Welcome to the third edition in a series of case studies designed to test hypotheses I have regarding how supplier size needs to be factored into sourcing and supplier management approaches.<\/p>\n
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If you read the first two posts about Dell and Yahoo Web Hosting, you may think that I have a prejudice against using big suppliers. You\u2019d be wrong. I\u2019ll use today\u2019s case study to illustrate that big supplier don\u2019t always treat small customers like they are unimportant.<\/p>\n
Next Level Purchasing is a growing organization. Year after year, we experience tremendous growth in the number of students we serve. And that, of course, requires that we also grow our employment base.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, we created the position of External Relations Coordinator to handle things from helping the leaders of our larger clients track their team\u2019s progress through our purchasing training to interfacing with organizations who grant approval or recognition of our purchasing education to coordinating marketing projects. This is a very important position and, for a small organization, we simply cannot afford to hire the wrong person.<\/p>\n
To manage the risk of hiring the wrong person, we decided that we would try working through a temporary labor agency to find someone on a temp-to-hire basis. This was the first time we took such an approach. Now temp labor is often associated with administrative work, but some agencies also provide professional temp labor.<\/p>\n
In speaking with temp labor suppliers, it became clear that our request for just one professional person was a pretty small request. After all, here in the Pittsburgh Airport Area, there are some large corporate headquarters and offices for companies like Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, FedEx Ground, Eaton\/Cutler Hammer, Nova Chemicals, ThermoFisher Scientific, and more. The temp agencies in this area can send dozens of temps to these clients.<\/p>\n
Because of the \u201cease of escape\u201d involved in bringing a temp on board, most companies just have the temp agency send someone in. If that person doesn\u2019t work out, they send someone else. And that cycle will continue until you find someone you like or simply give up.<\/p>\n
But, again, as a smaller organization, we don\u2019t want to waste one man-hour. So we wanted to interview candidates. Essentially, we were a high-maintenance customer with the potential of hiring one person. Not exactly the type of engagement that temp agencies dream about.<\/p>\n
Despite our small potential revenue and stricter-than-average requirements, the temp agency we ended up choosing \u2013 Kelly Services \u2013 totally treated us like we were a big customer. After all of the years that I\u2019ve been in purchasing, it takes a lot for me to be impressed with supplier service, but their performance was excellent. Specifically, the performance of their branch manager, Cari Fessler, was very impressive.<\/p>\n
Here are just a few of the ways that Cari and Kelly Services brought value to our engagement:<\/p>\n
In temp-to-hire situations, the employer has to pay a flat fee when hiring the employee. The amount of that fee depends on the number of hours the employee worked as a temp before officially starting her employment.<\/p>\n
We weren\u2019t watching that number closely and, unfortunately, just barely missed a threshold that would decrease our fee. Kelly Services saw this when preparing our final bill and gave us credit to bring our fee down to the next level. Now this wasn\u2019t a big savings for us and certainly not a big revenue loss for Kelly Services, but that move showed real class and care for the customer. A dollar is a dollar, you know. And suppliers that care about adding any amount of money to your bottom line are the type of suppliers that we all need more of.<\/p>\n
So despite being a small customer, Kelly Services did not give us \u201csmall customer treatment.\u201d They delivered above-and-beyond results!<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been following along with this series, you know that I\u2019m holding off on the purchasing lessons until I\u2019ve posted all of the case studies. The next case study with a different supplier will reinforce some of the underlying principles that made our experience with Kelly Services such a success story.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome to the third edition in a series of case […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n