Decideware

Last week I attended the eyeforprocurement 2nd Supplier Management Conference at the Flamingo in Las Vegas.

With a high powered team of client-side Supplier Management experts both presenting and participating, there was a wealth of content to absorb.

Day 1 was worth it's weight in gold with a great deal of discussion around the value of Supplier Scorecards, and specifically the role of the "people aspects" of managing strategic relationships.

Here are some key points that I thought would be of interest to our Blog audience. Each point will be covered in this and the next 2 posts.

Value Driven Scorecards

Do the questions you're asking on your supplier scorecards drive extra value from the relationship - beyond those basic benefits that you expect to achieve?

One question that all the participants agreed was of terrific value was essentially this:

"Does this supplier demonstrate a commitment to continuous improvement?"

This single, important question has the effect of "Raising the Bar" from each assessment period to the next and is particularly useful for mature relationships where most of the easy wins have already been achieved e.g. direct cost reduction, simple process improvement, financial management, etc.

Some Comments

I would like to add to this discussion the point that Value-driven scorecards need to have criteria in them that are future-focussed.

In contrast, many of the criteria in non-strategically oriented scorecards tend to be historically focused.

By this I mean that criteria such as "Innovation", "Continuous improvement" and "Strategic alignment" are strategically oriented, future-focussed criteria linked to what WILL happen, not what HAS happened.

It is also interesting to note that criteria that focus on previous performance also tend to address governance issues, such contract compliance. Future focussed criteria "go beyond the SLA".

Author: Richard Benyon (Decideware)