Author Archives: Crystal Jones

About Crystal Jones

Crystal Jones is the Director of Marketing at The Mpower Group (TMG). She has over 12 years of marketing experience specializing in B2B marketing for consulting companies. Crystal is actively involved in many organizations, including the Business Marketing Association (BMA). She also has her Master's Degree in Marketing from Johns Hopkins University.

Trends of 2012 – A Marketers Perspective

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On this snowy Thursday, I wanted to expand on Dalip’s blogs on trends from last week. As the head of marketing, I am looking at trends to better understand how I can better serve my company and the company can serve the market.  I have realized that being in marketing is similar to working Supply Chain Management (SCM) in many ways.  We are always trying to show value and get buy-in from the rest of the organization. Both marketing and SCM are trying to get the maximum amount of value out of their budgets while providing the best service possible to the organization as a whole. So I wanted to look at the trends in a different light and see how the same trends affect marketing and SCM.

The first trend that struck me is people’s focus on buying local. This is a trend that started years ago, but I think it is starting to pick up more steam. With “Buy Local” signs showing up in shop windows and the push to support small businesses, the word Mass in Mass Marketing is becoming a thing of the past. People want a more authentic feel. For marketing this means that messaging needs to have a community focus. Target markets are now hyper focused with large advertising campaigns being used to reinforce this message. For SCM, this means that buying local might become a strong consideration when making decisions.

This rolls us right into another key trend: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It seems that people are looking for a change in the way companies behave. The socially conscious companies are the ones predicted to make a splash in the next few years. CSR is very important when looking at what marketing messages to get out to the public. Of course you can’t just say that a company is socially responsible.  Actions speak louder than words, and CSR has to be shown in the way the organization behaves. Brands need to be associated with a cause. And marketers need to be careful that it does not come off as gimmicky and disingenuous. Consumers see right through what is authentic and what is fake. What does this mean for SCM? It means, once again, that there is a different lens when looking at what to buy for a company and making sure that the purchases are in line with the larger CSR goals. In addition, gathering around a cause is a great way to build a team environment and attract new hires as they consider CSR a determining factor when looking at companies to join.

Our third and last trend focuses on technology. It seems that you can’t escape the call of information and the Internet. Some are detoxing, but technology is so engrained in who we are that it is hard to leave the house without a laptop, tablet, or phone (I know my iPad and iPhone are never too far away from me at any given moment). This means that the way people are getting information is continuing to evolve. For marketers this means that your messages must be accessible to whatever device or social media platform people are using. A website can no longer be created without understanding how it will look and be navigated on multiple platforms. Keeping up with Social Media trends is a fulltime job in and of itself. For SCM this means that the way things are bought is changing. With online reviews and more interactive websites, buyers can now make more informed decisions. This can cut down on the time it takes to make a decision and negotiate prices as more information is available at any given time.

It is easy to sit back and look at these trends and plan about what actions to take. However, you can get stuck in the typical analysis / paralysis trap. The key however is to stay flexible and to stay educated. Both marketing and SCM are facing the same challenges. It is important to keep learning from each other as we navigate through this ever-changing environment.

Do you think SCM and Marketing have more similarities than differences?

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Mind the Gap – Training vs Competencies

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In our previous posts we talked about designing your talent management program and implementing a recruiting plan. However, these are only parts of a larger Competency Based Talent Management (CBTM) program. You have hired the people you needed. So what? How can you make sure they are integrated into your organization and are able to hit the ground running, creating the optimum amount of impact? Not only do you need to look at training your existing team, you need to create a training program for new recruits as well.

This sounds well and good (and perhaps a bit easy). However, it is not as easy as it sounds. We have heard from many of our Sourcing / Supply Chain peers, particularly at our last NPX, that they are struggling with their training efforts. Training is completed, but the learning is never adopted. So what can they do to change the results?

Adoption brings us back to our vowels (AEIOU). In the past we have talked about the importance of Adoption, Execution, Implementation, Optimization and Utilization in any organizational effort. However, training is just not about the act of learning (a consonant); it is about adopting and implementing that learning to drive business results. Using the vowels ensures that the people being trained start applying what they learned. Implementing the vowels is the key difference between training people and developing competency.

To effectively turn a training program into competency development, you must have a good understanding of your desired needs. This requires that you start with the strategic direction and objectives of the company and what role your organization will play. This will show you which organizational competencies you need and will give you an understanding of the gaps you have within your organization. Now, the closure of those gaps can be tied directly to the company’s strategic direction and the role your organization will play, adding value not just for individuals, but for the company as a whole. Sending 2-3 people at a time to some public seminar designed for the masses may develop individual competency but it is never going to develop organizational competency.

Your gap closure strategies must follow a multi-faceted approach (coaching / mentoring etc.). Make sure your entire approach is rooted in Adult Learning Theory and has experiential learning as its basic tenet. Making people sit through day long lectures with no ability to actually practice the new behaviors and competencies in a safe learning environment is of little value. In addition, the curriculum must include the strategic competencies found during the initial gap assessment. A program consisting of functional or process skills alone is doomed. The strategic competencies must also be integrated into the core process modules so that people know how to actually deploy the new process.

Your training strategies must look beyond the technical skills and focus on the strategic skills needed to be successful like change management, communication, collaboration, and decision making. Oftentimes these skills are overlooked when training, although they are the most important to organizational success. Anyone can learn to use any process and those are the skills most organizations worry about when hiring and training. However, developing strategic skills can take your team to the next level and have more lasting effects on the group. It takes your group from Best Practices to Next Practices.

Developing the right competencies within your organization is not easy. It takes a lot of thought and energy to train and develop your team. Sometimes closing the gap can make you feel like you are trying to build a bridge across the Grand Canyon. If you start by looking at competency development in terms of AEIOU and strategic alignment, you will no longer need to build a bridge across the gap. You will find that your organization will soar.

In our upcoming posts we will continue to address Next Practices associated with the Competency Based Talent Management lifecycle.

If you are interested in getting involved or would like to follow this topic further, here are a series of critical activities coming up:

  • Release of the results of the Executive Forum we just facilitated at the IACCM Global Forum for Contracting & Commercial Excellence on Talent Management.
  • A major research project to not identify the problem one more time but to identify Next Practices to solve the problems.
  • A webinar with IACCM on CBTM.
  • A White Paper to focus on Next Practices in CBTM.

Regards,

Crystal

Reposted on Sourcing Innovation.

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NPX Coverage – Talent Really Can Transform Your Organization

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Repost from Sourcing Innovation:

In yesterday’s post, we discussed the NPX keynote by Don Wirth, VP Global Operations Supply Chain and Excellence of DuPont, on DuPont’s Journey to Supply Chain Excellence and how a key to success was DuPont talent. We also said that DuPont is a company that did more than just give their talent lip service and put their corporate money where their corporate mouth was and this is a key to their recent success (which saw a year over year EPS growth of 32% last quarter) and their plans to cut 3.7 Billion in cost from their supply chain.

How did they do it? When the economy was tanking in late 2008 and early 2009 and everyone was cutting jobs left, right, and center, instead of cutting their global workforce 5% to 10% with all their peers, which was the original gut feel reaction of some executives and board members, they took a step back and said “the market will come back like it always does and the best way to recover is to be ready and more competitive when it does“. And they realized that the best way to be ready was to have people who could capitalize on the opportunity. By capitalizing, they decided that they needed people who could deliver the necessary innovation while keeping supply chain costs down as that is the key to continued success in up or down economies.

So they created a center of supply chain excellence and took people from across the company who would have otherwise been laid off from under-performing divisions and trained them. And trained them. And trained them some more on supply chain best practices — lean, kaizen, negotiation, contract management, and other areas of critical impact. Then they sent them back into the business units with new skills and knowledge to guide unit operations and manage the supply chains with guidance from the center of excellence. And then the cost reductions started to appear from across the board.

From there, they modified their Dupont Production System (DPS) methodology to include best-in-class supply chain operations to provide the highest customer service with the lowest total cost of ownership by increasing overall supply chain resilience. And then they focussed on plant operations, supply chain design, and supply chain optimization and identified almost 3.7 Billion in cost reduction opportunities through improved operations. And now development is a key part of their mandate and a continued focus. And it’s for the best.

Special Thanks to Sourcing Innovation for covering NPX!

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NPX Coverage – Three Keys To Success in Today’s Competitive Supply Chain Landscape

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Repost from Sourcing Innovation:

The other keynote at this fall’s NPX was by Don Wirth, VP Global Operations Supply Chain and Excellence of DuPont who did a presentation on DuPont’s Journey to Supply Chain Excellence. Dupont, which expects to save almost 3.7 Billion dollars at the culmination of their journey through improved plant operations, supply chain network design, and supply chain optimization, will slash its overall supply chain costs across the board by about 10%. (And its efforts are making an impact. It just delivered strong EPS growth on 32% higher sales for third quarter 2011.)

How is it going to do it? Innovation, differentiation, productivity, and talent are key success requirements. In particular, it plans to align the following strategic themes:

  • Innovation & Customer Focus,
  • Differential Business Management, and
  • Productivity & Continuous Improvement

with the following growth trends (and the importance of trends was discussed in SI’s posts on minitrends andmegatrends):

  • increased need for food production,
  • decreased dependence on fossil fuels,
  • environmental protection, and
  • emerging markets.

This is great strategy for any supply management organization. Align with forthcoming needs and be better prepared for the market shifts that tend to come faster than expected. So how does it plan to align? By beginning with management practices. Metrics and incentives are revised to be consistent and aligned with goals. Risk management is organization wide. Governance and structure supports center of excellence operations. Then it leverages scale and skill. It starts with standardization and simplification. It puts experts in charge of the supply chain. Best Practices are institutionalized. Finally, it builds culture and capabilities by treating talent as an enterprise asset.

Dupont engages its workforce in its entirety. The collective power is in the group and the team, and getting the most we can out of our operations. These words are straight from the mouth of the CEO, who puts the company’s focus where her mouth is. How? That’s the subject of tomorrow’s post.

Special Thanks to Sourcing Innovation for covering NPX!

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NPX Coverage – Winning the Talent War – Start With A Resource Strategy

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Reposted from Sourcing Innovation:

In yesterday’s post, that mentioned that the talent war has just begun, we discussed Don Klock’s keynote at last week’s NPX workshop, put on by the The Mpower Group. In his keynote, Don, a Senior Global Procurement / Supply Chain Executive with over 30 years of experience with multiple major multinationals who is now with the Rutgers Business School, Don noted that, as a result of the severe skilled talent shortage, if you don’t have a Resource Strategy to build your talent pool, you better develop one.

Why? Because, to put it in the colourful euphemism us North Americans understand so well, you’ll be up sh*t creek without a paddle otherwise. And while Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, and Dax Shepard might have parlayed their situation into a 69 Million gross for Paramount, you won’t be so lucky.

Fortunately, a resource strategy isn’t that hard. A simplR one consists of:

  • an internal skills assessment to define your skills (& talent) gap
  • a training and development program to take the both the resources you have, and the resources you bring in, to the next level
  • a recruiting plan to get that talent

Or course, the recruiting plan can be quit an exercise. After all, where do you look? Internally? Externally? Do you use a recruiting firm? Do you use a temporary staffing agency to keep the canoe afloat in the interim? Do you rotate your top performers through temporary assignments to make sure all critical functions, and tasks, get addressed? Do you just outsource? And if you look external, where? Universities? Industry Associations? Job Boards? Your competitors? The answer is typically — as Don notes — all of the above. You need talent, and you need to get it wherever its, whenever you can, through any means necessary.

This will obviously take some work.

1)     First, you will have to identify how you will relate to your job pool.  These days, talent wants challenging work, good benefits, life/work balance, advancement opportunities, the right culture, and the right management in addition to a good salary. And, in fact, chances are culture, life/work balance, and organizational mission are more important to them. For the Millennials, a lack of focus on environmental stewardship is unthinkable and a kiss-of-death to your organizational future.

2)     Then you have to get that message out there. You’ll need a great job description, a great corporate message, and a great communicator leading the charge. And this person will have to connect to your talent wherever they are — job fairs, industry events, and on-line social networkslike LinkedIn.

3)     Finally, you have to rope them in during the interview process. An interview is a two-way street now. They are interviewing you as critically as you are interviewing them, if not more so. Not only is their unemployment rate as skilled, college-educated talent, approaching an all-time low, but they know that, in many industries, there are not enough people to meet the demand and that they have the power. You will need to address all of their concerns, and (honestly)emonstrate that your organization is not only paying better but also providing a better work/life balance while providing challenging work and advancement opportunities, and that they will shape the path of the organization going forward. (Of course, if all this isn’t true, then your organization has a big problem as it’s not going to attract much talent until it is.)

Of course, if your organization does all this right it will be one of the few in a position to find, attract, and retain talented resources, which will soon be the supply chain’s number one talent. Almost 25% of the North American workforce is now eligible for (early) retirement. The only reason they are hanging on is the down economy. When it bounces back, they’re gone, and you’re down another 25% (or more) if you’re not ready. So get ready.

Special Thanks to Sourcing Innovation for providing these unique insights into the Next Practices Xchange (NPX).

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