Case study
Global Supplier Management Skills Building Programme including Stakeholder Engagement Workshops
By Simon Brown |
Business situation
Our client was a global, technologically driven company with 140 procurement team members. Much of their $multi-billion spend was focused through a small number of large global suppliers who frequently held the balance of power. Procurement was often working against the tide with these powerful suppliers and struggled to make change happen.
Across the organisation, supplier management was not a well-defined process. This meant it was handled in a fragmented way and carried out by numerous different parties with limited success.
Solution implemented
The Future Purchasing (FP) team worked with its client to develop a new practical approach to supplier management (SM), including an easy to use SM toolkit.
The first step was to design and run a global SM training programme for 50 procurement staff who, in collaboration with their stakeholders, became the champions of SM.
The next step was to initiate a programme of one day SM review workshops for each of their major suppliers. The procurement team members collaborated with their key internal business stakeholders to create a specific action plan for each major supplier. Areas of focus were stakeholder and supplier relationship mapping, business requirements, potential supplier interventions and clear action plans.
Benefits delivered
A new SM process is now embedded within the organisation, led by the procurement team. Key stakeholders are inspired and motivated to support SM activities with procurement and business stakeholders now having joint accountability for its success.
Supplier SM action plans were co-developed and agreed between procurement and key stakeholders for five major suppliers. The cross functional SM teams were equipped with agendas on how to work better with major suppliers. Results-oriented face to face SM workshops were then organised with the selected suppliers.
“Thought provoking ideas and ways of doing things differently.”
“Combination of insights which will make me think and work differently in the future.“
“SM materials are really great and best in class. Classification of suppliers was helpful and how to handle meetings.”
Procurement team members
Related Expertise
Supplier management
Our supplier management approach combines excellent tools and techniques across the full range of activity, from segmentation, through performance measurement and improvement and through to relationship strategy development.
Category management
Excellence in Category Management gives multipliers of value delivery compared to less effective programs. Our approach delivers a high performing team and process which provides sustainable value over years rather than months.
About Simon Brown
Director
30 years procurement experience in line management and
consulting roles.
Previous employment: British Aerospace, British Airways, QP Group
Education: MBA, London Business School. BA (Hons) Business Studies.
CIPS: member
Further Reading
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