Chris Denton, Director, Supply Chain details the evolution of Proserv’s latest concept in bringing strategic supply chain partners together.

At Proserv, it certainly helps that communication is firmly embedded within our values, but you won’t go far without relying on it in the ever-changing and ever-moving world of supply chains and logistics. Like any forward-thinking business, we constantly strive to find advantage and we have been evaluating how we can secure more added value from our supplier engagement programme.

Already, we have successfully delivered supplier engagement events across our global locations of Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the UAE and Great Yarmouth in the UK over the past 16 months to hugely positive effect and garnering excellent feedback.

Going further

But how could we go further? Proserv’s supply chain team came together and, driven by our FRESH values around sharing insights, creative approaches and prioritising excellent service, we formulated a new event brief: to create a platform that fostered an environment to encourage our suppliers to discuss ideas, innovation and solutions to challenges.

Our supply chain team identified that to meet this new brief, the proposed event required greater levels of supplier participation enabling those involved to demonstrate their range of capability to support these broader discussions.

So, how could this be achieved? Through internal reviews, the team brainstormed several ideas with one of the options described as “staging a mini ADIPEC,” inspired by the leading UAE based energy industry event and driven by an exhibition framework, incorporating a stall format, and a medium for networking. From that point onwards, the concept of adding stalls to showcase our supplier capabilities was born.

Next Gen supplier engagement

This new format was branded as the Proserv Partner Expo, also encompassing presentations, one-to-one review meetings, and networking with a much broader number of Proserv and supplier attendees.

We wanted to deploy this “Next Gen” supplier engagement concept in one of our key growth areas and Proserv’s base in Chennai, India, was soon pinpointed.

This May, Proserv rolled out the very first Proserv Partner Expo in Chennai, with 19 current, and potentially future, key strategic partners setting up stalls over two days to enable us to accelerate our understanding of their technology offering and how they can help Proserv today and support future business growth.

The Expo format allowed Proserv Sales, Proposals, Engineering, Quality and Supply Chain teams, both in Chennai and from our global locations, sufficient time to visit all the different stalls, and this innovative approach created openings for discussion as each supplier was able to highlight their abilities through sample products and visual aid displays.

Ultimately, it proved a great platform for our supply chain partners to share their future plans and presented them with effective business development opportunities.

But equally importantly, the event was also about Proserv reaching out to the attendees and giving an overview of our business (both within India and globally), our strategic roadmap and our on-going and ever-developing supply chain and sourcing initiatives. Several key presentations were delivered including one by our General Manager in Chennai, Suresh Subramanian.

Guided by positive feedback

Proserv’s next generation supplier engagement event was very well received by our partners who provided excellent feedback which can help guide us as we look to develop further iterations of this Expo across our locations.

One local engineering partner stated: “It was a great platform to showcase our abilities and products and because of this Expo we also got to know the exact requirements of Proserv.”

Meanwhile, a measurement and calibration equipment specialist added, “We were able to interact in one place with all your colleagues and other vendors. It was also good to know about Proserv’s future plans which will help us increase and extend our capabilities to serve you better.”

Sharing such comments, and harnessing such positive and valuable communication, is central to how we work at Proserv. It is encouraging that this inaugural Expo proved such a success but we will develop and augment this framework as we move forwards and we deploy this format elsewhere around the globe, seeking to drive and support business growth, innovation and value creation.

Forward as a Team.