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?

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.

• 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?

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  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?

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  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.

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  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.

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  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.

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 and Suggest Improvements for Internal Communication and Tools

  1. Investigate current ways the company’s team is communicating internally. How active is the company from a communication standpoint? What suite of tools are they using? How well are these tools integrated with one another? Consider: calendar, chat, email, and project management at the very minimum.
  2. Does the team seem to be using all of the same tools and doing so effectively? How do these tools compare to similar tools on the market? How do these tools affect productivity and employee satisfaction? Note: This assignment requires interviews and surveys of significant internal stakeholders at the company.
  3. Is there a cheat sheet when it comes to communication and project management at the company? If so, review the manual and provide recommendations on updates based on what you’ve learned from the company personnel. If not, produce a rough draft of the manual or cheat sheet and review it with your project managers.
  4. Provide the company with a proposal including the analysis of the status quo of communication in the company and thoroughly examine recommendations for future improvement.

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  Automation Assessment & Recommendations

  1. What suite of tools is the company currently using? How well are these tools integrated with one another?
  2. How can the company be better automating certain processes to improve productivity?
  3. Find 2-3 areas that could use automation.
  4. Select one area of potential automation to focus on. Build automation or suggest step-by-step process of how automation can accomplish the desired business objective. How would this automation save money and/or time for the business?

Cross Functional Departmental Cooperation Assessment & Recommendations

1. What are the different functional areas?
2. How do they interact with each other?
3. What improvements could you recommend to improve internal interdepartmental communication? Think standing meetings, internal newsletters, new checklists, and other mechanisms that might help improve cross functional department collaborations.

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.

Organizational Structure Assessment

1. How has the company evolved to its current state? What growing pains have they experienced to-date?
2. Visually map the company's current organizational structure.
3. How effective is this layout for a growing organization?
4. What competencies is the company missing that it really needs? What should be the highest priority in terms of hiring?
5. Create a leadership profile highlighting some of the management team’s biggest strengths and weaknesses. Be sure to highlight the areas of the company that can leverage their strengths.

Company Culture Pulse Check

1. Create a survey for a few existing employees to measure company culture and analyze the resulting data: Is there a positive culture? Are there any red flags that the company needs to address?
2. What are their favorite and least favorite parts of the culture? (Consider workspace, benefits, and other perks).
3. Based on the survey results, what are the essentials for company culture? What are the cost implications of keeping these benefits as the company scales?
4. What might not be scalable within the company culture? Does this cause a concern?
5. How might the company need to modify and scale company culture in the future?

New Office Launch

1. Assess the need for a change in office/organizational structure. If a company is preparing to expand operations into another city or add/change working protocol, asses the potential impact.
2. How would company culture be impacted by this addition/change?
3. What are some best practices for opening up new offices? What are some of the major challenges they can expect to wrestle with as they prepare to launch in the new city?
4. What tools and resources can be used in order to efficiently launch and maintain company culture?

Growth Trajectory & Future Org Culture Evaluation

1. How has the company changed over time from an organizational culture perspective? How does the company expect to change/grow over the next 1-3-5 years.
2. Assess the ways this might impact your host organizations. What key investments might need to be considered?
3. What new roles and positions might be critical for them in the future? Where can you find these types of people?

Assess the Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

1. What types of standards exist around diversity and inclusion? Does this differ internally vs. externally?
2. How does the company’s standards compare with competitors and/or other similar regional companies?
3. What areas can be improved? Is there a plan in place to make improvements?
4. What tactics would you use to make the environment more inclusive? Consider: events, recruitment strategies, trainings, rewards, etc.

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.

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  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.

• 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)

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  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?

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  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?