Corporate Solution at Jones Lang Lasalle
Corporate Solution at Jones Lang Lasalle
March 6, 2012
Should the account management function be a cost center or profit center? Should Peter Barge recruit an internal or external candidate to be BoA’s account manager?
Part A). We feel that this new account manager function should be considered as a cost center.
Generally, account managers are points of contact in managing customer’s accounts with the business, and this is also true in JLL’s reasons for introducing an account manager. JLL wants to ensure that their clients feel that their RE needs are being met. Therefore it will not be the incoming account manager’s job to go out and find new clients to work with, and thus we cannot expect the account manager to produce any additional profits to the company but maintain existing clients. Instead, the account manager will be working closely with JLL’s three business units – Tenant Representation, Project Development Management, and Corporate Property Services – as well as Bank of America to enhance information transfers and business understandings between these parties.
When transferring information between JLL business units and Bank of America, the account management will ensure clients’ needs are well understood by regional offices. Before the idea of account management, JLL’s business units strayed away from sharing information amongst each other, partially because they were afraid of losing clients to each other. Therefore, the account manager needs to be an effective and fair intermediary between JLL’s business units, as well as between JLL and Bank of America. Consequently, profits are not necessarily generated by this mid-stream function but the downstream regional offices, which with help from the new role use their resources to provide clients with improved RE solutions.
Part B). We decided that account managers should be recruited externally. First, the nature of the job client service oriented. The major function of this position is to
March 6, 2012
Should the account management function be a cost center or profit center? Should Peter Barge recruit an internal or external candidate to be BoA’s account manager?
Part A). We feel that this new account manager function should be considered as a cost center.
Generally, account managers are points of contact in managing customer’s accounts with the business, and this is also true in JLL’s reasons for introducing an account manager. JLL wants to ensure that their clients feel that their RE needs are being met. Therefore it will not be the incoming account manager’s job to go out and find new clients to work with, and thus we cannot expect the account manager to produce any additional profits to the company but maintain existing clients. Instead, the account manager will be working closely with JLL’s three business units – Tenant Representation, Project Development Management, and Corporate Property Services – as well as Bank of America to enhance information transfers and business understandings between these parties.
When transferring information between JLL business units and Bank of America, the account management will ensure clients’ needs are well understood by regional offices. Before the idea of account management, JLL’s business units strayed away from sharing information amongst each other, partially because they were afraid of losing clients to each other. Therefore, the account manager needs to be an effective and fair intermediary between JLL’s business units, as well as between JLL and Bank of America. Consequently, profits are not necessarily generated by this mid-stream function but the downstream regional offices, which with help from the new role use their resources to provide clients with improved RE solutions.
Part B). We decided that account managers should be recruited externally. First, the nature of the job client service oriented. The major function of this position is to