BMJ BUILDERS MERCHANTS JOURNAL NBG: LOOKING AT
Q: What is it about NBG that suits your business?
Julian Milligan (Kellaway): The range of partners is a real benefit. There’s a good range of products and expertise and a big diverse range of types of merchant John Dibble (BPS): The recent drive to get the specialists in has also been a big plus for us. Lots of us who were into ironmongery or roofing have benefitted from expertise in these areas. Whether that is what computer suite to purchase or how your stock control process goes, what you are doing with online trading, what recruitment problems you might have. You honestly can pick the phone up to any of these guys and ask them questions and get a straight answer. More than anything it’s the camaraderie, the knowledge that you’re dealing with likeminded people who run businesses that are like yours, but also not like yours. We are trying to put that together in one sort of network where, although it’s not very structured, it really works. JM: With NBG, there is an amazing relationship between the Partners and a real willingness to co-operate.
Nick House (Grant & Stone): To be fair, that is probably a benefit with other buying groups as well. This sort of relationship building isn’t exclusive to NBG but bearing in mind we are such a big organisation, I think it works really well for us. JD: I would say that nearly all Partners have some involvement. Every one of our merchants will sit on a category management team in some capacity, so when we are looking for a new Partner we are looking for those who can enhance our deals and bring something new along. The recruitment this year was seven new Partners and a good mix of that was timber merchants which extends the strength of the whole group. JM: We also have a lot of Partners who are growing their business organically and the way the group is bringing in new strengths is really helping them.
January 2019
THE LONG-TERM NBG Executive Board Members Julian Milligan, John Dibble and Nick House on how NBG works for their businesses.
VIEW FROM THE BOARD John Dibble, MD BPS
JD: That’s true. When plumbing and heating became a much bigger part of the organisation there were existing merchants who decided to look much more seriously at that sector, on the grounds that these were plumbing specialists and, therefore, the deals they were working on must be worth looking into. And it has helped to push up their sales into new areas. JM: That’s the strength of NBG, where the diversity of Partners means there are plenty of areas where you can look to learn something for use in your own business. You might not see tools as a big part of your business, but we do all sell tools, so if you have a Partner who is an expert in that sector in your group, you might as well make the most of their knowledge and improve your own business along the way. Just because it might be a small part of our business, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do everything we can to make it run as efficiently and as effectively as other parts of the business. We talk a lot about deal compliance and the feedback from suppliers is that we achieve good compliance of the deals. We try and encourage it because if someone really believes in the deals then that offers much stronger commitment to the suppliers than if
Partners are being told they have to support it. Supporting because they want to support it and they understand the business benefits from doing so is how we would prefer to see the organisation run. NH: In that way, everyone gets to feel as though they are part of the same team with us all working towards a common agenda. JM: What’s always been a challenge as NBG has grown is how we maintain that sense of ownership, the feeling that we are all doing this for ourselves and for each other. JD: Our focus moving forward as a board is how we get better buying deals, that’s what we are here for. We have our key objectives and beyond doing that deal there are things like really managing that account, which I think we may have been weak on in the past. Obviously, we also need to not lose sight of the fact that we need to have a forum or an organisational structure that allows us to share best practice. To make sure that these all happen the trading board and the executive board are working much more closely, meeting twice a year. Two of the executive board sit on the trading board as well so the message is clear all the way through. JM: We are now trying to get more direction to the category management team but also ensuring that the message is clear and understood. The executive board is all about giving the long term view, strategy, vision and objectives. Then that, hopefully, gets translated through to the rest of the organisation via the trading board. NH: Trying to keep 84 Partners, all of whom are, by their very nature, independently- minded, happy is a pretty hard task but I think that generally most of the partners are settled. We know we are on a recruitment drive but we’re only going to add businesses who will bring something of real value to the organisation. JD: Our next four or five Partners who join will probably be from areas where we are weaker - either in terms of product sector or geographically. There’s less ‘no, that’s my patch’ and more ‘what can this potential new Partner bring that will strengthen the whole group’. Equally, we don’t want people coming and cherry picking the deals. If you’re in, we want full-on, real commitment and as much compliance as possible. JM: We want, and we think we have got, to a large extent, a network of like-minded independent businesses who aren’t running their businesses because they have an exit strategy like an equity-funded business might be. Our Partners are working, not to an exit, but to an income that allows them to grow and build their businesses.
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