Project vs. Account Management

by Emily Cohen

Many in-house creative teams have very important operational roles with traditional, industry standard titles such as Project Manager and Account Manager. While both roles perform critical functions in the management process, their specific responsibilities in that process, from project initiation through close out, are quite different and require unique skills sets and responsibilities. In order to understand how these roles are different, I’ve developed the following table that compare the account vs. project manager’s overarching responsibilities at various levels:

	Account Manager	Project Manager
Project Type	Primarily responsible for those projects at the highest level (those projects that are strategically important to the company and are complex to execute)	Involved with all types of projects
Project Initiation	Brings deep brand knowledge, understands overarching company objectives, strategies and marketing plan(s), and the goals/needs of each business unit and target market/audience Leads development of creative brief across cross-functional teams Conducts project kick-off meeting with clients and creative team	Processes all project initiation documentation (e.g. project brief, work order, rapid request) Ensures documentation is complete and distributes to creative team Facilitates project kick-off meeting with clients and creative team
Client Management	Proactive – engages with clients regularly to discuss plans Advisory, consultative, strategic-level management Builds client relationships * Generates awareness of in-house team across organization Works with clients and creative team to align business objectives with creative strategies	Responsive – responds to clients needs, both planned and unplanned requests Tactical, daily project-level management
Staff & Process Management	Strong advocate on behalf of clients and staff alike Mentors staff on client management practices	Assists in the implementation of processes, systems, technology, metrics and SOPs Ensure a responsive, seamless, on-time and on-budget process from start to finish that adheres to standardized work flow systems and processes Manages project status and approval process If no Traffic Manager, develops project schedules and estimates
Project Close-Out	Develops case-studies for representative projects to demonstrate value and effectiveness of internal/external relationships Conducts post-mortems on strategic-level projects	Conducts post-mortems on select projects Issues project summary reports on all projects Analyzes data to report on key project-level metrics
Skill Set/Experience Level	Preferably, trained in meeting facilitation Consultative, dynamic and engaging Experienced in: creative brief development client management communicating and building strong connections with executive leadership and clients championing both clients and creative staff	Preferably, certified in project management Detail-driven, organized and tactical Experienced in: estimating, budgeting and scheduling procedures staff, client and project management developing and utilizing workflow/project management technology, processes and systems

* Traditionally, within an agency environment, an account manager is also responsible for new business development. In an in-house environment, this translates to building client relationships and generating awareness of the in-house team throughout the organization. I often find that account managers within an agency-environment rarely transition well when hired within an in-house environment, because they don’t have experience navigating all levels of an organization.

At the highest level, the account manager provides strategic, big-picture insight and is relationship-driven while the project manager performs an equally important but different, more daily, tactical and project-level management role. Both roles are important and without them a team can greatly suffer.

The challenge many in-house teams have is how to differentiate these roles without blurring the lines. Because these two positions require different skill sets and experiences, it is often hard to combine them into one position. Yet, unfortunately, that is often what occurs. In this case, the project and account manager are one and the same position because the account manager position is considered “non-billable” or overhead which, in turn, impacts the team’s utilization rate – an important metric that drives the team’s financial model and organizational structure. Thus, the Catch 22. A team may need dedicated account mangers, yet they can’t “afford” them. Still other teams may have project managers but lack dedicated account managers.

Those teams without dedicated account managers often struggle to demonstrate their value and have difficulty allocating enough time and resources to building productive, consultative relationships with their clients. In such cases, the creative team is purely reactive and tactical. This impacts the team’s capability to provide value-added strategic advise to clients – and this is a service most in-house teams need to provide in order to compete with external agencies and provide the necessary insight most clients value above all else.

Similarly, other teams don’t have enough resources to hire dedicated project or account managers and often rely on designers to manage clients and projects alike. While this dual role does have some benefits, most designers don’t have the necessary skill sets required and their time really is best suited to creative areas, where their experience and passion can be best utilized.

The best teams are constructed around the needs of the organization and clients and include dedicated, trained and skilled account and/or project managers to truly fulfill those needs.