Account Management Current State and Benchmarking Assessment

1. How is the account management or client success team structured? Are they split by geographies, verticals or other characteristics?
2. How many accounts are the account managers responsible for?
3. What level of service and interaction is required or expected in this industry?
4. How does the company's model compare with their key competitors?

Improve Current Account Management Process

1. What process does the company use to interact with their current customers?
2. Survey the account managers and create a flow chart of their of what their recurring responsibilities look like.
3. Based on the flow chart, are there any processes that are redundant or inefficient? Anything that can be automated?
4. How can they more effectively keep their customers satisfied?

Optimizing the Account Manager Role

1. What are main responsibilities of Account Managers at the host company?
2. How are Account Managers incentivized? Some examples are: renewals, up-sells, customer satisfaction, net promoter scores, and new business. Are these effective or should the host company consider adding other metrics and/or removing metrics that don’t result in optimal outcomes?
3. How can you best align incentives with internal operations to maximize success?

Cross Functional Synergies Assessment

1. What are some potential opportunities where the host company can align processes between account management and other functional departments in the company? (E.g., sales, marketing, product, and operations)
2. Create a hypothetical case where it would be beneficial for the Account Managers to have a cross-functional team with other departments within the organization.
3. What would it look like? (Map it out)
4. How would the process be different?
5. Who would need to be involved?
6. How would you measure success as a team?

For your reference, we've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage educators to mix-and-match components from various departments so that the projects are cross functional in nature. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and course teaching objectives.

Industry Customer Service Benchmarking Assessment

1. Call the customer service line or inquire via email. Document your experience. How does this compare with competitors?
2. What does the company do that makes their customer service more effective than competitors? What could be improved?
3. How important is good customer service in this vertical or industry? How does it affect the lifetime value of the customer?
4. How does the business model affect the level of service required? Is there any automation that can be incorporated into the process to increase efficiencies?

Customer Service Diagnosis Challenge

1. How does the customer service team troubleshoot issues? How effective are their current processes?
2. What is the most time-consuming part of the troubleshooting process? Is there anyway this can be automated?
3. What process improvements would you recommend? Pay close attention to communication tools, knowledge base resources, and follow-up procedures.

Customer Service Process Improvements

1. How long does it take for the issues and cases to navigate through the internal organization before arriving at a resolution?
2. How can the process be optimized? Is information being circulated effectively internally?
3. Should the company consider circulating certain materials externally as well? If so, how? Can we reduce redundancy by leveraging existing resources and cases?

Customer Feedback Driven Process Improvement Recommendations

1. How does the company collect feedback from customers?
2. Can you identify consistent feedback from customers related to the company’s product or service?
3. What is the customer feedback process? How do the customers feel about the feedback process?
4. Does the company use technology or social media to collect customer feedback?
5. How can we better incorporate and address customer concerns before it escalates?

Customer Service Process & Technology Assessment

1. What technology is the company leveraging to administer the customer service process?
2. How does the company feel about the customer service process? Interview key team members inside and outside that part of the organization.
3. What other technologies could possibly improve the process? What is the cost of implementing new tools?
4. Would you recommend implementing new tools and procedures?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

Company Data Collection Inventory and Mapping

1. What is the product and business model?
2. How is the business organized from an organizational perspective?
3. What main systems does the company use to organize and execute?
4. What data is produced by the system as a result?
5. What strategic goals does the data help address?
6. What would flow chart of all the systems look like? What are the key data inputs and outputs within each system? How do they all connect to one another?

Create New Metrics (and KPIs) Using Company Data

1. How can data from multiple sources be analyzed, organized, or visualized to provide more insight to internal and/or external users?
2. Are there other potential use cases for the company’s data?
3. What other data points would be useful to capture in order improve the quality and/or relevance of insights?
4. What metrics would be best to use in order to showcase potential benefits and use cases?

Build a Sample Dashboard

1. What company data is available? How reliable is that data?
2. How can data from multiple sources be analyzed, organized, or visualized to provide more insight to internal and/or external users?
3. Can you organize these key pieces of data into a preliminary dashboard?
4. What procedure is required to keep the dashboard up-to-date? Are there any tools that could help with this process?

For your reference, we've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage educators to mix-and-match components from various departments so that the projects are cross functional in nature. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and course teaching objectives.

Growth Plan and KPI Performance Assessment

1. How has the business evolved over time? How does the team feel about the past, present, and future of the business?
2. What key metrics does the company use to run the business and make key strategic decisions? How are these calculated? What does the company envision for the future for each metric? Does that seem to align with management expectations?
3. What are some key concerns and areas of focus that the host company should consider when preparing for the future of the business?

Industry Benchmarking Assessment

1. Who are the biggest competitors and how do they stack up against the company's model? Do a SWOT assessment.
2. Do any companies present interesting opportunities for partnerships? What about potential mergers and acquisitions?
3. Who are the key thought leaders and media outlets in the space? What are they publishing and how do they interact with companies like yours?
4. Design a comprehensive industry overview report. Pay close attention to the key players, their growth trajectory, and the major regions where they find the most success.

Customer Retention & Growth

1. How well does the company address customer needs from a product and service perspective? Do their customers seem happy with their purchase?
2. What’s the general customer perception of the company’s brand?
3. How large are the largest accounts compared to the smaller accounts? What makes the difference between these two contract-types?
4. What percentage of accounts can scale to becoming 50-200% larger? Does the company seem positioned to scale?

Establish Company Goals & Projections

1. Analyze the company’s growth plan. What areas of the business seem most opportunistic and/or concerning? Consider their growth plan and existing traction.
2. How does the company today compare to the company months and/or years ago?
3. What does the company want to look like in the future?
4. What are the KPIs and how well well do they tie to your assessment of company performance in strategic areas?
5. How do you think the KPIs will change as the business scales?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

1. What is the company’s product and business model? Does the company have competitors internationally? How do their products and services stack up against international competitors?
2. What regions/countries/cities around the world seem ripe for expansion. Why? What metrics can you use to justify this?
3. What regions seem the most strategic? Why? How would you suggest entering? What resources and/or changes to the business model would be required?
4. What cultural or governmental norms might have an effect on the proposed plan? How can you mitigate negative risk factors?.

1. What is the company’s business model and product?
2. Why do they plan to expand into a new specific region?
3. What is the language, education, religion, values, customs, socio-economic, and geo-political make-up of the new target region?
4. What is the company’s plan to mitigate risks when entering the new market?
5. Would you recommend that they move forward? Why or why not? If so, how would you measure success?

1. What is the company’s business model and product?
2. What competitors does the company have in the country and/or region?
3. How have similar companies entered the market?
4. What risks exist domestically and regionally from a political perspective? How might that relate to the user adoption and market potential?
5. How risky is the opportunity? What is the potential upstate? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

• Industry Marketing Benchmarking Analysis

  1. What is the company's target demographic, product, and business model?
  2. What is the customer’s problem and how the company's product or service is solving that problem?
  3. How would you compare the company's products with the rest of the providers in the industry? Pay close attention to how other companies are marketing their products and positioning the brands.
  4. How would you compare the company’s marketing performance to competitors?
  5. What improvements would you recommend based on your assessment?

•  

  Marketing Strategy Impact Analysis
  1. Examine the company's past marketing strategies. What worked? What did not? How would you showcase progress over time?
  2. Compile data into a visualization to track trends of successful and less successful strategies.
  3. Compare the company's marketing tactics with competitors to showcase what works effectively - or not effectively - with certain customer demographics
  4. What other marketing strategies could be used to benefit the company?
  5. What technologies could be involved in different marketing strategies? How can you use them most effectively? How would you measure success?

•  

  Marketing Strategy Development

• 1. What are the company's past marketing strategies? What worked? What did not? How would you showcase progress over time?
  2. What is the customer’s perception of the company’s brand, product, and services?
  3. Propose 2-3 digital, experiential, or social, marketing strategies for the company to consider. Assess cost, reach, mediums, and any other components needed for a full understanding of this investment.
  4. Select one campaign and develop a road-map that will prepare the company to launch your campaign. Keep in mind timing, required resources (budget, people, etc.), projected results, and how you would measure ROI.

•  

  Customer Brand Perception Analysis

  1. Does the company assess their brand perception at all? If so, what do you find interesting about the process or findings?
  2. Conduct structured customer interviews to gain a better understanding of their customers’ preferences, purchasing habits, and decision-making processes. Consider: Demographics, Discovery Channels, and their Product Aptitude
  3. Suggest a new effective process to collect more customer data on brand perception and customer experience.

•  

  Marketing Mix Assessment & Recommendations

  1. Consider a 360 marketing approach when deciding the appropriate channels to utilize. What is the current marketing mix for the company? Analyze where the company spends the most and where the company performs bests.
  2. Propose an alternative marketing mix for the company that you think will work best for the product, industry, and customer type. Where should the company allocate resources to generate better performance? Consider paid advertising, social, display, content, guerrilla , experiential, affiliate, partnerships, etc.
  3. What are the costs and benefits of using your strategy? What are the key risks and costs? Compare these risks with potential reach and benefit.

•  

  Industry M&A Temperature Check

  1. What makes the company unique compared to competitors in their industry?
  2. Review existing data and current plans. Analyze the opportunities that the company is considering through strategic company interviews with key stakeholders.
  3. Hypothesize potential synergies with other players in the market. Is this market ripe for consolidation? How are you making that assessment?
  4. What benefits would these mergers and/or acquisitions present for the company?

•  

  Competitor (or Target List) Analysis

  1. Who are main competitors in the market?
  2. What unique offerings does each competitor have? How does the company product, service, and brand compare to these companies?
  3. Do any of these competitors see reasonable to acquire? Do any of them seem ripe to acquire you?
  4. Create a detailed profile of each competitor in the industry with a buy/sell assessment.

•  

  Merger or Acquisition Simulation

  1. Select a company and walk through the procedure of exploring a merger or acquisition. What are the costs, benefits, and likelihood of success with this potential transaction?
  2. Would this potential merger or acquisition be beneficial to your host company if it were successful? Why or why not?
  3. What key strategies would you use to initiate OR implement that merger or acquisition?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

•  

  Analyze the Role of Public Relations on Enhancing Customer Experience

  1. Do similar companies at a similar stage and size have a PR function? If so, how is that role designed? How do they use PR to enhance the overall customer experience? If so, how?
  2. Interview the folks responsible for Public Relations at your host company to get a sense for how they have been doing PR so far. What is the relationship between customer satisfaction and PR at your host company? Are they related at all? Which aspects of the PR activities influence the overall customer experience?
  3. How satisfied are the customers of the company? Administer customer interviews and/or questionnaires to determine how satisfied the customers are with the product, service, and overall purchasing experience.
  4. What recommendations do you have for the company on how they can improve their overall PR process in order to further enhance the customer experience? Are there specific campaigns or processes that can be implemented to enhance the overall PR function and customer experience?

•  

  Analyze and Recommend Improvements of Public Relations Strategy through Social Media

  1. Conduct a comprehensive analysis on what media channels (including social and others) that the company currently uses for Public Relations. To what extent is social media being used for PR purposes as opposed to other channels? How does this compare to their industry peers?
  2. Collect data from the company’s social media accounts and analyze: Does the company differentiate their marketing initiatives from their PR initiatives on their social media? How does the company balance PR and marketing on social? What reach and impact do these two initiatives typically have? How do they compare to one another?
  3. How can the company enhance their PR when it comes to their social media channels? What do similar companies do when it comes to PR through social media? What are best practices you could recommend when it comes to PR through social media?

Deep Dive on Public Image & Suggest Performance Improvements

1. Establish a way to assess public image through surveys and interviews.
2. Analyze the difference of company image between current and potential customers.
3. You may also want to include employees and publicly available information to help with your analysis.
4. Based on your findings, how urgently does the company need to address their public image?
5. How would you recommend making improvements to the PR strategy in order to enhance the overall public perception of the company’s brand?

Crisis Management Process Mapping & Performance Improvements

1. How does the company define a crisis? Have they encountered any public crises yet? How was that situation managed? What did they learn from that experience?
2. Does the company have a crisis management process? Is this a clear process? Has it been detailed and mapped out including all stakeholders, approvals?
3. What key criteria need to be analyzed when administering a damage assessment after a crisis has occurred?

Design a New Product

1. Become familiar with the company’s core competencies and current product offerings. How does the company categorize and organize their products? How do these products compare with competitors?
2. Assess the company's product roadmap and goals for new product development. Who are the critical stakeholders (including internal and external)? Brainstorm and ideate product development ideas with the team. Identify the potential market opportunity and clearly define the problem. Propose 2-3 new product ideas given the company’s current product portfolio and desired goals.
3. Select one product for further development. Is this a similar customer base to the company’s original product or is this product for a new market entirely? Collect user feedback on the idea and/or any prototypes/drawings.
4. Develop official target audience personas for the new product. Explain why these personas are potential customers and why you feel these groups present a reasonable market opportunity. Write user stories to detail why users need the product to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.
5. Create a product roadmap including assessment of time, budget, and resources required to get the product to market.
6. Create a prototype of your design: the prototype could either be a drawing, digital asset, or physical mock-up.

• Design New Packaging

• 1. How is the packaging currently designed? What are the basic materials that go into the packaging? How does the packaging impact the manufacturing and distribution process? What does the packaging cost as-is? How does the packaging compare with industry peers?
  2. How do the current customers feel about the packaging (or unpacking) experience? What did they like about the experience? What do they feel could be improved?
  3. How does the company’s packaging compare to industry peers? What best practices can be adopted from similar companies to improve the unpackaging experience?
  4. Suggest 1-2 specific packaging improvements for the company’s product. Analyze the impact these changes would have on required materials, vendor relationships, the manufacturing and distribution process, and overall cost.
 

• Design Product Extension

  1. Assess the company’s product portfolio over time.
  2. What products are ripe for new additions or complete reinventions?
  3. What product extensions can you think of with your group?
  4. Select one product for further assessment. Assess the potential cost, benefit, and impact of adding your proposed product extension.

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

• Raw Materials Audit

  1. What raw materials are being used? Where are they getting the raw materials? How is the relationship with these suppliers? How do current key stakeholders feel about these raw materials and/or suppliers?
  2. What is the cost of raw materials? How does this compare with other suppliers?
  3. Explore potential new raw materials providers. Do any of them present potential benefits for the company (improved quality or reduced cost)?

• Manufacturing to Distribution Process Mapping & Improvements

• 1. How does the company get their products to distributors?
  2. How is the company currently manufacturing the products?
  3. What is the process of preparing the final goods for distribution?
  4. How does the distribution system work? How long does it take to get from destination to destination?
  5. Can any of this be automated or optimized? This about increasing efficiency and/or reducing costs.

•  

  Distribution System Testing

  1. How does the company distribute their products?
  2. How reliable are the distributors?
  3. How far-reaching are these distributors?
  4. Are there better potential distributors? What about potential new distributor relationships?

New Distribution Partner Assessments

1. Understand the current distribution partner relationships. Map out how products get to end customers and in what quantities.
2. Assess potential new markets for the product. What regions seem the most appealing? Why? Select one region and make the case why this is the most ideal region to enter.
3. What distribution partners would be able to help you reach your selected region? What other products are they distributing?
4. How does entering this new region impact revenues and costs?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

Process Mapping & Performance Improvements

1. What type of QC control process is the company currently using? Can you map it out end-to-end?
2. How effective is the company’s current QC process?
3. How could the process be improved? Think technology and process workflows.

Instituting Quality Control with Suppliers or Third-Party Vendors

1. Analyze how the company’s suppliers, partners, and vendors administer QC. Does this meet your company’s standards?
2. What types of quality check is the company currently doing? How often? What is this process like and how can it be improved?

Quality Control with Customers and End Users

1. How does the company ensure quality with their customers?
2. How well does the company check-in on customers to ensure quality?
3. How can the company improve their quality control process related to the customer experience?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

• Develop Financial Statements

• 1. What is the company’s business model? What are the products? What makes them unique compared to competitors in their industry?
  2. Assess where financial data comes from at the company? What drives cost and revenues? How are these categorized?
  3. Build a set of comprehensive financial statements including a cash flow statement, income statement, and balance sheet. Ensure it’s consistent for the business since origin.
  4. What key insights and metrics can be derived from the financial statements? What types of process improvements and recommendations can you provide to the company’s management?
  5. How can the company continue to manage the financial statements on the go-forward? Provide the company with a step-by-step process when it comes to building and maintaining the key financial statements in for the future.

•  

  Develop Predictive Financial Model

  1. What is the company’s business model? What are the products? What makes them unique compared to competitors in their industry?
  2. Develop a flexible financial model from scratch dependent on a set of assumptions that they can be manipulated to understand the dynamics of the business.
  3. How do the different cost and revenue components tie to each other? How will this change as the business scales?
  4. How should the team set goals for the next few years?
  5. Use the projections from your financial model to develop a Discounted Cash Flow model. Help the company determine its appropriate WACC and use that WACC and the future cash flows to determine a company valuation. Use industry benchmarks to determine if the valuation is reasonable.
  6. How will the company's growth plan affect the financial model you built in the last section?
  7. Interview upper management and the sales team to get an idea of scale over the next 6, 12, and 24 months. Update your financial model according to their scaling forecasts and goals. Develop these goals into a usable budget.

Financial Records Audit

1. If the company uses cash accounting determine if they should be moved to accrual.
2. If they use accrual accounting, determine if the following accounts are recorded correctly: 1) Deferred Revenue 2) Prepaid Expenses 3) Accrued Expenses 4) Fixed Assets & Depreciation

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

• Market Research

• 1. How much information does the company have on the market? What about their target audience and customers? Use this information to get up-to-speed on the business.
  2. What does the competitive environment look like? How would you benchmark your company against competitors? What are your competitors’ current market advantages, weaknesses? Create a competitor research reports including products, pricing, market share, and marketing tactics.
  3. Create a broader industry and market environment research report, which includes: market size and trends, market demographics (e.g. age, gender, income), regulatory landscape, marketing channels and strategies, and sociographics (e.g. beliefs and attitudes, interests, lifestyle factors)

•  

  Customer Research

  1. Who your current customers? How well does this align with the company’s defined target audience? Who are the potential customers? What, when, where and how do they buy your products?
  2. What strategies does the company currently use to attract new customers? To what extent are these strategies effective? What other strategies could the company use to attract more potential customers? Why do you think your new strategies would be effective?
  3. Create a customer research report including customer demographics, social and lifestyle trends, needs and expectations, attitude towards you and your competitors.

• Product Development & Updates

1. What existing products does the company offer? How satisfied are current customers with the current product offerings?
2. What improvements could be made to existing products? How would you suggest updating current products to meet existing and potential customers’ needs?
3. What new products does the company have on the horizon? Do you expect that these products will meet customers’ demands? What are the product guidelines and regulatory specifications that need to be followed while developing the new product?
4. Can you project how well products will fair in the market? Does this align with management expectations? Why or why not?

• Business Innovation Assessment

1. How has your company improved over time?
2. What are key ways for the company to improve overall performance?
3. How might you be able to reduce expenses and/or increase revenues?
4. How will expanding affect current operations? Do you have a reliable operations (think HR, implementation, and operations)?
5. How would you compare your performance with competitors?
6. What KPIs is the company tracking? How does the growth plan address these KPIs?

• Industry Sales Benchmarking Assessment

1. Familiarize yourself with the company product and business model.
2. Create a comprehensive list of key competitors and industry stakeholders that sell similar products and/or services. Compare your host company with competitors in the following areas: pricing, features, services, regionality, customer demographics, etc.
3. Who are the biggest competitors and how do they stack up against the company's performance? What do the biggest competitors in the space tell you about the industry?
4. Do any companies present interesting opportunities for partnerships?
5. What additional channels can the company tap in order to scale more effectively?

• Sales Process Assessment

1. How has the company’s business model change over time? What has changed about the product, service, and team?
2. What is the current status of the sales process within the company. Do you think this is more or less effective than previously? How does the team feel about the sales process and overall performance?
3. Where does the company hope to be in 1-3-5 years from a sales perspective? How will the sales process, team, and structure need to change in order to address these changes?
4. How satisfied are the current customers with the product or service?
5. Craft a survey and administer customer interviews to help identify where the company can improve. Pay close attention to how the company may be able to provide additional value to existing customers.

• Prioritizing Sales Initiatives

• 1. What is the company’s sales strategy? How many different lines of business exist? Are they separated by different products and services or divisions?
  2. What lines if business are providing the most revenue for the company currently? How was this book of business built originally? How does the company expect for this to grow over time?
  3. What new sales opportunities are on the table? Is the company prioritizing this sales initiative? What do you think the potential is for this new line of business?
  4. Are there alternative ways to sell that the company hasn't considered? Would they be more effective? What data do you have to support your reasoning?
  5. How would you prioritize the sales team’s time and resources with regards to the sales plan?

•  

  Inside vs. Outside Sales Strategy Assessment

  1. What’s the difference between an inside and outside sales strategy? What has the company tried to-date? How effective was that process? What types of results did it yield? What resources were required? Can you measure the ROI and growth rate?
  2. How could you adapt the sales process to include either more inside OR outside sales tactics?
  3. How would you go about implementing this sales strategy? Do you think it would produce better results?
  4. What goals would you set for the new team over the next 3-6 months and/or 1-3 years? How would you measure success?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

• Company Talent Skills Mapping

• Organizational Vision, Values, and Goals Temperature Check

• 1. Get up-to-speed on the current business model and organizational structure.
  2. Does the company seem to have a clear organizational vision, mission, and goals? How does this differ when speaking to folks in different departments that are at different levels within the organization?
  3. How does the organization come up with the vision, values, and goals? How does management share this vision with the rest of the organization? Is this an effective process?
  4. Is there a way to measure progress when it comes to adoption of organizational vision, mission, and values?

•  

  Talent Management Troubleshooting

  1. Get up-to-speed on the current business model and organizational structure.
  2. Interview key stakeholders and learn more about strengths and weaknesses of the current organizational set-up. Be sure to assess whether the organization has addressed any of these challenges previously.
  3. Synthesize data and distill challenges to 2-3 concrete challenge statements that need to be addressed by management. Why do you feel these are the most important based on your research?
  4. How can the organization address these challenges? Are there specific tools or tactics that might be able to help?

•  

  Talent Optimization

  1. Get up-to-speed on the current business model and organizational structure. Where is the company most productive? Where is the company struggling?
  2. What are the main challenges that exist for struggling parts of the business? How far are they from meeting expectations?
  3. What is the final level of output that is needed?
  4. Map the output gaps.
  5. Map the inputs and processes that will be needed to achieve the desired outcomes.

•  

  Recruiting Process Assessment

•  

  Training & Development Program Creation