Successful Partnerships
What Makes a Successful Supplier?
There is no question that a relationship with Corporate United represents an efficient way for a supplier to gain access to a large audience of potential customers; but it takes more than a desire to grow your business to be successful within Corporate United.
Our most successful suppliers work closely with Corporate United to identify value beyond the obvious cost benefits of a leveraged contract. Seeking opportunities for standardization, continuous improvement, and proactive improvements on members’ total cost of ownership aids suppliers in winning and maintaining participation.
While working with Corporate United does provide our suppliers with an unprecedented opportunity, it doesn’t come without expectations. The keys to a successful relationship include;
Offering tremendous value to our members, consistent with the volume and potential that Corporate United represents. Our members have joined Corporate United to take advantage of the leverage that being part of the world’s largest virtual organization represents, and they expect to see that reflected in their agreements.
Providing national account representation and internal communication that will help support sales efforts. Corporate United can provide substantive value for our suppliers, but only if we maintain the ability to develop the right kinds of relationships at all levels of our suppliers’ organizations.
Helping Corporate United to better understand and market your total value offering. As an advocate for our members and our suppliers, building our knowledge of the industry and the subtleties of our suppliers’ businesses is a key ongoing function.
Working with the more than 130 Global 2000 companies that make up the Corporate United membership. In doing so, our most successful providers are able to exhibit a level of flexibility that separates them from their competitors. While Corporate United members find tremendous value in belonging to the group, each has unique needs that must be addressed if a supplier hopes to be broadly relevant.
Finally, working to maintain and improve the competitiveness and service levels of our suppliers’ offerings, which is paramount to the development of true partnerships. If suppliers expect to retain business, they must work to educate Corporate United and our members on what represents a “best of breed” approach to take advantage of their services.
Remember, our most successful suppliers understand and appreciate the value of collaboration. If your organization feels it is better off independently pursuing opportunities without providing a leveraged solution through a GPO, then a partnership with Corporate United is unlikely to bear fruit.
Creating Sustainable Partnerships
Both buyers and suppliers are known to extol to virtues of partnerships, but neither party is apt to do what it really takes to create lasting relationships. Buyers are too quick to bid suppliers out, and understandably cautious suppliers are unlikely to give too much away without a stronger commitment.
Corporate United is uniquely positioned in this relationship to help both sides take the necessary steps to create a sustainable partnership that includes meaningful and measurable benefits for both the buyer and the supplier.
The keys to the development of these partnerships are communication, trust, transparency, measurement, and execution.
Communication: Corporate United provides a regulated forum in which buyers and suppliers can share their issues and concerns, and resolve them in a manner that satisfies both parties. By openly discussing the goals and objectives of each group, we help to develop plans to address the evolving needs of everyone involved. In a traditional model much of the communication ends when the contract is signed; Corporate United ensures the continuation of this discourse throughout the relationship.
Trust: The simple truth is that you can’t have a productive partnership with someone you don’t trust, or who doesn’t trust you. Corporate United works in a high-integrity environment in which buyers and suppliers are expected to demonstrate more than professional ethics; they are expected to enter all discussions with the candor one would expect from a strong partnership.
Transparency: In order to establish trust, both parties must be willing to share all of the information that is pertinent to the relationship. While no one is expected to make their customer an “insider” in their business, helping one another to understand their drivers and goals will invariably lead to the best and most palatable solution to any concern.
Measurement: Maintaining strong partnerships requires suppliers to deliver value beyond initial savings. Continuous improvement initiatives are critical to the long-term stability of a relationship, but only if the buyer can quantify them. Working with buyers to understand their measurement requirements, and suppliers to understand their ability to quantify the impact of their recommendations, is tantamount to the sustainability of partnerships.
Execution: Saying you can do something and doing it are two different things. It seems logical, but all too often recommendations go unimplemented, buyers don’t see the value, and suppliers lose the business. Corporate United works hard to provide visibility and support into these initiatives so that development opportunities are not simply identified, they are realized.