PROCUREMENT STRATEGY bear .” “ I don ’ t need to outrun the bear ,” the first one says . “ I just need to outrun you .”
“ The same is true for supplier collaboration . You don ’ t have to have the perfect relationship to reap crucial innovations from the supplier , just a slightly better relationship than their other customers .”
Requesting for I P O No , not an initial public offering . You ’ re more likely to find mentions of those in our sister publication , FinTech Magazine .
What I ’ m talking about is the well-known – in the procurement and sourcing world , at least – RFx ( Request for ): RFI , RFP , and RFO .
Marland recently told the world , via his personal channels , that innovative companies are looking at issuing :
1 . Request for Innovation 2 . Request for Partnership 3 . Request for Outcome
“ In essence , companies are now asking suppliers to ‘ Solve [ this ] problem for [ us ].” That idea , in itself , is innovative . Have the suppliers innovate new solutions to old problems to demonstrate their capabilities and
“ You don ’ t have to have the perfect relationship to reap crucial innovations from the supplier , just a slightly better relationship than their other customers ”
JAMES MARLAND GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT , SAP INTELLIGENT SPEND & BUSINESS NETWORK earn a companies investment and partnership . To help solidify the value of supplier innovation , I thought I ’ d take a look at a few excellent examples – the first provided by James Marland – of this , played out in the real world , to see if it worked out .
To conclude , we ’ re going to give you a quote that James often refers back to , by Visna Wightman , a former CPO of Woolworths : “ There ’ s no such thing as an internal customer .” And a final insight from the man himself :
“ The customer sits at the heart of every decision that we make . We in procurement get to work on initiatives that impact the customer , the customer who pushed the trolley , the customer who is in our store . Not an internal customer .’ So rather than satisfying our internal customer in engineering , marketing , and finance , we need to draw back and look at the one who actually pays the bills . The customers should be our customer in procurement .”
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