Supplier Collaboration, a holy grail?

Earlier this week, I was in Denmark, speaking at a conference around the theme of Supplier Collaboration and Strategic Supplier Relationship Management. About 130 people showed up and were listening quite carefully at what the speakers, myself included, were speaking about. Many of them told me they still had a very adversarial relationship with their suppliers however. One of the speakers, a professor from a university close to Detroit, demonstrated the difference in supplier perception in the US automotive industry between the 3 US majors and Toyota, Honda and Nissan. The results were stunning, and guess what, there is a clear correlation between profitability and the perception.

Obviously you will argue that having good relationships with suppliers is by far not the only factor that will play in the profitability of a company, and obviously you are right. But the fact there is this correlation really makes me wonder why not more companies are jumping on the bandwagon. What is it that stops them doing so?

One thought daunted on me while listening to him and to others. As listed companies, we are focused on the short term. In my company, we jokingly say that the long term is the end of the quarter. Transforming a relationship from an adversarial to a collaborative one takes time as trust needs to be built between the organizations. That is not done overnight, so, is it the long term nature of the effort that hinders companies to jump onto the bandwagon? Could well be. I would understand that if large initial investments were required, but frankly, most often that is not the case. So, should American and European companies wait till they completely outmaneuvered by Japanese ones before taking action? I would definitely not do that if I were in their shoes. How long does it actually takes to find the Holy Grail?

Telepresence, is this StarWars?

The other day, I had a memorable experience. It looked to me a little like StarWars. I was told I had to meet with some researchers and a customer of ours. The meeting was going to take place in the Netherlands, but the scientists would be in the US. Frankly, I had some difficulty understanding what they meant, till I got there.

We were introduced in a room with half an oval table and three large flat screens in front of us. On the screen appeared a number of people in what looked like the other half of the same room. The illusion was complete. If I made abstraction of the screen frames, I would have had the impression of really being in the same room. And then the dialogue started. The discussion was initiated in a low and soft voice. There was no need to scream, no noise beside the voice of the person who spoke. Suddenly I interrupted him, and to my uttermost astonishment, he stopped immediately, turned to me and listened.

No, I have been in video conferences before. I have never seen anything like this. We even had a demo of a device they were developing. I had actually not realized that, on top of the three screens I talked about at the begin, was another screen that serves to collaborate. They shared computer screens with us and so we could see the demo that was performed on their halve of the table with the computer measurements that were affected by it. This was extremely impressive I have to say. Our customer very quickly became enthusiastic about the device and started discussing characteristics, usage etc. We had been able to gain his attention at short notice without having to travel across the Atlantic. This was really efficient use of our time. By the way, I learned that the room was a "Hale Room" from Hewlett-Packard.

Have you had such experiences? What do you think about it?

Can you beat up your customer

In the last couple entries, I spoke about the cultural differences between the Dutch and the Belgians, let me stay on that topic as it allows me to illustrate even more why we cannot take things for granted.

Several years ago, I was asked by one of our sales people to join him in a sales call to his Dutch customer. This was actually my first sales call in the Netherlands and I accepted it immediately. I thought it might be interesting, it actually was, way beyond my expectations, but for completely different reasons.

After the check-in at reception, we were guided to our clients office and sat down in front of him. My colleague introduced me, up till then, nothing unusual. But he turned back to his client and told him in non uncertain terms, he was completely pissed of with him because he had not placed the order he had promised and as such, my colleague had missed his forecast. Obviously, the client did not take that and the discussion heated up quite heavily. I was sitting on my chair completely frozen and asked myself how soon we would be thrown out. I could not understand why he was risking the whole relationship for what turned out being a small delay due to some administrative issues. The bashing lasted for about one hour. When they finally came to an agreement and the customer apologized (believe me or not), he turned back to me, and as it was already late afternoon, told me, "look I want to hear what you have to tell me, why don't we go and take a drink in a nearby bar. This will allow us to talk more freely." And yes, the customer even paid for the drinks.

The Dutch have this great capability to completely separate business and private life. It is not because you have an issue on the business side, that this will affect your personal relationship. This is actually a great asset, but that got me shivering before understanding what it was all about. Never take things for granted, make sure you get briefed on how business is done in a country prior to go to the first customer meeting. I can tell you out of personal experience. Do you also have such stories to tell?

A little more on culture

Last week my wife and I went cycling in the Loire valley in France and obviously, visited some castles. What else can you do out there, isn't it? Each castle has its way to represent its history. In one of them, plastic sheets were available for the visitors in each of the rooms. Several languages were provided, they included beside French, English, Italian, Spanish, German and a couple sheets in Dutch. I was actually quite impressed about the number of languages available and the effort the French owner had mad to translate the text. So, when I heard a couple Dutch speaking people complain about the fact there were not enough Dutch documents.

Later in the day, we were lunching in a lonely spot along the river when a group of Dutch speaking people choose a spot 50 cm from our place to have a noisy lunch with their family. Then it daunted on me. Despite the fact we are living within a distance of a couple hundred kilometers from each other, we have very different sensitivities. I would have been pleasantly surprised to find a text in my language all together, and I try to respect people's intimacy. But that is probably not something I share with some Dutch at least.

Now, if we are already so different, while living so closely, what about the differences of sensitivities with people living on the other side of the planet.

Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers....

No, you are not looking at the wrong blog. This title, that is well known in France, can freely be translated in "Mr. Englishmen, please shoot first...". It goes back to the time of the archeries.

Now, why use this as a title. Well to highlight another aspect of global collaboration. English is the only language that is spoken more by non native speakers than by native speakers. It is actually a very rich language which has a lot of nuances. Listening to British humor is one of the best ways to experience that. Unfortunately, most of the non native speakers do not know these nuances and will make mistakes all the time. Messieurs les Anglais, keep that into account and do not get upset when you hear something that may sound rude .

I remember, years ago, I was responsible for the beta test of a product that my company was going to sell. We tested the product with a local company in Belgium. The development team, based in the US, was asking for our feedback. And we gave them feedback:

• You must include this function
• You must change the human interface in this way
• You must interface with this device

You probably already realize what happened. We completely pissed of the development team. When I went to visit them, they beat me up. You cannot tell us what we have to do. We should have used other words. We did not realize that the word "must" has a much harder meaning in English than in Dutch or French.

My request is actually pretty simple. Keep in mind that not everybody you talk to is as fluent as you are in English. It may avoid a lot of bad feelings.