About AKAM

About the Association for
Key Account Management

Our mission is to advance the understanding, recognition and standards of Key Account Management through learning, support and making connections.

AKAM is a not-for-profit, professional membership providing a resource centre and exchange for all members, both through the website and a variety of events. The AKAM community shares a passion for Key Account Management (KAM) and a desire to understand this apparently simple but actually challenging business discipline.

Our global community of Key Account Managers receives access to the latest research, resources and learning opportunities. AKAM members, including practitioners, consultants, academics and experts, are encouraged to network and collaborate to continuously advance the practice of KAM, sharing experience, insights and knowledge to help others develop their own understanding and competency.

Founded in 2016, initially with a pan-European focus, AKAM quickly attracted members across the world via its internet-accessible events and resources.

AKAM promotes KAM principles and practice through:

Communicating with business, academia and the wider world to gain proper understanding and recognition of KAM.

Standardising skills by defining competencies; a development curriculum; and certifying development programmes.

Sponsoring research into under-explored aspects of KAM, and linking practitioners and academics to the benefit of both.

Facilitating the sharing of KAM knowledge and the latest research, learning, practices and variations from around the world.

Our Members

AKAM consists of a healthily mixed community of five constituencies with different takes on KAM that add to each others’ understanding.

Corporate companies pursuing KAM programs in their organisations

Individual key account managers seeking support for a challenging job

Educational institutions seeking to develop a new offering in KAM

Academics looking for new links and participants in their research

Consultants and trainers offering KAM support and services.

Our Objectives

Foster professionalism in key account management (KAM)

Establish and certify educational and developmental standards in KAM

Develop professional qualifications for KAM practitioners

Raise standards of performance and practice in the KAM profession

Generate new knowledge and insights through sponsoring research

Act as a support hub and home for KAM practitioners, experts and new ideas.

How does it work?

Meetings and Webinars

Meetings are free to Members (chargeable for guests). Normally we hold two highly participative workshops, led by KAM experts and practitioners, and one conference with a wider range of presentations. Face-to-face meetings take place all over Europe: e.g. Paris, London, Oslo, Dublin, Lugano, Madrid, Milan, Berlin.

We also run webinars on KAM topics which are accessible from all over the world: about half are open to non-members. Meeting and webinar presentations are loaded into Member Resources on the website afterwards, with exclusive access to members, so even if you can’t make a meeting or live webinar, you can access the entire backlog of material and ideas whenever it suits you.

Online Member Resource Centre

We are constantly adding to the materials (available to Members only) via the website (over 250!) The collection of papers and articles – practical and conceptual, long and short – tackles a wide variety of KAM topics.

You can apply the tools and diagnostics in your own organisation, which will save you a lot of time and trouble. Plus there’s case studies, videos, and references to make it easy for you to learn more.

As far as we know, there is no other online resource for KAM like it, and the keyword search facility will help you find what you need. We hope Members will let us know what they want to see.

Qualifications in KAM

AKAM has developed two ground-breaking qualifications in KAM: as far as we could see, none previously existed.

The AKAM Professional Diploma is for experienced Key Account Managers who want to prove their competencies (to current and future employers, and to themselves), working through RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning). It’s not a course, you document your competencies at your own pace, with AKAM’s guidance.

The Postgraduate Certificate in KAM is accredited by the Technological University Dublin (with 30 ECTS), aimed at less experienced, new and aspiring Key Account Managers and any missing formal KAM training. The online course of recorded lectures, live tutorials and assignments can be followed anywhere in the world.

Professional networks

Members have exclusive access to the Member Network of names, organisations and email addresses so you can contact people who may have similar issues and might be able to offer support.

KAM Leaders in corporate members have access to an exclusive Programme Directors Forum with bimonthly online meetings to thrash out some of the issues they face. Their page on the website collects all the inputs and outputs from their discussions.

AKAM’s Academic Advisory Board meets quarterly to promote exchanges between academics, researchers and practitioners and particularly to facilitate and support research projects providing new insight into KAM. They also have an exclusive page on the website.

What our members have to say

Every Pfizer colleague has access to AKAM's network, its great resources on the website, engaging events and much more. Pfizer has been a proud and active corporate member of AKAM for over 5 years and will continue whilst we gain so much value

AKAM Membership allows me to join a community of specialists from different industries. In addition to the regular webinars that I enjoy attending at lunchtime, I also have access to a large number of resources that help me deepen and perfect my managerial approach with key account customers. Thank you for the richness and quality of your content.

Through AKAM, Hiab now has a network of like minded professionals, consultants and academics in support of our journey to optimise Key Account Management. AKAM helped me enormously in my endeavours to learn about KAM.

My membership of AKAM (since 2019) is extremely valuable for both my professional and academic development. AKAM helps me to stay in touch with the most relevant topics and trends in KAM globally, stimulates my thinking around my job and enhances my skills and competencies through its extensive tools, learning, networking and professional support, and the vast knowledge base of its members and board.