An account manager is a person who works for an organization with the responsibility managing customer relations and sales in the company. The main role of the account manager is to ensure that there is a strong relation between the clients and the company so that the clients will continue using the company for business. The manager will also ensure that there are business development proposals for the new clients, in so doing the account manager act as the link between the company and the clients in regards to business communication. Other responsibilities involve the quotas and reporting to the organization regarding sales (Moore and Janne, 2017).
Project manager, on the other hand, is a person responsible for planning and executing any project related activity in the company. A project manager acts as the change agent as they make the project their own so that they can carry out any activity that will be intended to accomplish it. Other than planning and executing, the manager will be responsible for leading the implementing team towards the success of the project.
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In regards to the two careers, it is clear that they perform important roles in driving the success of the company. They are management roles that require expertise and skills in this line of career. Taking a look at the salary scale for both we find that the range depends on education, experience and the competency and the rank of the manager. However, the rewards of the two differ in the sense that the project manager is rewarded after completing the project while the rewards of the account manager come in after there are a successful client relation and business development with the company. The two careers are important in any organization that intends to attract more customers and expands the line of business in the future (Savolainen and Jarmo,2015).
Insight on the two careers by orientation, process, strategy, reward and structure will help in understanding the differences between them and how they have an impact to the organization. In regards to orientation, account managers are external while the project managers are internally oriented, without customers, the account manager has no job, while without targets defined by the internal goals of the company, the project manager will not accomplish his job. When it comes to the process of completing the job, both have similarities in the sense that they use the same strategy to accomplish the job. However, the details in job completion for each manager differ according to the roles and responsibilities of each. In regards to the structure, both managers have teams responsible for executing the strategies. Account manager have professional in sales and marketing while project managers have professionals in engineering, quality assurance, technical expertise and monitoring and evaluation experts. The strategies used by both managers differ in the sense that the variables vary; for account managers; information about cost, pricing, competition and the goals of the company are used. On the other hand, for project managers; they deal with information regarding cost, timely delivery, estimation of work, the design schedules and technical information. Lastly, regarding the rewards, for the account manager, it depends on the successfully planned activities that are intended to increased sales. While for the project manager, rewards depend on the timely accomplishment of the projects (Comfort and Peter, 2014).
In conclusion, both careers are important for a company; they enable one to have competence and expertise in each field (Piteira and Jorge,2017). However, the project manager is more complex as compared to account manager, in the sense that it requires more skills and competence regarding designing, engineering, and technical areas. The project manager is a career that requires a time investment to gather all the expertise so as to perfect every planned project.
References
Comfort, Jeremy, and Peter Franklin. The mindful international manager: How to work effectively across cultures . Kogan Page Publishers, 2014.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/role-account-manager-vs-project-manager-37915.html
Moore, Tim, and Janne Morton. "The myth of job readiness? Written communication, employability, and the ‘skills gap’in higher education." Studies in Higher Education 42.3 (2017): 591-609.
Piteira, Margarida C., and Jorge FS Gomes. "Organisational Narratives of Applied Knowledge in Technology-Based Organisations." International Journal of Knowledge-Based Organizations (IJKBO) 7.1 (2017): 19-31.
Savolainen, Paula, and Jarmo J. Ahonen. "Knowledge lost: Challenges in changing project manager between sales and implementation in software projects." International Journal of Project Management 33.1 (2015): 92-102.
