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Mölnlycke Health Care
Ensuring Supply Chain is part of a positive
customer experience
Mölnlycke Health Care is a leading supplier of surgical and wound care products to hospital wards and operating theatres across the world. Ensuring products are available in the right place at the right times involves a complex supply chain: some customers, may opt for central storage, while others require items to be delivered direct to wards.
Mölnlycke recognises that supply chain operations present an opportunity to positively differentiate their services from those of their competitors. In today’s competitive marketplaces, this makes total, and profitable, sense competing solely on product specification risks allowing deals to be decided on price. It is more profitable, to think in terms of ‘integrated solutions’ with value adding points of positive difference... which is why supply chain can and should be a key value contributor, enabling a company to stand out against the competition.
An ‘integrated solutions’ approach only works when all links in the chain understand how they fit in. When the whole team, including the customer, understands the big picture and is aligned, many of the day-to-day challenges fall away. When sales teams understand some of the core tenets of supply chain, and the relationship between service and cost, they appreciate why aiming for those few extra percentage points of service can have a disproportionate effect on costs.
How customer behaviour impacts upon inventory is also important: erratic ordering patterns, emergency orders etc, all drive up inventory. Are payment terms incentivising customers to order in ways that do not suit the overall supply chain? When the sales team knows how the supply chain works, what levels of service it can deliver and, critically, what the constraints are, they make realistic promises that will be met. Freed from time-absorbing, ‘put it right’ distractions, the sales team are able to focus on building more business.
To provide training for Mölnlycke Health Care’s Customer Support Team, the company engaged Davies & Robson to develop and run a two-day course tailored to the Mölnlycke supply chain. Run at Mölnlycke’s European distribution centre in Belgium, the course covered all aspects and demonstrated how customer behaviour can dramatically impact upon the supply chain. Topics discussed included product range, order size and frequency, delivery arrangements and payment terms.
Katja Rintala, Customer Support Manager for Mölnlycke said: “The training enabled us to ensure that our Customer Support Team can understand the benefits of our Value Added Supply Chain Services to both customers and our own organisation, and can work with our sales team to ensure we can deliver on our promises.”
How much do your sales people understand the supply chain that delivers the goods? Do they know what is involved in getting goods out to customers and, most important, are they aware of the consequences of the promises they make?
www.molnlycke.com
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