Project CustMaS was introduced to address the changes in customer management skills needed in digitalising Business-to-Business (B2B) markets, with the following aims: a) Develop an up-to-date, comprehensive, empirically validated framework of skills in B2B customer management in a digitalising world. b) Develop a post-graduate course curriculum and program guide, including program-intended learning outcomes, appropriate pedagogy, and evaluation strategies. c) Disseminate the results of the project for a broader community. On May 19 and 20, 2022, the project started with a transnational kick-off meeting at the Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster, Germany. During the meeting, project members were present to discuss project management-related issues and the layout of the attended intellectual outputs (IO). To do so, the submitted project application was reviewed, and the five expected IOs were discussed in detail.
In the last decades, the European economy has transformed into a “network economy”. Firms have reduced their depth of production, relying on increasingly differentiated supply chain. Managing the buyer-supplier interface in an efficient and mutually beneficial way thus becomes a key challenge for a modern economy, requiring perfectly skilled workforce at this interface. Within the context of a network economy, European industry has been confronted with an additional set of complex challenges including the intensified global competition and the resulting fundamental change in customer behaviour, the high volatility and susceptibility to crises of global supply networks, raising sustainability issues and continuous demographic change (European Commission 2019a, 2019b, 2020). Fortunately, new digital technologies developing in the fourth industrial revolution (I4.0) offer a chance to cope with these challenges. Digitalisation also disrupts the traditional buyer-seller interaction (Krafft, Sajtos & Haenlein, 2020). CustMaS, therefore, has paid attention not only to identify current success skills, but identify the necessary digitalization skills as core part of the 21st century skills.