Are you getting what you pay for?

Do you know the top challenges in reducing your company’s costs? Why are companies hiring supply chain consultants?

Johan van Hamme speaks on Cost Reduction and improving efficiencies for Business Owners, CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s.

1. Practical consultancy to secure the best “Total Cost of Ownership” solution. How to match the best possible "cost reduction methodology" with the specific product or service?

2. Advanced training sessions on Purchasing and Supply Chain Management. These cover elements such as: supplier selection, operational and sourcing key performance indicators, cost reductions, contract development, low cost country sourcing, reverse auctions, supplier development, etc.

3. Development of high performance Purchasing and Supply Chain Organizations. This process includes such items as: creation of new organizational charts, development of roles and responsibilities, support for recruitment purposes and post implementation follow-up.

Johan van Hamme speaks on Building a Bridge to Europe to Business Owners, CEO’s, CFO’s and Sales Directors

While crossing borders for doing business, simply having a good proposal may not be enough. For doing business in Europe – a colossal mélange of several countries, it is extremely vital to know a lot about their specific cultures and style of doing business if you are to succeed.

1. Cultural Diversity Trainings. Understanding the cultural differences while doing business across various countries in Europe. If you think France is just a short train ride away from UK, and hence the mode of communication and business etiquette can’t be all that different, think again.

2. Build Bridge to Europe. How to prepare strategies in anticipation of meetings with European contacts and how to win them over.

3. Cross Cultural Consultancy. Delivering “hands-on “advice allowing companies to secure effective integration into European businesses.

Some recent speaking engagements:

• “Supply Chain challenges and opportunities of a company in growth”

o March 2010 – Salzburg (Austria)

o Customer: Siemens Wind Energy

• “Sourcing and India, the European Perspective”

o January 2010 – Mumbai and Pune (India)

o Customers: Chemexcil, EEPC (Engineering India),The Times of India, GNBC (Generation Next Business Consultancy), Global Economic Summit

• “Optimizing product portfolio and new trends in purchasing”

o February 2009 – Barcelona (Spain)

o Customer: Tenneco Automotive – Customer of the Year Award

Biography:

Johan van Hamme has 20+ years experience and worked as executive for global leading companies such as the Volkswagen Group, Tenneco Inc., Rockwell Automation and Accenture.

Johan, who masters six European languages, has in-depth experience in Purchasing, Supply Chain Management, International Business Culture and Change Management.

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New trends in Supply Chain Consulting

The landscape of Supply Chain Consulting is clearly moving towards a demand for a higher degree of specialisation into a defined sourcing category. The more generic kind of work with high attention on analysis has gradually shifted to a short-term, no-nonsense approach with key focus on the implementation.

With globalisation is mind, customers are also looking for consultancy companies with the ability to work internationally who understand potential cultural differences.

Together with the functional and soft expertise, cross-functionality and helicopter view still remain major contributors to the success of a given project.

More often, decisions to hire external specialist are initiated by board level members. These executives are mainly looking for solutions that are more anchored with their company’s core strategy. In the mid management range, people are still looking for consultants to fill the gap from a pure operational point-of-view.

Despite the tendency to upgrade the requirements for Supply Chain consultants, companies are not always willing to pay more for the proposed services. The global ongoing crisis can be considered as the main cause for this price pressure.

So, the importance of smaller highly focused consultancy companies is growing. Let this be a positive warning for the bigger global players.

Top 5 Tips to Reduce Costs from Supply Chain Expert

“It’s all a matter of efficiency!” is what they say. Pulling costs out of your organization or avoiding spending money might be easier said then done.

Just think about a drop of sales you might expect when drastically cutting your marketing budgets or the lack of services you might initiate when “attacking” your operations.

Unfortunately many companies active in the cost-cutting field suffer from the “copy/paste” syndrome. Believing that when it works for A it should also work for B is a far too simple expression. The true value of strong consultancy companies with strong demonstration of capability lies underneath.

Hereby the top 5 tips to reduce costs from Supply Chain Expert:

1. Start with a decent spend analysis on current and future expected costs but do not make this a microscopical exercise. Getting first high level indications is good enough at this stage.

2. Translate this information into your own business context by asking questions about “must have’s”, “nice to have’s”, preferred areas, potential customer impact and implementation ease.

3. Provide evidence of cost-reduction strength by focusing on a first important project. Trying to do everything at once classically generates failures.

4. Make sure to select the right cost reduction methodology (out of approx. 15 available) for the category or project “under fire”. You might want to combine some of them into one exercise.

5. Integrate the human and business culture aspect into your equation. It will allow a smoother change-management process and will increase positive interactions with vendors and internal customers.

The recent and ongoing crisis shifted people to think differently. Supply Chain Experts with focus on “here and now” do quite well!

Just make sure to fish in the right pool of Supply Chain experts but be careful for the business sharks. Unless you want to play a role in the next “Jaws” movie.

Why is your company’s supply chain solution failing to deliver?

Yes! We found the good supply chain solution that will bring glory to the company!
We will be drastically reducing our costs, streamline our deliveries and optimize our structures.

Most probably this statement is backed up by a good initial process driving towards that decision. However, are you sure to have the ability to implement this solution? Asking this critical question is of great value knowing that many senior people and managers have been dismissed due to the lack of capability to go from A to B.

Still too many top guys do work out of their marble tower without having a realistic view on the business. Field experience and knowing the context is a mandatory requirement to do things as the best student of the class. So, use your helicopter view, feel the temperature, communicate properly and swim into reality.

Hereby some key points to consider being successful in the implementation field:

• What information is required and from whom?
• Who are the key people to be involved?
• What would be the consequential damages if not handled correctly?
• What are the major bottleneck(s)?
• What is the critical path to be followed?
• Is this project supported by top management?
• Who is the budget owner?
• Are the overall savings worthwhile to start with it?
• Do you generate extra internal costs with this move?
• Is there a risk of hitting the final customer?
• Is the type of process generally accepted?
• Do you have comparable examples of previous exercises?
• Is the environment ready for change?
• Are you working in a conservative or a more progressive context?
• What are the defined expectations and roles for all parties concerned?
• Is this only one of many other similar projects (multiplication effect)?
• Are there any cultural business barriers you might expect?

Make sure to incorporate all this into the first waves of your supply chain solution BEFORE you make a decision. Gathering this data might even convince you not to start with the development of your strategic thoughts anyway.

Avoid bouncing your head against the wall! Understanding were the walls are located is a good start … unless you are a fan of headaches!