Thinking of which is the best Key Account Management Software in the market?

Here is the answer.

‍MarTech Advisor (MTA), one of the world’s leading sources for marketing technology news, research, product comparisons & expert views, recently published an extensive Buyer’s Guide to Key Account Management Software. This 32 page KAM Bible covers a wide range of topics from opportunities that induced the need for KAM enablement to listing Key Account Management software currently in the market.

It makes us happy to announce that this exclusive Buyer’s Guide rates DemandFarm as the ‘Best-fit KAM & Sales Enablement tool’ in the market. Too busy to read the report? Don’t worry, we have got all of it covered for you. We have summarized all the useful information in this easy to read the blog. Without further ado, let’s look at the salient points that led to the rise of Key Account Management software.

The Need for Key Account Management Software

The inclusion of Key Account Management into various business processes has changed the dynamics of the relationship mapping between organizations and their Key Accounts. The importance of managing relationships with strategically significant customers was always a ‘no-brainer’, but only a few organizations were able to carry out the Key Account Management process efficiently. The times are changing for the better and organizations are investing both in Key Account Managers and Key Account Management tools. So what was the catalyst that brought forth this change…

• Catering to Key Accounts is paramount to an organization’s revenue growth. This fact is made evident by the 80/20 Pareto Principle which states that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers.
• Key Accounts are a boon that keeps on yielding profit. With cross-selling up-selling in Key Accounts, the revenue increases without the hassle of acquiring a new customer.
• The customers you will acquire with referrals from Key Accounts helps ease the strain on your marketing and sales efforts.
• Key Accounts are hard to acquire and even harder to maintain. In fact, the real challenge of an Account Manager starts after the acquisition of an account.
• The inclusion of Strategic Account Management processes into the organization helped the management of Key Accounts. However, a tool was needed for the effective implementation of these processes.

The statements above prove the true worth of Key Accounts and the need to harvest, nurture and grow them. This need led to the inception of Key Account Management Software.

Challenges resolved using Key Account Management Software:

• Data in Silos – Data in an organization is spread in silos or distributed across multiple systems. This restricts Key Account Manager from identifying and extracting complete information regarding their accounts. Key Account Management Software plays a significant role in handling this challenge efficiently.
• Lack of key insights – Even if a Key Account Manager is successful in accumulating all the data points, they are useless without key insights. A Key Account Management software helps extract knowledge from this data, providing the KAM with key insights thus aiding in realizing the optimal potential of Key Accounts.
• Multiple tools – With various individual tools and systems such as CRM, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, etc for their day to day work to manage Key Accounts, the life of a Key Account Manager became tough and chaotic.  A Key Account Management software helps solve the complexity by directly integrating with existing CRM and providing insights and analysis from existing data.

What should a Key Account Management Software deliver?

A good Key Account Management software should increase Key Account Manager’s productivity while simultaneously providing him with key insights and tools to manage and grow Key Accounts. Key Account Management software should be a one-stop-shop for everything related to Key Accounts. Following are the things that a Key Account Management software should deliver:

• Visual Org Chart
• Communication Tracker
• Contact History
• Affiliations Mapping
• Data Management ( collation, formatting, storage, etc.)
• Data Consumption Approach
• Real-time, anytime, anywhere access
• Collaboration Tools
• Easy report generation, exporting and sharing
• Reminders & prompts
• Data Analytics
• Finance Tracker

How to evaluate a Key Account Management Software?

Choosing the right Key Account Management software is a challenge, which a guide book like this is addressing. Following are some parameters to evaluate a KAM software:

• Trial or Demo
• Cost of Deployment
• Ability to Customize
• Integration with existing CRM
• Onboarding and Customer Success
• Speed of Deployment

Business Impact Areas

Adopting an Account Management approach along with the right tool can help transform your business. Following are few KAM enablement impact areas:

• People cost – Account-related data in an organization is highly vulnerable. All the business intel is tied to Account Manager; if he leaves so does your data!
• Opportunity cost – An organization loses deals and opportunities every day due to the lack of key insights. These insights are hidden in data silos and are hard to discover without the right key account management tool.
• Business cost – Without the right tools, the highly paid Key Account Managers are forced to waste their time on creating reports, collating data and tracking down people.

Key Account Management software in the market currently

Following is a list of Key Account Management software in the market currently for Medium/Large segment:

Now that you know about the best Key Account Management software in the market don’t forget to request a demo of DemandFarm. Remember, we are just a click away!