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Tag: Ecosystem management

Industrial goods, Strategic account manager skills and competencies, Technology

Helping your customers go digital: A conversation with Boston Consulting Groups’s Jonathan Van Wyck

Boston Consulting Group recently released a three-part series on digital maturity in the manufacturing sector. SAMA reached out to series co-author Jonathan Van Wyck, a partner and managing director at BCG, to ask him what suppliers can do to make themselves indispensable to their strategic customers’ digital transformation journeys. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

SAMA: I think people may have a narrow view of what we’re talking about when we talk about digitization. Can you lay out the full scope of what we mean by digitization?

JVW: When we think about digital transformation broadly, we think about a couple of different avenues. There’s one leg of it that’s saying, “How do you reengineer the customer experience, leveraging digital technologies, to support the projects and products you are offering?” The second is, “How do you actually leverage digitization as an opportunity to drive new growth and launch new solutions and new businesses?” And then there’s digitizing your internal operations, which is taking the internal lens and asking, “How do I take my manufacturing process, my supply chain, my customer service and support, and my sales processes, and leverage digital technologies to reengineer — either at a lower cost or to drive more effectiveness — those internal processes?” We have a framework off the shelf on that if that’s helpful to share. 

Courtesy of Boston Consulting Group (2019)

SAMA : Can you talk about what you set out to study and what you learned? 

JVW: What we’ve been seeing is that everybody’s talking about digital operations, and everyone feels a high degree of conviction that this is the future. But when you take that and contrast it with  the progress that we see with our clients, there’s a disconnect. What we’ve found is that they’re taking almost a project-based approach to digitization, where they’re working with individual vendors who have a cool technology to pilot it in a specific location. Or they have an internal project around some component of digital — a plant scheduling tool or something like that — but they’re not able to drive it at scale and really capture the full benefit.

So we took a step back and started thinking about what we have learned from doing this with a bunch of companies to sort of bridge that gap between what we talk about as the opportunity versus the reality of where companies are — and then move from point solutions and individual projects or applications to actually driving value at scale. 

SAMA: So what you’re saying is, there are a lot of pilot projects out there that can prove themselves out, but the companies, for any of a number of reasons, don’t manage to scale the solution and really capture the full value. 

JVW: Exactly. When you look at past industrial revolutions, I’m sure it took the same stages in development. But the challenge here is that the way of working is so fundamentally different from traditional approaches. We’re talking about another revolution in terms of the types of talent, way of working from an agile standpoint — but also building the infrastructure to be able to support these use cases. I see our third paper as the most critical one. It’s about the organization and way of working to drive this at scale, which is ultimately what I think is the issue.

It’s not like companies don’t have great ideas, and it’s not like companies don’t have an idea of what the right use cases are. It’s really about, “How do you actually build the organizational capability, the funding model and the talent to be able to do this?”

SAMA: I’m thinking about the manufacturing environment, in which great plants are typically run by very seasoned people who have been doing this forever. And to do a pilot project, you’ve got to bring in data scientists and a bunch of under-30 digital natives who can actually make it happen. 

JVW: Also, company processes are oriented towards waterfall I.T. projects and are not set up to support this type of innovation. Because a traditional funding model is, “Submit a capital request with your full plan, the milestones all laid out, the exact financial investment that you’re looking for from the company, and then we’ll have a meeting with our senior leadership and debate it, probably cut your funding a little bit, and then approve it.” Whereas here, you don’t actually know the challenges, and actually laying out a full roadmap and waterfall set of milestones is actually counterproductive to what you actually need to do to experiment quickly, which is to assume that 25 percent of what you do is really going to work. So you do the 75 percent that will fail very cheaply, and then rapidly scale the 25 percent that does work. You just don’t know all that stuff in advance, and so it doesn’t fit with traditional processes.

So there’s a challenge from a talent standpoint, but I don’t think it’s just about hiring more people under 30. It’s about thinking about your internal processes and, in some cases, modifying your approach to how you drive digital operations. And this applies more broadly, not just within operations but to your traditional funding, project management and approval. 

SAMA: So to a certain extent, you have to invest and pray and then say, “OK. How can we take this 25% percent [that’s actually working] and really put more effort into those and get more benefits faster?”

JVW:  You just need to set it up to say, “We’re going to have an outside-in view of what the opportunity is. And we’ll have a long list of use cases, roughly mapped to that opportunity, and an idea of what that’s likely going to cost.” And then in your next meeting, a month later, you’re going to have a much more refined view. And then a month later, it will be even more refined.

So it’s a journey from more ambiguity to more specificity, but you just can’t shortcut that journey and have the specificity at the beginning.

That’s really challenging for companies that are used to having that specificity, which in reality is false specificity because projects overrun 80 percent of the time and take longer, et cetera. It’s a mindset shift. 

SAMA: In my career, we had a hurdle rate that you had to exceed. If your project didn’t have better than a two-year ROI and proven, financially sound waterfall, you didn’t even submit the project because it was never going to get funded. Is that mentality bumping up against how you have to approach the digitization project? 

JVW: There is a set of infrastructure that needs to be put in place to support use cases: You need to set up a cloud infrastructure. You need to build a data lake. You need to invest in a certain number of technologies, et cetera.

The challenge is where I’ve seen companies burdening those first set of use cases with the cost of all that infrastructure, even though that infrastructure could support 100 use cases.

This problem can be unlocked by doing it at scale and having conviction around the strategic relevance for your overall company and the total value on the table, versus taking it piecemeal and starting with three or four use cases in one factory.

SAMA: In a normal plant environment, there’s a plant manager, there’s a division leader, there’s probably some subject-matter experts, et cetera. But with this kind of thing, it sounds like you need to go above that traditional manufacturing decision-making process and get C-level buy-in?

JVW: Typically it’s at the C-level.

SAMA: From the supplier perspective, do you see them being a catalyst by bringing some of these ideas forward, or is it all internal to the customer itself? 

JVW: I think the more stakeholders you can involve in the ideation process, the better. I’m a big proponent of involving suppliers, but I like to first recommend that companies internally align on what the pain points are and a high-level view of what a solution could look like before they go down that path. 

SAMA: Are there any kind of best practices that you see good suppliers doing to really help this process work? 

JVW: Recognizing that the process needs to start with the pain points and value levers. Don’t lead with your technologies, but facilitate a workshop around a specific process that’s relevant to them. That can be really powerful. It’s also about being open to collaboration and sharing of data. Because one of the other challenges I see is that it’s so hard to share data across companies.

SAMA: Are there any observations on who typically leads that so-called ecosystem to create a common data lake? Do you sometimes see a supplier that takes that on for the manufacturing company to help pull all these disparate entities together?

JVW: It’s typically a manufacturer, but wherever the supplier has the scale I don’t see why they couldn’t take the lead in their specific swim lane. 

SAMA: We teach our customers to say, “It takes a village to solve the problem, and if you can become the leader of that village, there’s a lot of value.“

JVW: I think that’s the next frontier: How do you digitize the value chain and start working with your suppliers and working with your customers to take waste out of the system looking holistically? Whoever can lead that ecosystem is in a pretty interesting position.

SAMA: Say I’m the strategic account manager for 3M going into a factory and trying to bring value to them. Any advice you’d give? 

JVW: First, I think it’s so much easier to do that if you have a business model or an offering where you’re a solution provider versus an individual product provider. That’s one piece. And then the other piece is, map out the customer journey associated with your product or solution, and what that looks like — where the frictions or pain points are along that journey. If you don’t have that, then you’re not going to be able to add value to your customer. Having that approach embedded into the strategic account playbook becomes really valuable because it allows you to have a different level of discourse with your customers.

SAMA: Say you’re a SAM who just got assigned to a new customer. Is there a typical spot that you might want to start inside your customer, or is that really company by company, organization by organization?

JVW: It is very case by case. Some organizations will have a manufacturing strategist. Some may have a digital organization already set up. Some may be decentralized, with the plant manager driving the decision making. Some may be more centralized. That’s why you need to be able to map the organization of your customer and understand where the decision makers are.

SAMA:  Typically, when this first meeting happens, is the customer expecting the supplier to bring people that have subject-matter expertise? 

JVW: Yes, you can also look horizontally — because you may not have the whole scope of technology required to solve this pain point.

You need to be humble in recognizing that you may not have the capabilities to solve the entire pain point, and so you may need to work with your peers to build a solution that you can then bring to your customer.

And if you’re the one actually orchestrating that, it can be really value-additive, versus just bringing your customer a specific technology.

Say for example that you have the best programmable logical controllers, and then maybe you partner with the analytics provider who does the analysis on top of that, and then — oh by the way — you partner with a robotics company. I haven’t seen many suppliers do this effectively, but that could be very differentiating to be able to offer as the supplier. And then, by the way, you’re the one with the overall solution, versus [just being] one piece of it. That’s a much more powerful position to be in from a margin standpoint. 

You can find BCG’s how-to guide to digitization here. Parts two and three can be found here and here.

August 20, 2019August 20, 2019customer co-discovery, Digital transformation, Ecosystem management, Industry 4.0, Moving from products to solutionsLeave a comment
SAMA Research, Strategic account manager skills and competencies

From strategic account management to strategic ecosystem leadership

By Kaj Storbacka and Elisabeth Cornell

Digitalization is both a source of disruption and an enormous opportunity. We argue for the latter. Never has there been a better opening for SAM programs and strategic account managers to take on a bigger role in securing the future of their organizations.

The implications of digitalization are forcing SAM programs — and the SAMs who drive them — to redefine themselves on multiple dimensions. While many traditional SAM traits will remain, the overarching trajectory will see SAMs having to become even more strategic than they are currently.

The practical manifestations of becoming more strategic will take three distinct shapes:

  • SAMs will take alignment to the next level by becoming drivers of strategic development cross-functionally and inter-organizationally.
  • Strategic account management will be liberated from the shackles of the seller-buyer dynamic by transforming from account management to ecosystem or stakeholder management.
  • SAMs will develop new processes and skill sets that will make the future one of leadership, rather than of management.

The role and responsibility of the SAM are transforming from advanced, consultative, insight-based selling focusing on one customer relationship towards orchestration of mutual value creation in a larger ecosystem of organizations. To simplify, one could argue that strategic account management is becoming strategic ecosystem leadership — no longer SAM but SEL.

The elevated SAM’s new and important roles are summarized in diagram below.

Elevating SAM.png

From aligning to driving: strategizing

Traditionally, SAM has been viewed as a set of management practices that aim at inter- and intra-organizational alignment: Inter-organizational alignment to jointly (with the customer) develop a value proposition and a process for the delivery of the value proposition…and intra-organizational alignment to create a collaborative, flexible and committed customer-centric culture that enables value creation for the customer and value capture for the firm.

The goal of aligning functions and processes between selling and buying organizations is not disappearing, but the new digital reality means that it is no longer enough. Increasingly, SAMs will need to assume the role of “change champions” who drive change and strategy development.

Being a change champion can take several forms, but key to them all is to not fall into a trap of becoming an administrative and commercial coordinator – someone who spends her/his time on aligning, without having a development trajectory aiming for new value creation. A change champion may drive development in three different ways:

  • Driving strategy for the selling firm. The strategic account manager needs to be involved not only in executing strategy but also, increasingly, in driving strategic initiatives within his or her own organization. The SAM program should be a vehicle for top management to identify new business and renewal opportunities and to shape the firm’s strategy by providing deep understanding of strategic customers and the overall market.
  • Driving strategy for the customer. The strategic account manager needs to focus on helping the customer create value in new ways. Sometimes this takes the form of challenging various influencers in the customer organization and suggesting modifications to its present ways of running things. This implies new types of processes and skill sets, where strategic account managers are tasked with becoming “value innovators and transformation agents” by helping customer organizations to strategize.
  • Driving market development. As markets become more dynamic and malleable, and strategies are less market-driven and more market-driving, the SAM becomes a key market shaper and can, for instance, push the market boundaries by finding customers who are early innovators and then engaging them as lead customers in a process of collective learning. Additionally, facilitating dialogue with customers and other actors in the ecosystem can challenge dominating assumptions about the market, reexamine existing market boundaries and expand market boundaries.

Becoming a driver of strategic development has two consequences. First, it will heighten the importance of value quantification and verification. To drive customers’ strategy or how the market develops, the SAM will need to tap into available data to show the potential for reconfiguring resources in the ecosystem to enable value creation relevant to influencers inside the ecosystem. Using data analytics will be the basis for credibility creation – a necessary foundation on which to build the case for change.

Second, SAM practices will need to be modified to better fit with the idea of driving change. Account planning will need to look beyond the buyer-seller dynamic to become increasingly collaborative. Value propositions will need to be made based on deep insight into influencer and stakeholder situations, and new tools will need to be applied to engage influencers and stakeholders in a collaborative process of co-creation. Digitalization provides tools and techniques for these modifications.

From account to ecosystem: orchestrating

A dramatic development that supports the elevation of SAM is the expansion of the “unit of analysis” – moving focus from the seller-buyer dynamic of strategic accounts to the larger ecosystem. If global accounts that involve hundreds of individuals are viewed as complex, then widening the perspective to include entire ecosystems makes them exponentially more so.

Increasingly, companies face situations where no single firm possesses all the resources or capabilities required to deliver the value required by strategic accounts. As solutions become more complex and components of the solutions become more digital, they are increasingly created and delivered by a “competency system,” or ecosystem — a combination of collaborating industry players.

The consequence is that strategic account management needs to be emancipated from the shackles of the seller-buyer paradigm so that it can focus on generating a better understanding of how resources in the broader ecosystem can be reconfigured to increase resource density for the strategic account. To put it succinctly: SAMs need to become industry players, ecosystem architects and ecosystem orchestrators – all roles that require a new set of skills and new tools.

In an ecosystems view, success is less dependent on the resources that a firm controls than on the resources to which the firm can connect. This flips traditional strategic account management on its head. Rather than start with what the firm controls and look for ways to leverage it, tomorrow’s SAMs will need to begin with the opportunity and then assemble the required resources in its wake. Key will be the ability to orchestrate actors and resources in the larger system to allow the firm to assemble and flexibly reconfigure resources so that value can be created for the entire ecosystem.

To seize opportunities that lie outside the grasp of any one firm, SAMs need to assemble partners, create alliances and enter into joint development efforts in which influencers and stakeholders are guided towards a common vision.

From management to leadership: facilitating

The key to being successful in driving strategic development in a customer organization or in an ecosystem of stakeholders is a simple realization: Change will never happen unless you can engage other individuals in the process. It requires leadership that facilitates others – customers, suppliers, other business partners and sometimes even regulators – to engage in a common change journey.

Moving from a firm-centric view to an ecosystems view implies an acceptance of complexity and uncertainty – and a corresponding loss of control. A successful strategic account manager encourages novelty and innovation not by directing but by allowing; not by stabilizing but by disrupting stifling patterns. In fact, in order to become a driver of change, one must decouple leadership from the individual and distinguish between “leadership”and “leaders.” SAM leadership should be seen as an emergent, interactive and distributed process of learning, influenced and enabled by the SAM process and strategic account managers.

Hence, we are not arguing that strategic account managers need to become better leaders, but rather that they will need to engage in processes of leadership that are characterized by facilitation and rotating leadership:

  • From self-centric to allocentric innovation. Orchestration of resources and activities in the ecosystem will require strategic account managers to switch from a self-centric, firm-based view to an allocentric (“other-centered”) view in which value is created for the whole market system by integrating resources from an ecosystem of organizations. To seize opportunities outside the firm’s grasp, the SAM will have to facilitate processes that help to assemble partners, create alliances and enter into joint development efforts.
  • Learn from jazz (i.e., rotating leadership): Part of orchestration relates to improvisation and allowing others to play their solos. Even if a jazz band has a leader, his/her roles are very different from the traditional orchestral conductor. The latter stands alone, high on the podium, and controls the performance with his baton, based on a score. By contrast, in jazz the leader is one of the players. And leadership rotates during solos, as everybody else builds a platform enabling the soloist to shine. Research has shown that rotating leadership — where organizations take turns leading the inter-organizational collaboration in distinct phases — and consensus leadership — where organizations work together, agree to common objectives and follow shared decision making — are associated with higher innovation outcomes than collaborations dominated by a single actor.

Strategic account management traditionally has been a set of primarily managerial practices: to make account-specific plans, execute them and follow up. Simultaneously, the more advanced programs have engaged in activities geared towards impact without authority, acknowledging that SAM programs on the one hand have an element of conflict management in them, but also that strategic account managers can exercise considerable power if they play the game well.

The managerial part of SAM is not going to disappear, but the leadership part will need to be elevated. This does not mean that strategic account managers will need to become more “leaders” than they are today, but rather that the SAM process will need to be designed in such a way that it enables distributed leadership in a collaborative process. Digitalization provides tools for this. Cloud-based collaboration also can, at its best, enable work to be organized more in projects and less in functions, and can enable the formation of flatter organizations. This would facilitate more people to be engaged in leadership.

An exciting time

To reap the benefits of digitalization, we need to ensure that digitalization is not used to engage in more administrative work or building more elaborate account plans. The name of the game is increasingly about added value, co-created between many stakeholders in the ecosystem. And this co-creation puts demands on strategic account managers’ abilities to navigate inside their own company as well as inside the customer’s and other stakeholders’ organizations.

For those who are ready for this new role, these are exciting times! Want to go deeper? Read the entire SAMA research report on which this post is based here.

Kaj Storbacka is professor of Markets and Strategy at the University of Auckland Business School’s Graduate School of Management. Elisabeth Cornell recently retired after nearly two decades at SAMA, most recently as senior knowledge content developer. 

October 26, 2018July 17, 2019Change management, Digitalization, Ecosystem management, Multifunctional account team leadership, Value analysis and opportunity insight1 Comment
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