Relationships Matter in Hard Economic Times
Reading Miki Saxon’s post on her blog at Ramp Up Solutions about how customers reduce communication with vendors in hard times made me think of lean environments and the tech boom and bust of the late ’90s through 2001. It’s true that customer to vendor communication tends to stop in hard times- my take is that the relationship is the culprit. Here’s my comment to Miki’s post:
Miki- it’s fascinating to observe what “hard times” do to relationships, from marraige to business partnerships. The JIT relationships are often formed based on who is in the power seat vs. “how can we best work together”. The lean culture approach, done properly, focuses on a relationship in order to best communicate issues and challenges between “partners” whether it be two manufacturing depts feeding each other or a supplier providing raw materials to a manufacturer. This approach usually finds innovative approaches to solving problems in “hard times” vs. abusing the power. One of the most telling periods of time was the tech boom, followed by bust, of the late 90s into 2001. Many industries were very excited about setting up industry “marketplaces” where supposedly thankful suppliers were supposed to flock for business. The problem was that those suppliers knew they would be squeezed by most of the customers/companies in that marketplace and avoided it. Most of the promise of marketplaces failed miserably and a lot of money was wasted on projects setting up the technology- basically because of poor relationships.
Do you remember the tech boom and bust? How did it affect your relationships with suppliers? If you maintained a good working relationship with another company through hard times, what made it successful? How did innovation and relationships play a role?
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Tags: Bob-Turek, communication, customers, difficult, hard-times, Miki-Saxon, projectmanagement411, projects, ramp-up-solutions, relationshipsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Solutions and Trends Requiring Projects
2 opinions for Relationships Matter in Hard Economic Times
Kelly
Jan 24, 2008 at 9:25 am
I’ll confess that I’m one of those people who have found vendors more annoying as the economy cools down. Within the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed the marketing efforts have been substantially ramped up - and that means more calls to my office, more emails, more folks wanting meetings to “review” my situation. In contrast, my time is now more valuable because there is more pressure for me to get work done and bill out. It’s a terrible conflict.
Bob
Jan 24, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Kelly- I’m guessing that the annoying vendors are probably the ones that you don’t have good relationships with? Or is it simply a volume problem?
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