What is a TAM (Technical Account Manager) and Does Your Database Need One?

This is usually one of the first questions asked by clients when discussing the possibility of adding a TAM (Technical Account Manager) to their Percona Support contract. Although the TAM role in a general sense has been around for many years, there are often misconceptions and confusion on what exactly a TAM is, and how a TAM can prove beneficial to your company.

As a TAM at Percona, I advocate for our customers, working with them closely to understand their business and technical environment, using my industry knowledge to advise the best path forward for current issues as well as any future project planning. (Recommended reading: my colleague Michael Patrick wrote a blog post about a day in the life of a technical account manager earlier this year.)

Expertise

Percona TAMs are often SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) in many areas of database administration. Percona TAMs come from a professional DBA background, so we have years of experience managing large and complex database installations in enterprise environments as well as smaller companies and startups.

Efficiency

As a TAM, I am also involved with the customer’s planning/testing both before and after any major changes, such as database upgrades, architecture and design, and project planning. This work often includes documenting the procedures that are followed during planned events, reviewing active support tickets, and analyzing customer environments.

Research

I review the latest white papers, blogs, and newsletters to stay up to date on various database technologies, including MySQL, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL. Our clients need the latest information to stay current, compliant, and secure, and as a TAM I can help make that happen by staying involved in the industry and bringing relevant information on trends and technology to the table.

TAMs are exposed to all of Percona’s products and services with a unique internal insight. This enables us to offer expert advice to our customers to take full advantage of our products and services to optimize their database infrastructure. Percona’s wide reach also allows the TAM visibility into multiple clients, industries, and architectures that can give real-world additional insight. This information exponentially increases the ability of our customers to achieve their goals and plan successfully.

What Else?

There is, of course, much more to the TAM role than just these areas. Some of the other regular duties a Percona TAM might perform are:

• Hosting regular meetings with Percona clients to better understand the business/technical environment, infrastructure, goals, and challenges.
• Taking ownership of support tickets and retaining that ownership through to a successful resolution.
• Providing an internal escalation point for client support and consulting projects.
• Perform implementation reviews, discuss new product features, and ensure prompt and proper resolution of technical challenges.
• Staying current with any ongoing and upcoming client projects and initiatives.

I might add is that we have exposure to multiple clients/industries/architectures and that can help give additional perspective or insights to clients

TAMs are equipped to use all this information to assist customers with proactive solutions and best practices for recommended changes to production. As a TAM, our commitment to you is to be honest, empathetic, and exceed expectations, whether you’re using a Percona product or not.

Your personal Percona Support Technical Account Manager will understand you and your company better than anyone else at Percona. They are on hand to help you achieve your database business goals, ensuring you are aware of the best tools to optimize and power your company’s database infrastructure.

by Brian Sumpter via Percona Database Performance Blog