner Markus/ Zupancic Dirk, Figure 102, page 280)

The proposed organisation set-up offers the following advantages:

The current national key account management concept can easily be upgraded to a global account management concept without the need to recruit new Global Account Managers.

It can be viewed as a promotion for some of the existing National Key Account Managers. This in turn increases the motivation of them and has a positive job retention effect.

Since the Global Account Managers still report to the country’s Business Area Managers there is no interference with the interests and hierarchical structure of the market organisations.