Auditing a strategic account management pilot: a case study in the marine manufacturing sector

This is a methodological paper demonstrating the process of applying academic research in the audit of a strategic account management pilot in a global company in the marine design, systems and services sector. A review of the academic literature on best practice in strategic account management, included in this paper, was used as the basis for an in-company multi-method research project to review the pilot and identify enhancements to the programme for the next stage of its roll-out. The way that the company built on the literature to verify the best practice framework identified is discussed. The framework identified here, and the primary research methods to determine perceptions of the pilot, proved to be a useful approach to auditing a strategic account management programme. These findings are based on a single company case study. This paper contributes a case study of the process of auditing a strategic account management pilot. This contributes a case of using theory in practice to the important body of literature on strategic account management in the particularly interesting context of an industry sector badly hit by the 2008-2010 recession.