Here I am in the train on my way to visit an old friend and thought it to be the best time to pen down my thoughts. It has been a long while now since I have done this. Just been crazily hanging around a few crappy decisions to be taken in life!
In the due course of firefighting situations back at office, I happened to have a wonderful talk with one of my managers about handling clients and serving them in the way they want keeping in view the goals of the company you are working for. From the management quotient - 'How do I create a Win-Win situation?' Not so complex yeah? Get to the ground and get your hands dirty, you will understand the complexity of it :). Nevertheless, it was more in terms of letting the clients to be open enough to express their TRUE concerns for issues so that we can handle the ground level realities rather than the top level politics. So here goes my thoughts about the same...
First let me start with my perception of a W-W platform. To pull out another terminology, it maps to 'Collaborative growth saying you grow, I will help you grow, thus both of us grow!' Phew! Too much yeah? ;) … In the process of encouraging growth for both enterprises, the situation becomes highly political if you include the parameter of 'Multiple Vendor Management'. From a client mangers' perspective, 'Why do I have to be open for you to grow?' might be the biggest question. Also considering the fact that they have their own goals in managing the vendors (generally associated with 'how much money you save'), it becomes a norm for them to go in for an optimal solution from any of the vendors. Does a contractual obligation limit this thought process of a client manager? - May be of may be not (depends on the exit clause of the contract).
Given all the situations above, being open becomes highly complex at the management level. What will an account manager do in such situations? Specially if the project teams are going through a bad time, what will be the sales pitch of the account manager? On what ground can he / she ask for an account expansion? … Capabilities? What have we done in the past? What we can do? If these points are brought forward, all that can be got back is a tight slap! Let me take you all back to a few centuries ago - a war scenario (the birth of strategy); a similar situation with different roles and responsibilities. The only answer which worked successfully - be aggressive and step on a few dead bodies! Do you actually have to do that? Well... in situations like this, I feel that it will definitely work. Kill your competitors either by performing better than them or by putting them into situations where they under perform on a comparative scale.
But the biggest question here - Where on earth will you get the data to do all this? (This made me grin - literally...). You will have to rely on people at the ground level to go ahead with such scenarios. Get the information in terms of who is doing what - from both technical and management perspective. This becomes a hell of task to analyse all the data by one person. That is when the organizational hierarchy comes into picture. The way ahead - come up with templates for data collection, distribute it among the mid-level management people. Excel is a very powerful tool! Automate the initial phase of data analytics; add the other psychological parameters; Come up with a penetration strategy. Sounds all familiar and simple once you read it right? Get to the ground and experience the nuances...
Signing off for now, been a very effective journey to Slough in terms of bringing a thought process across
