Building deep supplier relationships

MANILA, Philippines - In order to keep pace in today’s highly competitive environment, more and more companies are becoming collaborative with their suppliers, and developing close and long-term relationships.

This is indeed necessary in an increasingly growing competitive business environment.

Such is the case with Splash Corp., the Filipino-owned personal and consumer care products company.

 â€œTreating suppliers as partners with mutual objectives and shared benefits secures the best possible commercial advantage. Both parties must work together and both must win,” said Cora C.  Jacinto, corporate procurement vice president of Splash Corp.

Splash is gearing toward even closer partnership with its major raw and packaging materials suppliers. About 32 key partner-suppliers have been enlisted in the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) program.

These partner-suppliers and Splash share more information openly, and jointly define efforts to improve cost, quality, delivery, time-to-market, and technology. 

Splash uses a “Balanced Score Card,” similar to what Splash itself uses to measure corporate performance and those of its executives and employees, for each partner-supplier.

This is to track on a monthly basis the performance of its partners.

Hence, at the end of the month, each supplier has a rating based on the BSC, Jacinto said.

The rating is discussed by procurement division with the partner-suppliers during the Key Performance Indices (KPI) review.

Suppliers who do not meet their KPI’s are required to submit improvement plans to address the gaps. Improvements are expected within an agreed period for the partner-supplier to maintain their qualified status. Apart from measuring performance, Splash encourages partner-suppliers to enhance their capabilities for mutual advantages.

Annually, Splash rewards its outstanding partner-suppliers through its Gawad awards.

As such, the suppliers with the highest rating for the following categories are named Supplier of the Year: Raw Materials, Packaging, and Toll Manufacturer.

The company plans to add more categories in subsequent awards.

Aside from the recognition, the best suppliers for the year are provided with guaranteed percentage share of the next year business.

Splash practices transparency in its supplier relationship management. It has put up a vendor portal, a web-based technology that allows supplier-partners to see its material requirements.

Under this system, purchase orders (POs) are automatically generated and issued to supplier-partners. In addition, new suppliers can also view through the vendor portal how they can get themselves accredited. 

Together with its supplier-partners, Splash provides pioneering and high quality products and services that cater to the universal desire of the people to look good and live well.

From a leadership position in the Philippines, it is successfully venturing into high growth markets in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and North America.