Key Account Managers translate wider ISS strategies into daily operations and are often the main “face of ISS” for clients, supporting them on operational, tactical, and strategic levels. Their work is crucial—and the course provides people like Toni with a deeper understanding of their roles in today’s markets, and how best practices at ISS can be enacted worldwide.

“There are many different ways to solve challenges”

The KAMC course has developed and evolved since its launch in 2015—but the main objective has remained to prepare team members to help clients and formally certify that they’re ready to run an account.

The course is modular and has a blended learning approach. For example, focus areas might include building a workplace that supports clients to reach their talent recruitment goals—or showing participants the tools they can use to help monitor and drive progress in areas like compliance and security—and cater to the needs of banking customers.

It’s also a global, collaborative process across geographies and sectors, capitalizing on expertise from different regions while implementing solutions that will be effective anywhere. This global blueprint helps ensure that ISS has the same fundamental expectations for Key Account Managers across the world, with consistently built-in skills and expectations.

For Julien Montagner, an ISS Account Director for a major international bank in Switzerland, the ten-week program was a chance to “get in touch with other leaders from different parts of Europe, particularly those in the banking sector who faced similar challenges.”

The highlight was getting to exchange points of view with other participants, finding out more about the way each of them manage their accounts. “There was an ongoing reflection process, diving deep into the customers’ complex world. And when you gain new knowledge from others, you can implement it with your own client,” he explains.

Toni also enjoyed the opportunity to share stories and collaborate closely. “The people in the program have that network to reach out to,” she says. “We were given case studies with problems to solve. Often there’s no right or wrong answer—there are many different ways to solve challenges, so it was interesting to see others’ perspectives.”

She says that she was quickly able to put the lessons she learned into practice on a day-to-day basis—and is keen to make sure her colleagues can benefit from them too. “There were some things that I immediately tried to implement: helping staff understand how everything they do affects the bottom line, showing them how each little thing they do impacts people. I hope I can both use what I’ve learned from the course and pass it on.”

Growing with clients

Sandhya Sharma travelled from Delhi to Mumbai to take the course, meeting 18 other ISS Key Account Managers. She works with a professional services network in seven cities in India and describes the program as “extensive.”

“You need a lot of information about your client to make the best of it,” she says. “That means learning how to set your targets for your client—understanding the prerequisites from their side. And a big focus of the program is how to grow your account with your client’s requirements.” The course has equipped her to take on more complex projects and made a big difference in the way she approaches her work.