Management of your company’s established business relationships can often be challenging. However, when starting with a completely new business partner it is becoming even more difficult. You do not yet know each other’s people, culture, processes, systems, technologies or ways of working. Therefore, in ramp-up stage of a new business relationship there is a huge need for information sharing and management, as well as, for continuous collaboration to learn from each other and align the knowledge between the parties. Here is a short case example, very typical one, how one Jakamo user company ramps-up their supplier relationships and how Jakamo platform can support this.
A Central European business unit of a global technology company uses Jakamo to ramp-up their supplier relationships, mostly, in India and China. Let’s call them Customer in this case. The ramp-up process is based on strong continuous collaboration, two-way information sharing between the parties, and learning from each other. The process consists of the following five steps: evaluation, training and instructions, prototypes & samples, quality inspection, and growth strategy & development.
Supplier ramp-up starts with careful evaluation of the supplier including offer requests, evaluation questionnaires, process audits and site visits. Secondly, Customers specialist of different disciplines are training supplier’s people regarding quality, environment, health & safety, manufacturing, technologies, ways of working, and code of conduct to align the common practices according to the requirements. Thirdly, supplier delivers some samples or prototypes that the Customers inspects and gives feedback of at the fourth phase. Inspection involves often also third party inspectors. Finally, if everything goes well and the supplier fulfils the Customer’s requirements it is time for growth strategy and development of the relationship. This step includes typically contracting, agreeing operational practices, forecasting and continuous development plan.
As you can imagine this type of ramp-up process requires a lot of continuous collaboration and information sharing, such as, project plans, tasks, drawings, instructions, memos, and agreements between the companies and their people from different functions to succeed. The supplier ramp-up projects are managed with Jakamo applications (Projects, Requests, Orders, Audits and Library apps) to ensure continuous channel for interaction and keeping all required information in manageable form in the same place available for both parties when and where ever. Jakamo makes the supplier ramp-up smooth.
Jakamo cloud service is designed for supply chain collaboration. Jakamo is already used in 29 countries by companies, such as, ABB, Prohoc, Prima Power and Wärtsilä. Explore more at Jakamo.
Timo Rossi
CDO, Partner
Jakamo Limited
A shortened version of this text has been published in Prohoc Stakeholder Magazine Scope
