The Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA), a nonprofit association dedicated to helping companies become essential to their most important customers, and ARPEDIO, the Danish provider of sales and strategic account management insights and software, announce a partnership to create a cutting-edge tool designed for strategic and key account managers to objectively assess their customer relationships and systematically progress through the stages of a value co-creation engagement. 

“Strategic account management enablement is all about tools, training and coaching,” said SAMA President & CEO Denise Freier. “This tool uses as its organizing principle SAMA intellectual property and best practices around value co-creation.”

The partnership will combine ARPEDIO’s powerful Account Management and Relationship Mapping platform on top of Salesforce.com with SAMA’s seven-step value co-creation framework, which has already been adopted and put into use by hundreds of the world’s leading B2B companies. Furthermore, the agreement also makes ARPEDIO SAMA’s only training facilitator and coordinator based in the Nordics.

“ARPEDIO builds on its key alliance with SAMA to put SAMA’s knowledge in the hands of all certified strategic account managers,” said Ulrik Monberg, Founder & CEO, ARPEDIO. “This will enable all the good training and knowledge to be put into use in their everyday life. Formalizing what has long been a key relationship between SAMA and ARPEDIO is a major milestone for ARPEDIO. It’s a big step for our customers, for SAMA and for all SAMA members, who now have a global tech partner that will continue to improve the platform with new features and tools to empower not just the strategic account manager but also the entire SAM program.”

The tool, which will natively integrate into Salesforce.com, is ready to use and easily implemented. 

“We use ARPEDIO’s suite of tools ourselves to give a common structure and strategic lens to managing our most important customers,” said Harvey Dunham, SAMA’s Managing Director for Strategy. “It’s quick, it’s easy to use and it’s powerful. It forces you to step back and say, ‘Where am I with this customer, and what do I need to do to get to the next step?’”

“SAMA has defined what makes a strategic account management program successful, and we provide a way of anchoring it in Salesforce CRM,” said Daniel P. Kallestrup, Business Development Manager for ARPEDIO. “It is the perfect match, resulting in professional execution, efficient teamwork and ongoing coaching.”