“If you look at procurement from the suppliers’ perspective, I think there’s a lot of burden put on the supplier, whether they know it or not, or do it purposely or not. There’s a lot of different systems, a lot of communications, a lot of big documents. There’s a huge burden to assimilate, understand, and figure out exactly what you need to do.” –Costas Xyloyiannis, CEO of HICX
Supplier experience management is a new area of focus for most procurement teams, even though we often serve as the primary point of contact for suppliers. We just haven’t thought about it before. If we want to improve the supplier experience, becoming customers of choice in the process, we are going to need to revisit many of our policies, processes, and programs.
In an effort to better understand the supplier experience and the opportunity associated with improving it, we partnered with HICX to run a three-part AOP Live series. We were joined by leading practitioners to answer audience questions on three topics:
Making a Business Case for Supplier Experience Management
Looking at the present and future of Supplier Experience Management in Practice, and
Articulating the ROI associated with World Class Supplier Experience Management
The three hours of conversation were full of insights and inspiration, and we’ve edited the best portions of them into this podcast.
In the first session, Charlotte Anabelle de Brabandt and Ramit Mahajan talked about the benefits associated with creating a good enough supplier experience to be seen as a customer of choice – what that looks like in practice and whether the disruptions of the last two years have impacted how executive leadership regards that objective.
In part 2, Adam Brown and Costas Xyloyiannis talked about the misalignment between how highly procurement would rate themselves as a partner and what the supplier experience is actually like in practice.
In the final installment of the series, Robert Bonnar and Mary Beth Lang explored the meaning of supplier experience management and how it connects to other types of value and initiatives that procurement is already leading.
SXM Series Part 1: Making the Case for Suppliers Experience Management
SXM Series Part 2: Importance of Data to Supplier Experience Management
SXM Series Part 3: The Meaning of Supplier Experience Management
