SRM Training Portfolio

Skills to manage and develop supplier relationships

Ultimately, business results are delivered through people. That's why our SRM training portfolio has been designed to cover exactly the right blend of technical capabilities, behavioural and communication skills that today's new breed of SRM practitioner needs to manage and develop supplier relationships effectively. The State of Flux curriculum focuses on four inter-related subject areas that deliver the 'how' as well as the 'what' of supplier relationship management:

  • Core category management capability: SRM capability is best built on a strong foundation of sourcing and category management experience.
  • Operational performance: We deliver SRM System training that transfers the knowledge and skills needed to get the most out of SRM technology. Additionally, best practice in SRM policy, process and governance is also covered in our operational training.
  • Commercial insight: We address key training topics such as market and supplier intelligence, understanding how the sales function works, driving and managing supplier innovation and leading change initiatives.
  • Transformational skills: This set of interpersonal skills programmes teaches the authentic influence techniques and communications skills needed to get beyond negotiation-driven dialogue to develop actionable, collaborative SRM initiatives with suppliers.

 

Context is king

It is important to recognise the importance of context when delivering training. Many organisations have excellent internal training programmes on subjects such as leadership, negotiating, influencing skills and so on. The issue, however, is that these programmes are generic – ie, not delivered in a format that is specific to the SRM context.

Our SRM curriculum is designed to provide a comprehensive skills development platform for supplier relationship managers to become successful in this emerging and important professional discipline. Most importantly, we deliver our training in context. Influencing, trust building and communication skills, for example, are all taught using realistic day-in-the-life scenarios to make training relevant, meaningful and immediately transferrable to the job.