During one of my quarterly visits to the client’s office my coffee break with my sponsor was interrupted by a call he received from the head of ecommerce merchandising team.
“We have to launch 350,000 new products and that too in only 18 months. Can you guys help us in meeting this deadline”? asked my sponsor.
Being the largest plumbing wholesaler in North America, our client, now wanted to grow their e-Commerce footprint by increasing and improving products offered online. Since our team was working on core product data improvements and being client’s preferred vendor in these activities, we decided to step up and move from a vendor to a partner and confirmed our involvement in the project.
It was not too long before we stumbled upon a major roadblock during process implementation when team started showing signs of stress as we have not handled such huge volume of data along with the complexity involved in the product types and it had an impact on throughput which became inconsistent and erroneous.
As expected, in the first review post implementation, our sponsor raised his concerns on project schedule adherence and quality. He ended the discussion on a worrying note when he asked - “Are you guys confident that you will be able to pull it off”? We assured him of some game changing results in next few months to pacify his anxiety.
After the conference call, I called my quality consultant and asked her to arrange for an urgent meeting to kick start a DMAIC project.
We went on with multiple brainstorming sessions starting initially in conference rooms and then spreading to even cafeteria. Whenever required, we also invited client point of contacts for discussions on project scope and how other supporting teams can help us achieve our target.
Finally hard work paid off as we achieved required throughput by automations, process reengineering and implementing an effective capacity utilization to ensure both eClerx and client were on top of schedule.
In the next review, sponsor was highly appreciative of the excellent work done by us to achieve project milestones and it was a rewarding moment when with a smile he offered more business – “will you be interested in taking up upstream and downstream activities as well”?
Lessons Learned
- Whatever the duration and objectives of the projects/processes, striving to become a partner is imperative. This gives companies a competitive leg up
- Business alliances should be collaborative (creating value together) rather than mere exchange (getting something back for your efforts)
- Partners value the skills each brings to the table