Why?
Most large companies have in place some kind of program for reviewing the performance of their suppliers.
Yet many companies still experience frustrations and dissatisfaction with supplier relationships, especially those with strategic suppliers. Why are many relationship management programs not working?
One key factor is that many programs are based on only quantitative measures whereas with strategic suppliers the key issues are often qualitative in nature. Other issues include:
| Useability |
applications that are difficult to use and understand!!! |
| Scaleability |
particularly with multiple supplier types, regions/countries, many spend categories etc |
| Inflexible |
in that it can be difficult to alter content, question sets and scorecards |
| Data issues |
difficulty accessing and retrieval once it has been gathered (particularly previous reviews) |
| Skepticism |
about outcomes because of poor completion rates, little transparency and low levels of 'buy-in' by the suppliers |
| Actionability |
few actionable outcomes ever emerge that genuinely help improve the relationship |
Clearly there is a need for tool that is targeted squarely for use with strategic suppliers, and that is easy to implement and manage.
What?
Relationship Optimizer has been developed specifically to help purchasing & supply managers better measure and track levels of performance and satisfaction in their relationships.
The application can help implement and automate your existing review process or if you are looking to create one from scratch you can use our wealth of partner methodologies and templates.
Its centralized reporting and administration make it ideal for managing reviews on a national or global basis.
It is also a perfect tool for helping you with performance or incentive based payments to your suppliers/vendors as well as tracking satisfaction over time or on a comparative basis
The application both fully configurable and highly flexible, so administrators can select whatever assessment criteria best apply to their relationship, and assessment can be one-way or two-way.
Importantly, the process leads to the development of Action Plans to ensure that findings are addressed.
Standard reporting from Relationship Optimizer enables outcomes to be broken out in any number of ways including...
| Structure |
Supplier |
Geography |
Assessor |
| by business unit |
by supplier |
by country |
by individual assessor |
| by spend category |
by supplier group |
by region |
by assessor job function |
| by brand |
by supplier type |
globally |
by assessor location |
The 'relationship data-warehouse' acts as an easily accessible central repository for all information relating to supplier relationship reviews
It has built-in workflow and email functionality to ensure easy communication with participants in the program.
And standard reporting includes easy checking on the progress of participation by assessors.
Outcomes are available immediately, all brought to life in a wealth of reports that can be saved and distributed as PDF files.
How?
Relationship Optimizer is an 'on-demand' web application that users can access from anywhere in the world without having software installed on their computers.
It can be adopted as a software-only tool or delivered as an integral part of the services from our consulting partners in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Asia. Those partners are: Ernst & Young (Global); ADR-International (Global), Morgan Anderson (USA), Roth Associates (USA), Brand Action Team (USA), Agency Assessments International (UK/Europe); Cardinal Mark (Australia); Navigare (Australia), The Clinic (Australia); Latham Consulting (Australia); MDA Asia-Pacific (Asia); Aqumen (New Zealand
Now!
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