CATEGORY TEAMS Paul Duff
DOING DEALS DIFFERENTLY
Grev Coomer, Chair of the NBG Civils & Landscaping Category Management Team and NBG Buyer Paul Duff look at how 2020 changed the way they liaised with Suppliers.
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n a normal year, the NBG Category Management Teams would get together, in person, with Suppliers to thrash out the supply deals for the coming years. 2020, though, was no ordinary year and CMTs had to adapt.
Pandemic or not, the Supplier deals still needed to be struck and looked after, but without all the usual face to face contact that NBG would normally have. “Ordinarily we would have review meetings in person and CMT meetings regularly. Last year, we had to do all of that via different means,” says Grev Coomer, Managing Director of Coomers, and Chair of the Civils & Landscaping Category Management Team.
“This has meant a lot more phone calls, even more email exchanges. And of course, lots of Zoom and Teams meetings. Supply has been an issue so we have had to spend time trying to secure products. And we’ve had to think about more things than usual: cashflow, getting rebates paid at a time when people might be worrying about that. So, in some ways it’s been business as usual, in that we were still working to get product into our Partners and to work with our Suppliers. In other ways, it’s been very different.” Early on in the lockdown, many Partners were concerned about their cashflow situation, wondering whether they would be able to open to customers. These early concerns have largely dissipated, and Coomer says this has a lot to do with how the NBG Central Team stepped up and developed a solution. “It’s hard to imagine how we would have come through this without their support. I think early on, when the announcements were first made that we must go into lockdown, many Partners naturally feared the worst,” he says. “I think
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Suppliers too, in some cases, probably pressed the panic button quite early. None of us were really sure how that would play out so there was a fear early on, that this might be a real financial challenge.”
In practice, the combination of the work that the Central Team put in to develop the rebate retention system, and the fact that merchants were able to function and open and keep busy meant that particular headache went away. Video conferencing and online meeting platforms have, of course, been around for years, but came into their own as soon as lockdown was announced, says Paul Duff NBG’s Category Buyer for both the Civils & Landscaping and Roofing & Insulation Category Management Teams. “I think we were quite quick out of the blocks with the Partners, trying to encourage them to use this type of technology,” he says.
It was important that everyone on the CMTs was able to maintain some kind of conversation with Suppliers, Duff says, because with a combination of closed branches and no Supplier visits into those branches, it would be easy to lose track of what is going on in the market. “Those visits are really the eyes and ears as to what is going on in the market. All of a sudden that avenue was shut off – for both Partners and Suppliers - so it was key that we tried to keep some communication links open. “
It was also obvious early on that some of the most senior people within the NBG supply base wanted to talk to their customers and get feedback about the marketplace that they weren’t getting in the usual way, he adds. Duff says that many deals have been extended beyond their original length due to the unprecedented situation. “Many of
Grev Coomer
our landscaping deals that had been in place for the last three years, were due to expire in September of this year. Working on those deals is probably the most significant part of the CMT’s remit. In normal circumstances we would have gone out to market for a full tender of imported products, domestically manufactured products, where we would have invited along the incumbent Suppliers and potential new Suppliers. But as the world changed it quickly became a case of where can we get product, rather than let’s go out to market and negotiate the best price for the next three years.
“We’re always very supportive of the Suppliers that have supported NBG so as a CMT we held a review meeting and extended those deals that are up for renewal for a 12-month period to give everybody the opportunity to try and get a bit of normality back into the supply chain.”
Continues on page 8 January 2021
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