Iris have had to move their procurement breakfast from Thursday 17th June to Thursday 22nd July. Contact details if you are interested as per my blog entry of last week.
I think my presentation to agencies this afternoon went well. It was about how to understand procurement and how to work more effectively from both sides to order to achieve what we all want from it - great results at a fair commercial arrangement. I like presenting to agencies as a few of them tend to have had (in their view) a negative experience of dealing with procurement and by the end of the talk, hopefully I have given them some insight that can help them build up the relationship with procurement in the future.
But sorry Procurement readers it is my fault if you get cheaper biscuits from your agencies now, I have said we look at things like that !!
Showing posts with label Iris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iris. Show all posts
09 June 2010
01 June 2010
Iris Procurement Breakfast
Iris are holding their 4th (free to attend) procurement breakfast on Thursday 17th June at 8.30am. The topic this time is Sustainable/Green procurement with the main speaker being Simon Brown who worked with M&S to develop their Plan A programme. It is always a really good debate and with a good turnout of procurement folk and other interested suppliers.
Contact Nicola Osmond at Iris (Relationship Marketing Manager) if you would like to attend - phone number is +44 (0) 20 7654 7343.
Contact Nicola Osmond at Iris (Relationship Marketing Manager) if you would like to attend - phone number is +44 (0) 20 7654 7343.
19 March 2010
This last 2 weeks I have mainly been....
attending a breakfast, conference, a local women's forum and 1 CIPS Branch meeting (more of that later!). Bit of a long post here so bear with me.
I attended the Iris Procurement breakfast the week before last. There was a really good turnout and the topic was Payment By Results, with the panelists being from my old company - Orange and ISBA. The debate was lively with some good points being raised but I suggested that perhaps PBR is a bit dated. It has been around for many years and ISBA are about to publish their 4th study I think of their most recent study on PBR at clients. Don't get me wrong, I think it works well where there is a direct measure of the results of the work in place e.g. media savings, increase in sales, a well managed and objective client satisfaction survey. But I quite like some of these new fee models that newer agencies are talking about - areas like revenue share, getting paid xx pence for every new call to the new directory enquiries company. That is both investing in the marketing activity and if it works both the client and the agency get rewarded. I am aware of one agency that didn't charge a new client any fees but took a xx pence model and got a cheque for £1m. That is some incentive as long as the client pays up for course. Let's all try and be a bit braver on both sides and try and find a few areas where we can try a new model and see what the results are.
The ISBA Conference was interesting. There weren't that many purchasing folk there which I was surprised about. Conferences like this really help you understand the categories that we all work in and help you perhaps challenge and provoke debate with existing and may be new agencies on different ways of working to achieve efficiencies etc. Worth attending next year if the training budgets get reinstated. One comment to end on was the lack of women speakers - there was one. Come on Women in Marketing - let's see more of us next year (for once there was a queue at the men's loo not the ladies!)
Following on from the above theme - I am a cynic of all 'wimmin' things but attended a local 'Wimmins' Forum this week. It helped it was at a local chocolate making shop / school. All networking over a chocolate bon bon must be good. As most of my work comes from clients in London I rarely find this of interest but this one was really good. A very relaxed format, encouragement to speak to everyone there, no pressure to stand up and try and explain what you do (my Mother still thinks I buy pencils for a living !) and a genuine interest in what you do. I suggested a few high profile women speakers that live locally to them and hope to attend the next one which is entitled 'The Trials and Tribulations of a Women Entrepreneur' by HSBC - not sure of the HSBC connection.
And now onto my last event the local CIPS (Purchasing body) Branch event. Again I have only been to one before and that was fairly bad. Both in terms of content, attendees and lack of energy in the room. But as I chair the CIPS group on Marketing thought I would give it a good. The topic was of interest and a good speaker. Other attendees were mainly public sector and gave me a bit of up and down look as I was in 'casual advertising dress' e.g. jeans, shirt and my converses !. Everyone was polite but not that open to chatting to everyone, people kept themselves to themselves. But the main issue for me was afterwards with the speaker. Fair enough he had a product to sell - his training. But he then rang me up afterwards as I am sure that he contacted everyone and really kept going on about coming into see me and my company. I am sure that my two cats (Boston and Madsie) would be delighted to serve him tea and cakes if I am out at a client meeting. Mate - it is just me, and no I am not interested in training, no I am not interested in a meeting and no, no, no to everything else. It was a really hard sell and where in the small print did it say that he could contact me ? I have made my feelings known when they asked for feedback this week. So perhaps I won't get another invite but I just felt that the after sales activity as it were, was badly managed. That is my rant over with.
As usual, all comments welcome (and no blatant advertising as the comment was on my last blog post !).
I attended the Iris Procurement breakfast the week before last. There was a really good turnout and the topic was Payment By Results, with the panelists being from my old company - Orange and ISBA. The debate was lively with some good points being raised but I suggested that perhaps PBR is a bit dated. It has been around for many years and ISBA are about to publish their 4th study I think of their most recent study on PBR at clients. Don't get me wrong, I think it works well where there is a direct measure of the results of the work in place e.g. media savings, increase in sales, a well managed and objective client satisfaction survey. But I quite like some of these new fee models that newer agencies are talking about - areas like revenue share, getting paid xx pence for every new call to the new directory enquiries company. That is both investing in the marketing activity and if it works both the client and the agency get rewarded. I am aware of one agency that didn't charge a new client any fees but took a xx pence model and got a cheque for £1m. That is some incentive as long as the client pays up for course. Let's all try and be a bit braver on both sides and try and find a few areas where we can try a new model and see what the results are.
The ISBA Conference was interesting. There weren't that many purchasing folk there which I was surprised about. Conferences like this really help you understand the categories that we all work in and help you perhaps challenge and provoke debate with existing and may be new agencies on different ways of working to achieve efficiencies etc. Worth attending next year if the training budgets get reinstated. One comment to end on was the lack of women speakers - there was one. Come on Women in Marketing - let's see more of us next year (for once there was a queue at the men's loo not the ladies!)
Following on from the above theme - I am a cynic of all 'wimmin' things but attended a local 'Wimmins' Forum this week. It helped it was at a local chocolate making shop / school. All networking over a chocolate bon bon must be good. As most of my work comes from clients in London I rarely find this of interest but this one was really good. A very relaxed format, encouragement to speak to everyone there, no pressure to stand up and try and explain what you do (my Mother still thinks I buy pencils for a living !) and a genuine interest in what you do. I suggested a few high profile women speakers that live locally to them and hope to attend the next one which is entitled 'The Trials and Tribulations of a Women Entrepreneur' by HSBC - not sure of the HSBC connection.
And now onto my last event the local CIPS (Purchasing body) Branch event. Again I have only been to one before and that was fairly bad. Both in terms of content, attendees and lack of energy in the room. But as I chair the CIPS group on Marketing thought I would give it a good. The topic was of interest and a good speaker. Other attendees were mainly public sector and gave me a bit of up and down look as I was in 'casual advertising dress' e.g. jeans, shirt and my converses !. Everyone was polite but not that open to chatting to everyone, people kept themselves to themselves. But the main issue for me was afterwards with the speaker. Fair enough he had a product to sell - his training. But he then rang me up afterwards as I am sure that he contacted everyone and really kept going on about coming into see me and my company. I am sure that my two cats (Boston and Madsie) would be delighted to serve him tea and cakes if I am out at a client meeting. Mate - it is just me, and no I am not interested in training, no I am not interested in a meeting and no, no, no to everything else. It was a really hard sell and where in the small print did it say that he could contact me ? I have made my feelings known when they asked for feedback this week. So perhaps I won't get another invite but I just felt that the after sales activity as it were, was badly managed. That is my rant over with.
As usual, all comments welcome (and no blatant advertising as the comment was on my last blog post !).
27 February 2010
Don't you just love a great headline
Something like when The Sun printed the classic 'Freddie Star ate my hamster', I am referring to the headline in this week's Campaign. 'Adland hit as billings collapse'. The Nielsen Company data for 2009 has been published and shows that there were rare examples of billings growth for agencies.
Obviously the driving factor of this is the reduction in client income (obvious statement of the week there sorry about that) but we are (and hopefully) starting to come out of a recession, and it is unsurprising that clients have had to reign expenditure in, but it will bounce back. I think the thing that got me about this article was that it was all quite dramatic and only really refers to the fact that things have been tough for clients and agencies in Claire Beale's Perspective column.
Good clients (Procurement and Marketing) will have been open and honest (as many of my clients have been) with their partner agencies to say this is where we are, let's ride this out together and come out the other side all the better for it. I still see bad examples of commercial ways of working from both sides. The Scope of Work is the starting point of all discussions - but whose responsibility is this ? I would think it is the clients but I see agencies completing on behalf of their clients - any views on this (go on - let me know that I have at least one reader for this blog!)
Iris are running their 3rd in their series of Procurement Breakfasts on the subject of Payment by Results. It is on Thursday 11th March, and if you are interested in going, please contact Nicola Osmond on 020 7654 7343, email: nicola.osmond@iris-worldwide.com.
Obviously the driving factor of this is the reduction in client income (obvious statement of the week there sorry about that) but we are (and hopefully) starting to come out of a recession, and it is unsurprising that clients have had to reign expenditure in, but it will bounce back. I think the thing that got me about this article was that it was all quite dramatic and only really refers to the fact that things have been tough for clients and agencies in Claire Beale's Perspective column.
Good clients (Procurement and Marketing) will have been open and honest (as many of my clients have been) with their partner agencies to say this is where we are, let's ride this out together and come out the other side all the better for it. I still see bad examples of commercial ways of working from both sides. The Scope of Work is the starting point of all discussions - but whose responsibility is this ? I would think it is the clients but I see agencies completing on behalf of their clients - any views on this (go on - let me know that I have at least one reader for this blog!)
Iris are running their 3rd in their series of Procurement Breakfasts on the subject of Payment by Results. It is on Thursday 11th March, and if you are interested in going, please contact Nicola Osmond on 020 7654 7343, email: nicola.osmond@iris-worldwide.com.
27 November 2009
Danish Pastries and Bacon Baps
Good turnout at the Iris Procurement Breakfast with very generous breakast choices ( I just had the fruit!).
Jane Dormer (Head of GB Procurement at Coca Cola) said that agencies should always look to invite their procurement clients into the agencies as soon as they are aware of the procurement person so they can understand the agency and what they are doing for the client. Totally agree. It happens as soon as a new Marketing person is appointed but not when Procurement are appointed (and we won't just look at the chocolate biscuits!).
She also touched on the new value compensation model that Coke have been rolling out globally and have just started to discuss with their UK agencies. It is about paying agencies on output / on their deliverables with zero profit. There is then a performance payment based on agreed measurement. This can be up to 30% of the agreed output level, and there are upper and lower limits on the output. I quite like the concept of paying by output and have worked with a few agencies that have used this model. My only observation is that it is the client 'dictating' the value of the output when all agencies work differently and is this bringing a degree of uniformity and standardisation into the commercial model ? Good food for thought though.
Tony Spong (Head of DM, SP & Integration (I think that is his title sorry Tony if it is not) from AAR) discussed the fact that a pitch is always a good time for the client to have a 'clear out from their garage' and use the pitch process and time to review how they work as a client. I really liked this idea as procurement can really help to evaulate ways of working and processes to make them more effectively and utlimately more efficient for all parties.
At Orange I worked with our contract publishing company - John Brown, to look at one page of amends and the costs that we had incurred. I then sent this information around to the marketing team for them to see. They could see that just by changing one word - what the impact on the timescales and the cost of doing that was. Quite powerful information.
Jane Dormer (Head of GB Procurement at Coca Cola) said that agencies should always look to invite their procurement clients into the agencies as soon as they are aware of the procurement person so they can understand the agency and what they are doing for the client. Totally agree. It happens as soon as a new Marketing person is appointed but not when Procurement are appointed (and we won't just look at the chocolate biscuits!).
She also touched on the new value compensation model that Coke have been rolling out globally and have just started to discuss with their UK agencies. It is about paying agencies on output / on their deliverables with zero profit. There is then a performance payment based on agreed measurement. This can be up to 30% of the agreed output level, and there are upper and lower limits on the output. I quite like the concept of paying by output and have worked with a few agencies that have used this model. My only observation is that it is the client 'dictating' the value of the output when all agencies work differently and is this bringing a degree of uniformity and standardisation into the commercial model ? Good food for thought though.
Tony Spong (Head of DM, SP & Integration (I think that is his title sorry Tony if it is not) from AAR) discussed the fact that a pitch is always a good time for the client to have a 'clear out from their garage' and use the pitch process and time to review how they work as a client. I really liked this idea as procurement can really help to evaulate ways of working and processes to make them more effectively and utlimately more efficient for all parties.
At Orange I worked with our contract publishing company - John Brown, to look at one page of amends and the costs that we had incurred. I then sent this information around to the marketing team for them to see. They could see that just by changing one word - what the impact on the timescales and the cost of doing that was. Quite powerful information.
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