Category Archives: Talent

Service Leaders Speak: Jim Wetekamp of BravoSolution on “Sourcing Leadership for the Recovery”

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Today’s guest post is from Jim Wetekamp of Bravo Solution, a global provider of supply management services and solutions (with offices across 3 continents).

It’s been just over a year since the financial crisis that signaled the worst of the global economic recession, and as we head back to work after summer vacation, businesses around the world are looking with a glimmer of hope towards the future. As the evidence in favor of a turnaround mounts, I am increasingly approached by sourcing leaders who are looking for ways to position their businesses for sourcing leadership in the recovery.

In truth, the visionary sourcing executives recognized early on that the objective for sourcing leadership doesn’t change at all as we dip into recession and then begin to recover. It is only the resources that they are allowed that changes. Ambitious executives will have seized the opportunities presented in the last year to be a strategic value driver for their businesses, driving cost out of the supply chain and helping to improve profitability in lean times. And they’ll have done that by adhering to the priorities that matter for sourcing leaders no matter the state of the economy:

Visibility, Fundamentals, and Evolution
Figure 1: Evolving Supply Management Priorities
The most successful sourcing leaders will have continued along this path over the last year; they will have kept their teams strong and armed them with the tools they need to succeed. These leaders are the ones who will find themselves best able to ride the crest of the recovery wave. They will not waste time staffing, training, and re-booting their sourcing organizations. Sadly, few organizations have weathered the past year fully intact, so what do sourcing executives need to do to lead in the recovery?

Sourcing Leadership’s job as the economy begins to recover is to rebuild the capabilities that were lost and get back on mission. This is not the time for a slow build; the most successful teams will be those who can quickly ramp their teams up and begin firing against all their priorities immediately. If you do nothing else, you should make sure your organization has best-in-class capabilities in three main areas:

Visibility and Opportunity Planning
If you don’t currently have visibility into your spend, it’s time to get a quick snapshot while laying the groundwork for a longer-term spend management program. Long term, a spend visibility tool will help you analyze and interpret your spending; you’ll likely also need a service provider experienced in rapid spend analysis to get you quickly through the initial opportunity identification phase. BravoSolution routinely delivers detailed opportunity analysis in a matter of weeks, even where our clients have spent months prior trying to understand their spend with internal resources.

Sourcing Fundamentals and Technologies
If you’re not using e-Sourcing tools, then you’re denying your business enormous efficiency gains, and wasting the time and expertise of your team on mundane recordkeeping tasks. You can move through the opportunities you identified faster and start realizing savings and managing vendors sooner if you’re using tools designed to accelerate that process. If you don’t have the bandwidth or expertise for a particular category, don’t be afraid to ask your technology provider for support – most leading e-Sourcing technology vendors, including BravoSolution, offer templates, advice, and even fully managed or outsourced events for their e-Sourcing customers.

Evolution and Extending Reach
The biggest disservice you can do for your organization (and your career) is to shy away from your most complex, highly visible categories at this moment. Strategic categories like transportation, packaging, and services mean too much to your business to be left to languish while your team rebuilds. You need to tackle these categories now, while suppliers are still eager to negotiate, and before a recovering economy begins to drive up costs in your biggest categories. Clearly, in categories that have such far-reaching impact across the organization, you cannot afford to fly blind. The value of pulling in a knowledgeable partner at this stage cannot be underestimated. Like other leading solution providers, BravoSolution regularly works with our customers to build tailored sourcing events that help our clients gain a deep understanding of their suppliers’ cost models and priorities, and to identify awards that drive efficiencies for both buyers and suppliers, reducing costs for both parties, and driving lasting, collaborative sourcing relationships.

By preserving, or better yet enhancing, your capabilities in these areas before the recovery takes hold, you will be poised to ride the wave of recovery and create competitive advantage for your business over the long term.

Thanks, Jim.

A Simple Recipe for Post-Recession Market Leadership

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A recent Industry Week article outlined “a recipe for post-recession market leadership in manufacturing” that will work for your industry too. After all, the real key to a quick recovery is good execution. So what’s the secret to turn-around success?

  1. Leverage Your Human Capital
    Your people should be the biggest asset you have. Use them. Solicit their ideas, get them on board, and let them take ownership.
  2. Benchmark the Gap Between Reported, Actual, and Potential Efficiency
    You’re never as efficient as you think you are, and you probably don’t know how efficient you could be.
  3. Take Action
    Identify the efficiency improvements that will give you the biggest bang for your buck and go for them.

For many of you, you’ll start with step 2 and hire a consultant who is an expert in efficiency in each of the areas that offer the greatest opportunities for savings. She’ll help you understand how well you’re really doing against how well you think you’re doing, how well you could be doing, and some general directions to get there. Then you’ll use your people to select the roads that are likely to work best for your company and the modes of transportation to get there. Then you’ll take the trip.

With respect to (your) sourcing and procurement (department), this means that you will:

  1. Hire a data analysis and category expert to analyze your spending and operations and identify your best cost reduction opportunities.
  2. Use your people to evaluate systems that will help you capture the cost reduction potential and manage the opportunities you have identified.
  3. Decide on the categories to attack and the systems to use and empower your team to take action.

McKinsey’s Leadership Lessons for Hard Times

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A recent article in McKinsey, which was based on a series of interviews with 14 CEOs and Chairmen of big companies like 3M, Tyco, Pepsi, P&G, and Sysco, described some emergent “leadership lessons for hard times” that was a good read. The harder times get, the more important good leadership is. Anyone can lead during a boom when consumers are spending freely and impulsively … but it takes a special type of leader to lead when the sky is falling all around you.

While not a complete list of lessons that a leader needs to learn, the following five lessons that emerged from McKinsey’s discussions are definitely critical.

  • Confront Reality
    The sooner you accept reality, even if it is a drastically constricting market, the sooner you can start dealing with it. The first company to deal with it is often the winner.
  • Put Strategy First
    Strategy should be the first item on the agenda of every board meeting … and you should be taking advantage of everything your board members have to offer.
  • Be Transparent
    At all levels. You will need the support and trust of your employees to make it through … and that will require regular, open, communication. Openness builds respect, trust, and solidarity which in turn helps employees stay focussed.
  • Build a Culture
    A culture binds a company together and helps to create trust.
  • Keep the Faith
    Even a crisis has opportunities, and since the nature of markets is that they follow up and down cycles, things will eventually get better.

And whatever you do, avoid the axe. Use a scalpel if you must, but never the axe. Chopping off the arm when you only needed to remove a finger just doesn’t make sense.

For a much deeper discussion, refer to the article. While a bit lengthy at 6 pages, it’s definitely worth it.

A Procurement Professional’s Guide to International Assignments

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The experience and perspective gained through an international assignment is ever-more valuable in today’s global supply chains and increases a procurement executive’s marketability in the long run. But making an international assignment work requires a well-thought out plan and a lot of flexibility from everyone involved-employer, employee and family.

So what should you do if you are thinking of making such a move? A recent article in Purchasing, which attempted to be “a procurement professional’s guide to international assignments”, had some good starting tips.

  • Does your company have a support structure in place for the region being relocated to?
    For example, IBM has had an established program since the 1980s where employees considering an international assignment were sent to an orientation session that addressed tax implication issues, handling your house in the US, school and church options, etc. Then, there was a look-see trip for those still serious about the idea.
  • Will your family be able to integrate into the community?
    Will there be support groups to help your family when you’re at work and traveling for work?
  • Will you be close to your suppliers?
    Not only should that be the primary benefit to the company, but it should be the primary benefit for you … you should be able to visit your suppliers regularly and develop real relationships on a professional and personal level that will help both your company and you.
  • Is the language you speak spoken there?
    It doesn’t have to be the primary language of the region, but at least a subset of people should speak it commonly as a second language.
  • Are you interested in learning a new language?
    While it may not be a necessity, it will certainly make your life easier if you are willing to learn the basics and soak it in.
  • Can you talk to people who have made the move?
    Find out about their daily lives and if you will be able to relate to their experiences.

It also had a list of do’s from Associates for International Research:

  • ensure that your company has a formal set of policies and practices
  • visit the location prior to accepting the assignment
  • have a clear understanding of the financial implications
  • understand how daily living will be different
  • obtain a proper and complete Letter of Understanding
  • read the relocation policy in advance
  • take care of any major medical or dental needs beforehand
  • get an idea of the expected outcomes of the assignment
  • obtain details on the type of security and medical services that will be offered
  • have an understanding of the tax implications and your compliance responsibilities

Five Secrets of Team Building

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In “Why Teams Don’t Work”, J. Richard Hackman of Harvard laid bare the five critical conditions that mark the difference between success and failure. Given that these trying times are requiring your team to do more with less and that the ultimate secret of supply chain success often boils down to cross-functional teams managing needs from product inception to final product disposal, successful teams are more important than ever. Here are Hackman’s five basic conditions of effective teams and ultimate success:

  1. Teams Must Be Real
    People need to know who’s on the team, who’s not, and who has what responsibilities. A virtual team or vague team concept won’t get the job done.
  2. Teams Need a Compelling Direction
    Members need to know what they’re supposed to be doing together. Without a clear direction, there is a real risk that different members will pursue different agendas.
  3. Teams Need Enabling Structures
    Teams with poorly designed tasks, the wrong mix of members, and un-enforced norms gravitate towards trouble.
  4. Teams Need a Supportive Organization
    The organizational context must facilitate teamwork in a manner that is conducive to the team and its members.
  5. Teams Need Expert Coaching
    A focus on individual performance does not necessarily improve the team. Teams need to be coached as a group in team processes.