Our Approach

The overall approach can be summarised as follows:

Pre workshop

• Participants complete the supplier management competence profile. This will create some focus, enable people to think through their strengths and weaknesses, and to arrive at personal learning goals in the context of the programme objectives.
• Pre workshop assignment/study. This will not be onerous in terms of time [say maximum 45 mins.] We will introduce some core concepts [for example supplier lifecycle] raise some questions for them to consider and answer to bring along to the workshop
• Select a current supplier relationship[s] they are responsible for to be used during the workshop as a “live case study”. This approach will enable to get some tangible immediate outputs from the workshop in terms of action items with live suppliers

Workshop

• Typically this interactive workshop duration is 2 days. This can be modularised into 2x1 day events if necessary. There are merits with either approach, and the final decision can come down to practicalities and logistics.
• The agenda will be driven by the stages as described in the lifecycle, which effectively provides a roadmap for charting the stages and actions during the “journey”
• Each session will use a structure of input –application review. Input sessions will be short, introducing new concepts and skills. Application is practice/ application time. Review is summary, key learning points, what can we take away and implement
• Application activities will be numerous and varied including: syndicate exercises, individual analysis, work on live supplier case studies, case study simulations, role play, structured Q+A sessions.

Post workshop support/ evaluation

These will be specific to an assignment, but typically will include the following interventions:

• Review workshops, usually 3 hour duration, approximately 2 months after the initial workshop. The objective is to share experiences, re visit specific topics, introduce new learning, reinforce implantation
• As a variation on the above this can be achieved on a conference call, if logistics/ travel are a problem for a face to face meeting
• Coaching. We have found this to be a very powerful reinforcement/ support tool. As the relationship between the trainer and then participant is established telephone based sessions are possible, so making the coaching more cost and time effective.
• Reading lists