Relationships with your suppliers are a two-way street
The biggest lesson I’ve learned about procuring virtual events after 100 negotiations – relationships with your suppliers are a two-way street.
Being a Procurement Director has always meant being agile when it comes to negotiating and ensuring value for money. In the world of COVID, however, that agility has had to be ramped up exponentially, a phenomenon that isn’t going to disappear quickly. With the rules around events expected to ease in the coming months, we still need to be flexible about whether an event is live, virtual or hybrid.
Key to this flexibility are your supplier relationships. They need to be open, transparent and mutually beneficial – a two-way street. If you’re a procurement professional investing in a virtual event, here are some things to consider:
'Go to' some virtual events – this will help you see the amount of work that goes into them and the differences in content and cost that you might be dealing with. Virtual events need shorter, snappier content to keep people’s attention and tighter timings, so you still need crew and technical input. If your event is hybrid, you’re catering for two or more different audiences, which has a cost implication. In other words, if your live event needs to go hybrid or virtual, your content will need to be adapted based on the needs and location of your audience.
Understand the roles - platform providers are different from technical production companies, who again differ from project management and creative agencies. Understanding the distinction means that your due diligence will be relevant, e.g. it’s the platform provider’s IT security that requires investigation, not the agency’s office IT infrastructure. This is also key to understanding the make-up of the budget and which services you need from whom.
These are still uncertain times for everyone – talk to your suppliers and agencies. It may sound obvious, but a transparent conversation about any changes to your processes, payment terms or strategy could help everyone and reduce the risks if your event has to change. If you have changed your ways of working during the pandemic, the chances are your suppliers have too.
A good supplier relationship can’t be measured in a questionnaire – of course, we all do our due diligence when it comes to financial health of our suppliers, but developing a good personal relationship is key. If you trust each other to be transparent about budgets, your supply chain, forward planning and security, the chances are that any smaller issues can be straightened out. Equally, the more transparent you can be around forecasted budgets and the number of events you need to hold, the easier it is for everyone to resource and plan effectively.
Keep that flexibility – we have all had to adapt our lives and ways of working to this pandemic, but with the world situation still changing rapidly, both you and your suppliers need to be ready to respond in your negotiations.
Key to all of this is remembering that, just as your team is keeping up with the staggering pace of world events, so are your suppliers. Taking a genuine interest in their world means they’re likely to take a genuine interest in yours. If you can create a mutual (draft) plan for the months ahead, you can navigate this uncertain world together.
