I hope that you have enjoyed the article \u201c13 Tips For Big Purchasing Meetings, Part I.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Much of what I teach, I\u2019ve learned the hard way.\u00a0 Such is the case with some of the tips in the above-linked article and the articles that will follow it.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a little story\u2026<\/p>\n
At Next Level Purchasing, we have a purchasing skills assessment.\u00a0 It began as an assessment of seven purchasing skill dimensions and was wildly\u00a0successful and popular.\u00a0 This assessment mathematically measures skill levels and helps purchasing departments benchmark their skills with others.<\/p>\n
As\u00a0we grew our content, we reach a point several years ago when we decided to\u00a0continue offering the seven-dimension assessment but also offer an advanced nine-dimension assessment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We built the expanded assessment, tested it, and had a client champing at the bit to be the first to use it.\u00a0 So, we rushed it a little.<\/p>\n
The client had its entire purchasing team of 20 people take the assessment, we generated the reports, and discussed the reports with them via conference call.\u00a0 The client couldn\u2019t believe how badly the team scored!\u00a0 The call ended in a bit of disbelief, but the client was still interested in discussing the results of the assessment and our recommendations for purchasing training going forward.<\/p>\n
Between the end of that call and the time of the next scheduled call, we discovered a coding error in the expanded assessment.\u00a0 Though it was just one line of code that had an error, it caused the client\u2019s scores to be lower than they actually should have been.<\/p>\n
We re-ran the reports for the client, saw that they scored markedly higher, and expected that they\u2019d be thrilled to learn that things weren\u2019t as bad as they seemed when we initially reviewed the erroneous reports with them.<\/p>\n
They were not thrilled at all.<\/p>\n
In fact, they had some choice words for us.\u00a0 They felt that the fact that the initial reports contained errors undermined the credibility of everything we did.\u00a0 They told us that they were not even interested in seeing the corrected reports, were no longer interested in doing business with us and, in fact, no longer interested in even speaking with us again.<\/p>\n
Ouch.<\/p>\n
But, you know what?\u00a0 I can\u2019t blame them.<\/p>\n
The error was our fault.\u00a0 We should have been more diligent in our testing and proofreading for that first client of the expanded assessment.\u00a0 We blew it.<\/p>\n
Well, we learned our lesson.\u00a0 We obviously fixed the coding error, tightened up our testing procedures, and made it part of our culture to double- and triple-check things when we introduce something new or rely on manual calculations rather than automated calculations that have proven tried and true.<\/p>\n
We recently did an assessment for a potentially huge client.\u00a0 This client not only wanted our standard reports, which we know are now bulletproof,\u00a0but also wanted our reports sliced-and-diced in Excel in about 60 different ways.<\/p>\n
That customized\u00a0manual slicing-and-dicing made me nervous.<\/p>\n
So, before our meeting with this client, an employee and I went through each and every calculation by hand.\u00a0 If there were 60 reports, there were probably thousands of calculations.<\/p>\n
I knew what was at stake.\u00a0 Though I can\u2019t say that this client would have dismissed us as instantly as the previously-described client, I didn\u2019t want to lose credibility with the client over one bad calculation out of thousands.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, and not unexpectedly, we found one error in a calculation that involved extracting data from the system and manually manipulating it in Excel.\u00a0 We fixed it.\u00a0 And we delivered a great \u2013 I\u2019d claim perfect \u2013 assessment package to the client.\u00a0 Things look promising for our future with this client.<\/p>\n
Executives hate math errors.\u00a0 Look for them.\u00a0 Find them.\u00a0 Correct them\u2026before you meet with executives.<\/p>\n
This was a lesson I learned the hard way.\u00a0 Hopefully, the above-linked article and this story will give you one less lesson to learn the hard way.<\/p>\n
Check that math thoroughly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hope that you have enjoyed the article \u201c13 Tips […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n