Teamwork for 2006

Resolutions have become customary across the globe. Some take them seriously, while others are quick to ride the bandwagon by enumerating "ideals" that would make them achieve desired outcomes for the next 365 days. This habit has become "perpetual," driven by our goal to become better each year.

Beyond personal resolutions, these are similarly exercised within the business arena. More than traditional yearend operation assessment paralleled to financials, decision-makers plow through the headlines to check on areas that could help advance their business models. Past achievements are fortified, prospective snags are identified, and growth opportunities are outlined.

E-commerce entrepreneurs, however, add zest within the conventional way of defining resolutions. Decision-makers who have participated early in e-Marketplaces are more able to augment desired results, after embracing both tangible and intangible benefits of investing their time and people resources in an exchange. Among other things, these include the following:

• Documentation reviews are readily retrieved when weighing historical transactions. Since more time can be allotted to analysis and strategy formulation, management members become more competent spotting price-quantity relationships that would help them better identify time duration per contract requirement. Are cycles involved? Is the final product demand sensitive or insensitive to price changes? What specific index gauge would be most useful in quantifying these variables? Most have also become flexible remedying spotted discrepancies within the negotiation procedure, as required data are readily produced.

• Faster internal and external communication is fostered, as item components are clearly defined. This includes micro sub-classification since pricing covers several elements (e.g., color, texture, taste, minerals or other chemical breakdown, weight, thread count, etc.). Overall, decisions can be made faster as to which alternatives a company can take to offset another criterion, or help it weigh the merits in case it considers absorbing extra cost. Given the volatile component in fuel prices, for example, not all are quick to apportion how much of this component goes through the final production run for specific items being procured that would explain higher charges. Suppliers also become more responsive embracing other scientific breakthroughs that would help generate improved features for clients.

• Past performance reviews become simpler as transaction references are integrated both for buyers and suppliers without unnecessary infrastructure capital expenditures. Within SourcePilipinas, buyers and suppliers utilize a unified and user-friendly platform where apple-to-apple referencing is feasible. Suppliers can also easily track complaints congruent to a customer’s document reference number.

• Customer relationships are also strengthened without necessarily abandoning objectivity. Performance analysis is useful for improved audit validation, especially in enhancing industry-benchmarked scorecards.

To date, enterprises on "semi-advanced" stage within e-Marketplaces focus on more pressing matters like improving utilization, electricity-saving measures, formula creation that would help them prompt trigger renegotiation clauses, and collaboration, among other things. By working cohesively with another lateral team that can blend in handling trivial requirements, enterprises become more focused tackling priorities immediately.

Hopefully, fiscal authorities would realize that more could be attained in terms of upgrading the efficiency scale through alliances with private e-Marketplaces. Re-enticing the "best-of-the-breed" home is workable when rare talents see teamwork transcending the sum of individual parts.

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Grace Crisostomo-Cerdenia is the general manager of SourcePilipinas.com and COO of 2TradeAsia. For comments or queries, e-mail her at [email protected].