Tidigare forskning har uppmärksammat en rad olika aspekter, delar och karaktärsdrag hos en Key Account Manager. En Key Account Manager är en nyckelspelare i jakten på att hantera och utveckla goda relationer till företagets kunder, och vars arbete kan vara en bidragande faktor till den egna organisationens framtidsutsikter. Trots detta, är studier gällande hur en Key Account Manager arbetar ännu begränsad. Uppsatsen syftar därmed till att undersöka hur arbetsprocessen ser ut för en Key Account Manager verksam inom industribolag. Med en kvalitativ metodansats, innehållandes åtta stycken semistrukturerade intervjuer identifierar studien att en Key Account Managers arbetsprocess inom ett industribolag består av fem stycken huvudsakliga aktiviteter som löper parallellt med varandra, vilka är Intern koordination och samordning, Externa möten och representation, Uppnå uppsatta KPI, Analyser och rapporter samt Interna möten, som noggrant har analyserats fram.

Globalization has opened up new markets. Companies have now endless opportunities to expand their business reachwith sportsclubs being no exception. Internationalization in sports has its beginnings with foreign players joining a team and changed in 1995 with the Bosman ruling. After the Bosman ruling, the transfer of international players became easier. Not only can one notice the internationalization of sports teams by the transfer of players but also by the expansion of the sports itself. The NFL plays home games in London, the NBA in Mexico City and FC Bayern Munich has opened subsidiaries in the US and China. Yet, this all seems like the whole sports industry is expanding. However, the influences behind this drive are unclear. The purpose of this thesis is to gain an understanding of internationalization in the sports industry. As the current literature indicates several gaps regarding the internationalization of sports clubs such as the limited view on one sport at the time or the data usage of clubs in their internationalization process, this thesis focuses on offering a broaderpicture. Therefore, the research question formulated for this thesis is:What influences the internationalization in the sports industry?For answering the research questions and fulfill the purpose of this thesis, an inductive approach was selected with a qualitative exploratory research study. By mixing the pur-posive and self-selected sampling, six semi-structured interviews were conductedamong different sports clubs. The findings indicate that there are several different influences in the internationalization process of sports clubs. Leagues and their ambitions are one direct influence. Here, the leagues statutes seem to be guidelines forthe clubs and their perspec-tives on growing. Another influence are the market conditions, where one can distinguish between the home market and foreign market conditions. There are some markets that do not allow much for further grow, as another sport is dominating the industry. For that reason, expanding internationally becomes necessary. Yet, some clubs see more potential on the home market to expand their scope and are thus, not thinking of internationalizing soon. Also influencing the internationalization are partnerships. Partnerships, either new or existing ones, offer the benefit of having knowledge or a business network the club can potentially benefit from. This study contributes to the literature of sports teams’ internationalization by adding the underlying concept of influences in the process. Understanding the influences will not only support the eventual internationalization but also offers the opportunity to unite or-ganizations in their efforts.

Whilst utilization of management consulting services has become an integral part of the contemporary economy and functioning of many organizations, intangibility leaves clients unable to predict or objectively assess the values created in consulting engagements. According to scholars, attempts to counteract the principal-agent related risks of opportunism and divergent incentives are expected to increase following higher competition, consumer awareness and anticipated increased demand for performance-based pricing. Improved comprehension of means to evaluate consulting services should become increasingly significant not only for the management consulting firms with increasing needs to tangibilize value and prove “success” to a greater extent, but also for the purchasing organizations in both private and public sectors. The academic attention to the industry has been described as surprisingly low, and previous scholars urge for increased empirical data on evaluation practices in general, and for additional contexts and sizes of consulting firms, in particular. Accordingly, this study aims to contribute with empirical data and understanding of consultants’ reasoning and approaches through asking; How do small Swedish management consulting firms approach evaluation of their engagements in terms of client satisfaction and value generated within the client organization, and; what is the rationale behind the eventual evaluation approach(es) used? Based on a literature review on primarily the fields of; the management consulting industry, intangibility of knowledge-intensive services, and scholarly suggested evaluation methods, semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior managers, partners and CEOs representing ten small-sized management consulting firms in Sweden. The purposively sampled respondents were categorized based on relative size and relative service offering, enabling comparison between size and type of business. Thematic analysis of the interviews showed great similarities between firms, and that valuation approaches are commonly unstructured, situational and goal-oriented, focused on aggregated satisfaction, rarely including objective measurements, initiated by the consultant, conducted through dialogue and sometimes supported by questionnaires. It was concluded that the evaluation approaches are generally highly subjective and focused on capturing client perceptions. Discrepancies between respondents’ practices and scholarly suggested methods were identified, and analysis of variations concluded that smaller firms seem to have less developed evaluation approaches. The respondents’ rationales were described and categorized into; drivers, deterrents and obstacles. Potential catalysts for change, including price sensitivity, client demand and performance-based pricing were identified. Whilst the study does provide requested empirical data and may facilitate improved comprehension of means to counteract intangibility to benefit clients and consultants - and hopefully increase public interest for these issues - further research is needed to nuance the findings, especially through capturing clients’ perspectives.

Business, organizational and information systems strategies are part of the process of turning an idea into an operating organism. This process can be easy or complicated depending on many factors; however its importance cannot be underestimated. This thesis presents a case study performed in order to show how to develop strategies using easy-to-use models and methods collected from literature researches. The result is a basic guide, for the ones that are thinking about developing their strategies, using the case as example. / Affärs-, organisations- och informationssystemsstrategier är en del av processen från att omvandla en idé till en fungerande organism. Denna process kan vara lätt eller komplicerad beroende på många faktorer, oberoende av detta, bör dess betydelse inte underskattas. Denna avhandling presenterar en fallstudie som genomförts för att visa hur man kan utveckla strategier med hjälp av lättanvända modeller och metoder som sammanställts genom diverse litterära studier. Resultatet är en guide ämnat åt dem som funderar på att utveckla sina strategier med hjälp av fallet som exempel.

A critical factor in project success or failure, is the impact on project outcomes, caused by the relationship between the project manager and project sponsor. Theory researched provides the foundations between the relationship between project manager and sponsor for an analysis on project best practices. The objective of which is to apply these theories to help create a set of guidelines or recommendations to be implemented to help measure and then manage the relationship through project processes or guidelines. The analysis covers the established views on the roles of both manager and sponsor within a project as well as the relational issues that are a part of it. The impact of these issues on project outcomes are the foundation of this dissertation. A portion of the analysis will be using lessons learned from previous projects and part of this research is to nd best practices for identication and application of these lessons. Empirical data is in the form of a series of interviews with both the main company and a benchmarking process using three other companies. This will help identify the actual perceptions and complexities of the roles and the relationship between managers and sponsors. In order to better understand the di-culties and challenges that exist in the rela- tionship both parties can work to avoid or overcome them as they arise. The diffi-culties will be both hard in terms of technical knowledge as well as soft relaating to people skills. Knowing how the relationship functions best would be an important asset for each party and will greatly increase the chances of project success.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial. / This research analyzes the current studies of supplier relationship management (SRM), based on a literature review to contrast and compare the evolution of SRM in agribusiness-oriented supply chain management (SCM). The result obtained in this research shows the agribusiness and its relationship with its suppliers. It also strives to identify potential models for a strong SRM. An SRM model is proposed to visualize the components that make up the management of suppliers in the agribusiness supply chain (SC).

Titel: Social Customer Relationship Management - En kvalitativ studie om hur svenska företag inom dagligvaruhandeln använder sociala medier för att skapa samt hantera kundrelationer   Nivå: Examensarbete på Grundnivå (kandidatexamen) i ämnet företagsekonomi   Författare: Jennifer Palm och Louise Wallsten   Handledare: Jonas Molin och Lars-Johan Åge   Datum: 2021 - maj     Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att få ökad förståelse för hur företag inom dagligvaruhandeln arbetar med SCRM.     Metod: En kvalitativ forskningsansats tillämpas för denna uppsats. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer samt en mailintervju med respondenter som tillhör företag inom dagligvaruhandeln.      Resultat & slutsats: Studiens samtliga respondenter är överens om kundens centrala roll och betonar den framgång som sociala medier har bidragit med i skapandet samt hanteringen av kundrelationer. För att skapa dessa önskade kundrelationer används sociala medier som det kommunikationsverktyg där företagen kontinuerligt kommunicerar med sina kunder. Genom kundernas återkopplingar får företagen en ökad vetskap gällande hur relationer ska formas för att tillfredsställa kundens behov.      Examensarbetets bidrag: Det teoretiska bidraget för studien är den analysmodell som har utformats i syfte att minimera osäkerheten gällande företags implementering av SCRM. Vidare till det praktiska bidraget visar denna studie de positiva aspekter som finns vid implementeringen av SCRM och hoppas att företag inom dagligvaruhandeln kommer finna ett större intresse av SCRM då fördelarna med användningen överväger dess nackdelar.     Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Denna studie har ett empiriskt urval som består av respondenter från dagligvaruhandeln. Detta gör att resultatet för studien endast kan appliceras på företag som befinner sig inom liknande bransch. Vi finner därför att vidare forskning är intressant att genomföra för företag inom en annan specifik bransch i syfte att se hur dessa företag arbetar med sociala medier i koppling till kundrelationer     Nyckelord: Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM), Sociala medier, Electronic-Word-Of-Mouth (eWOM) och Dagligvaruhandel

Die Arbeit untersucht insgesamt 25 kostenfreie Social Media Analytics-Werkzeuge und liefert einen Beitrag zu einer systematischen Beurteilung dieser Anwendungssystemklasse im Rahmen des Social Customer Relationship Managements.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Motivation 1.2 Problemstellung 1.3 Vorgehen 2 Grundlagen 2.1 Social Media 2.2 Social CRM 2.3 Social Media-Analys 2.4 Softwareanalyse 2.5 Prototyping 3 Analyse von Social Media-Analyse-Tools 3.1 Kurzvorstellung der einzelnen Tools 3.2 Kernfunktionalitäten kostenfreier SMA-Anwendungen 3.3 Realisierbare Anwendungsfälle im SCRM 3.4 Vergleich mit Funktionalitäten einer kostenpflichtigen SMA-Anwendung 3.5 Betrachtung von Unterschieden 4 Entwicklung einer Auswahlhilfe 4.1 Vorüberlegungen 4.2 Implementierung 4.3 Beschreibung 5 Erkenntnisse 5.1 Ergebnisse 5.2 Defizite 6 Ausblick

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the current relationship building Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) practices which could build business partners’ loyalty in the SCM context. A proposed model was developed with variables including mutual benefits/fairness, trust, retention, loyalty, and switching cost. Previous research examined the partial relationships in the proposed model, and no research has included the switching cost with all the variables in the proposed model. The quantitative methodology involving a survey method was employed for this exploratory study. The hypothesised relationships were partially supported depending on the type of SCM. The most significant variable having an effect on the switching cost was also different depending on the type of SCM. The SCM practice applied from Human CRM (i.e. emotional connections) in a business-to-business environment was the least effective SCM for loyalty but had a significant impact on switching cost.

The recent machine learning and analytics advances in customer relationship management (CRM) technologies place new demands on marketing education and practitioners to develop the skills needed to use the technology. Compounding the issue, research on the use of technology in sales curriculum is underdeveloped. In a comprehensive review of the sales education literature, one study identified that only six articles on sales technology were published in major marketing education journals from 1979 to 2013. In an effort to bridge the gap between critical industry competencies and marketing curriculum, understanding the impact of technology use and training is important for educational planning and student development. Using a survey of 82 salespeople in the United States, the current study empirically evaluates how use of technologically advanced CRM features influences self-perception of CRM knowledge, the perception that additional technology training would be beneficial, and adaptive selling performance of sales practitioners. A majority of survey respondents in the current study cited a need for college students to receive increased exposure to advanced CRM technology training and skill development. We propose an experiential learning approach to teach marketing college students advanced CRM features to help them bolster their effectiveness and value in the workplace.