Vendors are Machines. Suppliers are People.
We all rely on suppliers. It doesn’t matter whether they are providing you your personal ‘big screen TV’ or providing you ‘materials & supplies’ that help your organization supply others. Suppliers are extremely important.
I once heard a person refer to a supplier as a vendor. It was an innocent, positive comment that reinforced how vendors were “part of the team”. The supplier responded with, “I thought your team was composed of people, not people and machines”!
With globalization, and continued growth in various trade agreements, the flow of products and services (sometimes 50% of the total cost of the product) do not often recognize country borders. Finding the best suppliers, the best deals, is a never-ending effort. Also, monitoring the performance of suppliers becomes more important, both for your organization and for the supplier. Alignment with supplier’s goals and objectives will bring you the best results….
Suppliers want:
Customers want:
The above is not an all-inclusive list of wants. However, there is substantial overlap in wants that reflects the importance of developing close supplier relationships. Some call these ‘partnership style relationships’.
Partnership Style Relationships
It doesn’t matter whether you are a large corporation, a government operation, a small business, or another type of entity, working very closely with your suppliers will deliver better, consistent, long term performance. Some of the best practices that have shown continued excellent results are what I call my “Top 10”.
Treating suppliers as partners, partners with ‘aligned goals and objectives’, is an evolutionary process. It is a process that requires effort and work from both parties. I have never met a supplier who didn’t want to be successful, and have the customer be successful. By using partnership style relationships you will find that quality relationships deliver quality performance! People to people!
Russell J. Bunio
8.24.2016