Supplier Relationship Management Practitioner

Networking with the people next to you. Why should you know them?
This course is about relationships and you will start by creating relationships within the group that will last long beyond the end of the five days. Long-term networking is essential to successful careers and this course will start by helping you to create great networking opportunities with the professionals present, including the expert trainer Martin Chalkley.
Understanding WCC
→ Why is there an organization interested in supplier relationships?
→ WCC’s importance in the world of commercial trading and relations?
Foundation principles of SRM and the challenge of contracting
→ Defining Supplier Relationship Management and its meaning to your organization
→ The value added of supplier management to your company
→ SRM’s development: mastering SRM skills and knowledge
→ The five drivers behind successful SRM and their meaning for your organization
→ Understanding your company’s strategy
→ The result of managing stakeholders successfully
→ Building trust across the organization
→ Ways of gaining collaborative confidence with your strategic suppliers
→ Getting senior management involved.
Becoming the customer of choice
→ The participants evaluate and elaborate on few statistics on SRM implementations.
→ Becoming a customer of choice through successful implementation of these statistics
Practical application
Work in small groups: practical use of the five key attributes in becoming a customer of choice. How will it drive competitive advantage to your company? Learning ways to impact your organization’s development. Suppliers as a source of value
→ Recognizing our suppliers as a corporate asset and manage them as if they are part of the balance sheet
→ Breaking down of the cultural silos that exists in our organization
→ The value outcomes brought by the supply chain
The basics of contracting
→ Understanding of what a contract is, who can enter into it and form a contract, how a Supplier Relationship Manager can exploit the benefits of our contracting relationships.
→ The four basic elements of a contract: what are they, how to use them to our mutual benefit, why do contractual relationships fail; how to reduce failure and enhance success.
→ Becoming more collaborative in the contracting world
→ Negotiating for success: what does success look like
→ Focus on the right negotiation points
Practical application
Delegates will work in small groups to look at the effect of relationship management in a real world example from the USA. They will learn and discuss why the example studied was considered an unsuccessful project.

Understanding the supply base
→ The exact value of SRM.
→ Investigation of SRM: providing mutual benefit and the value it brings beyond the related disciplines of contracts, procurement and performance management.
Value erosion: do our suppliers suffer from our own organizational culture?
→ Factors we need to recognize and be aware of in order to maintain strong relationships with the supply base. How far outside the organization one needs to look?
→ Four of the top five value eroding concerns are internal issues. → Coordination and cultural realignment: suppliers prefer a united organization, but they often face discordant entity.
→ Benefits acquired by a culturally realigned organization
→ Key internal principles one must be aware of when implementing a move towards SRM
Practical application
Working in small groups, delegates will look at the principles of organizational change within an organization. They will investigate 6 facts that define more future looking company and be introduced to a real life example from Australia where a company drove successful change into their organization and affected true bottom line profitability.Delegates can request that real life situations are explored from their companies.
Approaches to sourcing relationships with our suppliers
→ Not all suppliers are created equal and not all relationships run the same course. Understanding the principles of our sourcing options is fundamental to the future nature of the relationship.
→ The principles of Full Outsourcing and when should they be used
→ The principles behind Equity Joint Ventures and how do we manage them when our own joint venture delivers to us
→ The consortium requires careful management, why would we use them as a methodology to deliver to us?
→ The role of SRM in coordinating a selectively outsourced approach which requires a high degree of customer oversight.
→ Key facts for SRM to understand an implement for the unique challenges given by prime contractors
Practical application
Investigate a variety of sourcing approaches to solve a global organization’s requirement for a change of business strategy. They will understand the impact of choosing one approach over another on the resultant internal organization structure and how that impacts the practices of SRM. Delegates can request that real life situations are used from their companies.
Segmenting the supply chain. Which suppliers are more important to you?
→ Determining supplier’s importance: which ones deserve your focus, which ones should I keep an eye on and who is likely to grow or lose business with me?
→ Different segmentation models available: from the legacy and developing suppliers to the niche, commodity and strategic suppliers.
→ Measuring and managing different suppliers: tips, tricks and tactics one can employ to make the company’s role more streamlined and support the company’s mission

Benchmarking performance and how can we be better together?
→ Critical success factors for strategic relationships.
→ Benchmark studies in the context of SRM: explanation and the value do they bring to the company.
→ Who and What should we be benchmarking against?
→ Using benchmarking to design and embed long-term change
Practical application
Work in small groups: design the inputs and outputs for a benchmark study that can be taken back and implemented to your work place. Delegates may use direct examples from their own organizations. A benchmarking practice from a leading organization will be discussed as an example.
Understanding the stakeholder community, internal and external → Supply chain stakeholders and their importance, why should you manage them?
→ Theories for mapping stakeholders: identifying and managing stakeholders, → Defining stakeholder’s respective influence on our plans for a coordinated supply chain
→ Stakeholder issues you should investigate, and build your knowledge to help drive towards successful mutual relationships
Practical application
Work in group: develop a stakeholder map for one of the exercises already undertaken. Individual work: build a stakeholder map for one of their own supply chain relationships. Apply critical thought to the relative influence of different stakeholders on your supplier activities.
Communicating about SRM
→ How to develop different attitude for different suppliers on the basis of the company’s
→ Principles that compose a quality communications plan
→ Ways to include the three critical success factors for strategic relationships into your plans. How does that interact with business cases for change and what are the components for a successful business case?
→ Evaluating capability to use the five case model in your plans to drive change into the way you use your suppliers
Practical application
Having identified stakeholders in the previous exercise, delegates will design elements of a communications strategy for one of the exercises already undertaken. Delegates can request that real life situations are used from their companies.

Managing the SRM environment
→ Managing a successful SRM environment: help our organizations drive new behaviors and standardize these behaviors
→ Measure success in the application of SRM:how do we show the benefit it drives
→ The balanced scorecard is one approach and its constituent make up is determined.
→ Instilling relationship governance across the company
→ Defining appropriate governance matrix. How do we ensure people adhere to the one customer one voice?
→ Supplier’s expectations
→ Managing ourselves and our team
→ Cultural principles we should be aware of
→ Introduction to the principal of BS11000 Collaborative Relationship Management.
Practical application
Over the course of the day, delegates will consider few exercises: who they are, understand their make up and realize new ways of approaching relationships. New approaches to communication can be taken into their working environment and they will gain a better understanding of how and why they react in different business situations.
Managing supplier claims and disputes
→ Defining and recognizing Dispute
→ Reasons for the occurrence of disputes: is it always just down to money?
→ Avoiding disputes
→ Proper behavior when the dispute escalates and has become formal
→ The principles of mediation
→ The principles of arbitration
→ The principles of litigation
Practical application
Work in small groups: work through a sample dispute and look to understand how different approaches to resolution can lead to beneficial outcomes. Which is the best approach? Delegates can request that real life situations are used from their companies.
Managing change in the contractual environment. How does it affect relationships?
→ What is change?
→ Using SRM to enable positive contractual change
→ Contractual change: defining and its effects
→ How does SRM interact with a best practice change control process?
Practical application
Using the eight principles introduced earlier in the day from Collaborative Supplier Relationship Management, the delegates will prepare a presentation on the similar opportunities that they face within their organizations to become more collaborative, simplify their approach to managing suppliers and improve the relationship quality that they have across the strategic supply chain.