Desk Report: Brands and retailers are missing opportunities to improve their businesses, and are incurring unnecessary costs, by not seeking out their suppliers’ ideas and insights on product and process innovation. They also risk missing important sustainability and carbon reduction goals by failing to prioritize efficient, fair, and collaborative partnerships with their suppliers.These are among the findings of the Better Buying Partnership IndexTM (BBPI), a new tool which examines buyer-supplier relationships through the lens of partnership quality.
Marsha Dickson, President and Co-Founder of Better Buying Institute, comments:
“Brands and retailers are missing opportunities to reduce costs and increase efficiency by not partnering with and listening to their suppliers, and not fully seeing the contribution suppliers can make to the long-term success of the business.”
“Unlocking that potential will require new ways of working with suppliers, practical changes such as regularly listening to, and discussing suppliers’ ideas, and a shift in how buyers view their suppliers – from expendable to important sources of innovation for long-term business success. “
The BBPI enables suppliers to rate their buyers according to 12 subjective measures, with buyers categorised as either True Partners, Collaborators or Detractors. The label of True Partner is only granted when a buyer has satisfied a particular measure all of the time.
Brands and retailers who subscribe to the Better Buying Partnership IndexTM receive an Individual Score and Company Report, enabling them to benchmark their performance against the industry as a whole, and recommendations from their suppliers on how they can improve.
