Alliance Boots
Alliance Boots is a leading international pharmacy-led health & beauty group, helping people to look and feel their best. Serving over 170,000* pharmacies, doctors, health centres and hospitals from over 370* depots in 21* countries. Its strategic goals include being number one for customer care, healthcare partner of choice and an e.cient, uncomplicated organisation.
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Unlocking opportunities for greater supplier collaboration
The formation of Alliance Boots through the 2006 merger of Alliance UniChem Plc and Boots Group Plc, created the opportunity to take a global approach to collaboration with suppliers of goods not for resale (GNFR). The aim: to drive even greater levels of service delivery and cost efficiency, and help Alliance Boots become customer of choice.
Supplier relationship management (SRM) became a fundamental part of the operation; to explore ways to enhance collaboration between business stakeholders and supply partners.
To date 40 strategic suppliers have joined Alliance Boots’ SRM programme – the “supplier excellence” programme.
Supplier Excellence Programme – Improving business relationships
Alliance Boots’ supplier excellence programme was designed to achieve three key objectives:
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Increase collaboration for enhanced service levels and greater efficiencies
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Share best practice and manage risks across the GNFR supply chain
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Position Alliance Boots as a clear customer of choice for its key supply partners
The programme provides a consistent framework for improvement of business relationships, complementing existing operational performance management systems used by internal customers.
Service improvement through stakeholder engagement
The initial focus of the supplier excellence programme has been to establish a sound foundation of service management and effective dialogue between supply partners, business owners and sourcing teams. To address the gaps in ‘best practice’ contract governance, the SRM team has facilitated a number of improvements, including:
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Engaging appropriate functional stakeholders
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Reviewing KPIs to maintain alignment with service expectations
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Introducing and/or restructuring monthly operational meetings
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Embedding SRM principles through the supplier excellence programme
The consistent framework supporting operational dialogue and SRM is ‘QCPDM’; this is further defined in Figure 1 below. This structure provides Alliance Boots with clear measures of service delivery, client confidence and relationship effort – a truly holistic view of supplier performance.
