CASE STUDY / DS SMITH
TECHNOLOGY / ADVERT
The fundamentals of SRM don’t stop at the strategic level, they should filter through every business relationship that you have.
of supplier management technology role The critical
set targets that support DS Smith’s externally published sustainability goals, environmental objectives, as well as targets on cost reduction, quality improvement and innovation. “We want them to help us take waste out of our process and with every interaction I expect them to help us improve, I don’t want them just accepting our requests.” And Jennings says Covid-19 has highlighted even further, the importance of efficiency. “I did 99 flights last year, but I’ve now done more than 130 days working from home and I’ve never felt more connected. We’re no longer waiting to get people together in person, instead we say, ‘let’s jump on a video call’. “Covid has brought some inefficiencies but they have been far outweighed by the tools we have to increase connectedness and speed of decision making. “We’ve had 1,000 things to deal with at once and changes to manage on an hourly basis during this crisis, but we’ve shown agility and the ability to pivot and move direction. We will not let go of these learnings. If an organisation comes out of this not having evolved and learnt how to do things better, an opportunity has been lost.”
And while the bottom tier may well be transactional from a product and price perspective, there is still a need for process innovation to remove waste. “For example, I don’t want 500,000 invoices coming in, so we have to look at how we manage that, how we embrace catalogues and technology that can make the connectivity with those suppliers as smooth and efficient as possible. “The fundamentals of SRM don’t stop at the strategic level, they should filter through every business relationship that you have.”
Innovations for a changing world
The company is constantly working on new solutions such as the recently launched ECO Bowl, which provides a more sustainable alternative to plastic food packaging. In March, it announced it had made special boxes that could be filled by food retailers with emergency provisions and left on the doorstep of vulnerable people. And in July, it revealed conceptual ideas such as delivery boxes with colour coded handling areas marked one side for the courier and the other for the customer, as well as packages that could have adverts and branding printed inside the box.
Increasing momentum
Despite being early days, the company has already seen a number of improvements in output, quality and total running cost of machinery as a result of closer ties. Jennings says he wants suppliers to suggest improvements and be unafraid to challenge procurement. “I want them to come forward and say, for example, ‘we have an ink that’s going to cost €1m more but it is fast-drying, so we can turn the ovens off and save €5m in energy’. That’s the kind of tension in the relationship that I want.” To drive that behaviour, suppliers are
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2020 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
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