Wrapping up on Supplier-Enabled Innovation (SEI)

Towards the end of 2019 I posted a series of videos and blogs on the challenges and opportunities faced by Procurement professionals in nurturing and capturing innovation from key supplier relationships.

This post puts all those videos in one place (although they’re also viewable on the Four Pillars YouTube channel). 

The first video was about rooting Supplier-Enabled Innovation within the overall Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) programme, but it doesn’t mean it has to be the number one priority (it isn't). The video explains why.

The second was about placing supplier-enabled innovation firmly into the Procurement domain, the idea being that capturing innovation was a key responsibility for ambitious professional category and supplier relationship managers. If those people aren’t driving supplier innovation, then who does?

Then we move on to how innovation is actually delivered. What methods should Procurement pros adopt in order to turn the rhetoric of collaboration and innovation into reality? In this video, I describe the key activities that are necessary to make innovation capture routine.

Supplier-Enabled Innovation is rarely hassle-free. If it was easy, then everyone would do it, and do it well. There are often cultural issues and other business activities that cut across the best endeavours of Procurement and contributing suppliers. In other words, although there are undoubted benefits of capturing great ideas, what typically gets in the way of ensuring it happens for real?

Having already placed innovation into the Procurement domain, then that topic is revisited here in respect of the roles played by senior executives, and by Procurement leaders. Each have specific contributions to make if supplier innovation is to be successful.

And finally, and partially functioning as a summary, I explain the five ‘critical success factors’ that will determine whether your supplier-enabled innovation is likely to be successful, or just another failed initiative.

If you’re curious enough to want to know more about how to make this type of innovation capture activity a reality for your organisation, or you would like to see your Procurement team improve their skills in this department, then please get in touch. I’d be delighted to help.

Beyond this series on SEI, I’ve been asked to broaden the topic into a comprehensive series on Managing Suppliers. Although I’ve spoken and written a lot on the topic and advised and trained many organisations, the idea is to provide a ‘Health-Check’ or ‘Maturity Assessment’.

By the end of the series viewers and readers will have pretty much all they need in order to baseline their current practice, and steer them towards genuinely having a successful programme and a team of professionals who really know what they’re doing. 

This will all be coming soon. In the meantime, if there are any particular challenge you and your organisation are facing in respect of manging suppliers, and you’d like me to cover it, then let me know in the comments section or simply email me.