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Chapter 2 examined how a supplier should decide whether to adopt a global customer management (GCM) programme. This chapter discusses how to evaluate the GCM drivers in both the customer's and the supplier's industry, and how to integrate the GCM programme into the supplier's overall global strategy and global organization.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the globalization context for managing global customers. It then turns to the globalization of buying and selling and the key response by suppliers — and global account management (GAM). An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter addresses the following questions: Should a company develop a global customer management (GCM) programme? How can it determine whether to do so? What are the potential benefits and costs? It begins by examining four types of drivers of GCM: customer drivers, financial drivers, market drivers, and technology drivers. It then discusses what managers need to do to attain the benefits from the four types of drivers.

Chapter 3 discussed how the global customer management (GCM) programme should fit into the company's overall global strategy and global organization. This chapter moves on to the GCM programme itself. The organization of the programme forms the bedrock of the total GCM effort. But there is, of course, no single best way of organizing GCM, as the right structure depends on the company and its situation. The one commonality is that a global account management (GAM) programme nearly always sits at the core of the GCM organization. The GAM programme constitutes the formal part of GCM, usually with a specific organization and reporting structure for the main players in GCM. As such the GAM programme will be the most visible part of the GCM organization, but needs to be integrated with the rest of the company. The chapter describes the various elements that make up a GCM organization, and discusses the three major forms of GAM organization, along with their benefits and possible pitfalls.

Once the global customer management (GCM) programme has been implemented, the work is not over. Managers of the GCM programme have to realize that it is an ongoing process, not a project. In order to achieve the best results from the GCM programme, it needs to continue to run as smoothly as possible. Once the implementation phase is over, GCM managers will find some need to customize the programme for different accounts. This chapter discusses the support that the programme needs and especially why relationship management is key for ongoing success. It also discusses the planning process and possible barriers that a company can encounter while working with a GCM programme.

Knowledge provides a major competitive advantage. Keeping track of knowledge is particularly hard for global accounts, given the geographic nature of this beast. Having larger and more geographically spread out accounts means having more and geographically spread out knowledge about these accounts. So the global demands of the accounts increase the necessity for global knowledge management capabilities. This chapter discusses the use of information management systems, the use of customer relationship management (CRM) systems and other knowledge management tools in global customer management (GCM) situations.

The previous chapters discussed many different features that affected the success of global account management (GAM). In addition, these covered how to use these features to progress from a GAM programme to a more beneficial global customer management (GCM) programme. This final chapter combines the most important of these features into an overview of the most important critical success factors. They fall into four main areas: the infrastructure of the company and the GCM programme; GCM roles; the relationship with the customer; and an integrated approach.

The success of the global customer management (GCM) programme depends mostly on the efforts of the employees of the company who deal with the global accounts — in other words, not just the global account manager (gam) but also the global account team (gat) members and any other employees who deal with the global accounts. So it is vital that all employees know about the importance of the GCM programme for the company, and that they have a positive attitude toward it from the start. Incentives and compensation constitute two critical tools for building such a positive attitude that helps implementation of the GCM programme. This chapter discusses the difficulties in constructing a compensation structure that is fair to all involved and that remains effective in achieving the objectives of the GCM programme. This includes remunerating the right people for the right results, and using the right criteria to measure the results.

The fact that the influence of globalization has been driven by dramatic changes is not one of those “blinding flashes of the obvious” that seems to sneak up on us. It is very evident and even predictable. Advances in technology, markets, and environments were precursors to the big changes we are now talking about. Advances in technology have led to the current global grid driven by information. The primary mission of business is to provide solutions, and this technology explosion has provided opportunities and market applications for those solutions. Local businesses now have an opportunity to move beyond their restricted geography of the past into the global arena with the use of technology. A local store in a remote village in Kentucky has the same opportunity as a large store in London to access global customers. These could be exciting times for local businesses if they use technology to their advantage.