By Patrick D. Quirk, President & CEO, Emptoris

Approximately 50 percent of the value and costs of any given company's products or services is in the hands of suppliers. Thus, suppliers are central to risk mitigation, innovation and to controlling enterprise spending.

“Customer retention is the most important metric for SaaS companies. Customer churn can kill your business model.”
– M.R. Rangaswami, Sand Hill Group.
Sand Hill is pleased to be a sponsor of The Customer Success Management Initiative

Over the past couple of years, a new position has been showing up in the open job listings throughout the SaaS/cloud community. Sometimes the Customer Success Manager is a sole contributor; in others it's a member of a very significant team. The new role may be listed under any of the direct CxO reports to the CEO, or it may even be a direct report itself. The duties and required skills of the position also show a lot of variation, from some form of expert implementation project management all the way to de-facto, or even de-jure, ownership of the ongoing customer relationship. Could a new profession be emerging, focused on increasing customer retention rates and maximizing per-customer profitability levels? That there are increasing numbers of Customer Success Managers and executives in SaaS/cloud companies is clear. What is actually going on, and what it may mean, has yet to be determined.

We need data, models, metrics, approaches and options to fuel the discussion of design and development. The purpose of the Customer Success Management Initiative is to gather those resources. Two free initial online surveys are now open for participation. One version is for companies that have already chartered and established their CSM teams. The other is for companies that are still in the planning phase. Both begin with the strategy of customer success management and proceed to examine the key issues of process/workflow, people and technology.

To participate in either free survey, click here for more information and the link to the appropriate online form. The benefits are immediate, for the 26 questions offer the opportunity for a comprehensive look at the strategy, process, people and technology of your CSM program or plans. Participants who fully complete the free survey will receive a copy of the report of the findings.

Ongoing coverage of the Initiative’s findings will be published on The HotLine Magazine and discussed in “The Customer Success Management Forum” on LinkedIn.