Trading Partner Collaboration: How to Avoid Groundhog Day Syndrome

It’s fitting that SMI’s inaugural column on all things supply chain should dig into the perennial interest our community has in collaboration. Collaboration is part of our DNA, and I mean this literally. Without it, this community of providers and suppliers joining together to solve problems and learn from each other would cease to exist.

Collaboration has been on our minds recently since our latest initiative team is getting ready to meet for the first time on innovative, value-based collaborations. The premise is that community members seek deeper relationships than those currently in place where the majority feel collaborative value still centers on price and volume discussions. The overall goal is to remove “friction” from trading partner relationships to unlock value beyond these traditional areas.

Have We been Afflicted with Groundhog Day Syndrome?

SMI has spent countless hours on collaboration in various initiative teams as well as live sessions at our Forums. I have to admit that collaboration as a business discipline does start to send signals to my manure detection meter. It reminds me of the classic fall back response when someone asks you about your organization’s sales and operations planning process: “S&OP is a journey my friend.”

Collaboration is like that. It’s prone to truism. The first that comes to my mind is “collaboration is all about trust.” The sentiment expressed here is absolutely true, yet I question our ability to systematize trust. Can we mechanize the development of trust? Groundhog Day, Columbia Pictures, 1993

Probably not. The fear then is that we are treading the same road over and over but with a different pair of shoes. We have the same discussion without making any meaningful advances, and without realizing we are in the same unenviable position as Bill Murray’s character in the classic movie Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day syndrome is no more than an inability to learn. And if there is anything that we as a community of healthcare professionals need now more than ever it is to learn more and learn faster. Learning agility is the way to free ourselves from Groundhog Day Syndrome.

It Takes a Team to Create Agile Learning Environments

Breaking the Groundhog Day curse requires recognizing certain benefits to collaboration that don’t often get referenced.

SCM World ran a study back in in 2013 on trading partner relationships, and among a wealth of interesting findings, one in particular has stuck with me over the years. According to 70% of the survey respondents, collaborative organizations learn 1 ½ times faster than non-collaborative organizations. (Trading Partner Collaboration Study).

In my mind, this is a critically important source of value from collaborative relationships. The organization that creates teams that can learn exceptionally fast and rapidly deploy those lessons for the benefit of patients or customers will win. I say teams because individuals will often fall back on what he or she knows in difficult situations.

Imagine a provider supply chain executive and supplier national accounts executive involved in a discussion where the way forward to deeper collaboration may be unclear or uncertain. Both individuals, in my mind, will retreat to what they know: the provider will lean on price, while the supplier will lean on volume discounts.

Now imagine a setting where both organizations are meeting with a stronger cross functional bench of talent. The provider may have leaders in care pathway design, and operations and logistics leaders while the supplier could have representatives from supply chain and R&D with them. Problem solving speed would increase because each party would see the customer need differently and would understand what solution would best fill the customer need.

Trust can’t be mechanized. But it can be demonstrated through a true understanding of what the customer needs and that is respectful of the depth of expertise that can reside in supplier organizations.

I’m excited for this new SMI initiative. We’ve assembled a great team of provider and supplier leaders under the guidance of John Strong. If the group recognizes that a big piece of the value from joining the initiative team is a stronger learning curve than I have no doubt we will have broken the groundhog day curse and be on the path to truly collaborative relationships.

As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions.