Procurement Professional is the official publication of CIPS Australasia

# 99 - Should you treat suppliers the same as staff?

04 Dec 2009

A recent white-paper from Kinaxis suggests you should treat suppliers collaboratively. Even treat them as an extension to your own organisation.
http://info.kinaxis.com/content/scmr-supplier-collaboration 

Maybe. But that may be going just a tad too far thinks The Buyer. The old IBM account-management model [the best in the business] always taught their sales account managers to be 51% IBM and 49% customer orientated. That seemed very magnanimous in those days, even generous. But it looks more normal than exceptional nowadays – so they were probably right.

But certainly, treating suppliers as 100% the same as your own staff is going a tad far perhaps ... otherwise what is the point of suppliers? You may as well buy up every company that supplies you .... there is a real cost to treating people exactly the same as staff. For example, low cost country sourcing has its benefits centred around lower cost labour: 

What is not beyond doubt is that most buyers could benefit from treating suppliers better; much better in some cases maybe. Even collaboratively. Just not exactly the same, that’s all, as there is still benefit in some modest distance in the relationship. One good sign was buyers hosting their suppliers for a night out at the CIPSA NSW Christmas Ball in Sydney last year. Who’d have thought it eh, buyers hosting suppliers for a change [see #blog 49].

The Buyer – posted 4 December 2009

The views of THE BUYER are personal and are not necessarily those of Procurement Professional magazine, BTTB Marketing nor CIPS.