Musings on project management: And, who did you say had responsibility for customer?

Monday, June 16, 2014

And, who did you say had responsibility for customer?

One of my students offered this strategy for establishing, maintaining, and leveraging relationships with the customer. I thought it was pretty good, so here's the idea:

1. Customer Account Responsible (ACR) -- who ... is the Account Manager
for the domain, market or dedicated to the customer (big accounts) responsible for:

Account relationships,
Opportunity identification,
Commercial management,
Communication management.

Normally the SPOC for a business development effort.

2. Customer Solution Responsible (CSR) – This role is held by various people
depending on the company type – Solution Architects, Solution Consultants,
Solution Managers etc – and they have the responsibility of:

a. End-to end solution integrity
b. Collection of and documentation of requirements from the customer – Executive,
Business, Technical and Users requirements – Securing the sign off on the
requirements scope with the ACR and CFR to the customer.
c. Prioritization of the requirements with the respective customer responsibilities,
in order of increasing importance, and determining the “fit to need” alignment of
the requirements
d. Map solution requirements to the vendor solution/product portfolio, and
determine the Delta, and how to fill those Delta.
e. Hand off complete solution design documentation to the project execution team,
and provide input to the executing team (CFR) for project execution planning.
f. Including and manages SME’s , Product Owners etc and their deliverables as
needed in various verticals that are needed to address the solution design and
product lifecycle

3. Customer Fulfillment Responsible (CFR) – this is normally the PMO organization that turn the solution into reality inside the customer organization/premises/site: