Last week we talked about the need for most manufacturing companies to empty their warehouses. This is a need that inevitably ends up dictating to the suppliers of such companies increasingly tighter and often unmanageable delivery times. In this issue I would like to connect another point for reflection that stems from a dynamic that I see occurring fairly frequently. I am referring to the discrepancy in attitude and management of Italian companies depending on whether the supplier being dealt with is German (to give just one example) or Italian.
Let me give you a practical example of this:
If a German company states in an estimate that it will takes two months to complete and deliver an order, that time scale is accepted but if it is an Italian company, then no, and a tighter delivery time is requested.
Why is this then? Why is there this difference in attitude?
The most obvious answer might be that unfortunately, by reputation, the Italian company has the unfortunate tendency of delaying deliveries, turning, for example, the two months indicated in the quote to three.
I do not however think that this is the real reason and I fear it is more linked to a cultural reason: in Italy – unlike in Germany – we are in fact always accustomed to bargaining over everything: prices, times, terms of sale …and therefore we are also used to finding solutions (economic, temporal and management-related …) that are not related to the processes in general but rather to each individual case.
Unfortunately, the consequences for us Italian suppliers are far from ideal. If in fact a company of our country has dealings with a German supplier and knows that it will take six months to receive the goods, the appropriate arrangements will be made and the order will be issued six months in advance. This is because the Italian company knows from the outset that it can try to haggle as much as possible but ultimately the German manufacturer will not vary the timescales indicated in the original quote.
However, if that same company is trading with an Italian supplier, the matter will be completely different. The company, in fact, knows right from the start that if it is able to persevere and to manage the commercial negotiations well, it will take delivery of the goods in advance (perhaps even by two months). It will therefore not order the goods six months in advance, aware however that with a little negotiation it can receive them in four. Why wait until the last moment to place your order, thereby creating extreme difficulties for the supplier?
A dynamic of this sort should provoke reflection. Also because in this manner, all we are doing is actually tripping ourselves up.
Perhaps we Italian companies should try to stick to our guns as much as possible, refraining from diverting from the timing indicated at the start.
In doing so, do we risk losing the customer? Unfortunately yes, but it is also true that we will probably just be losing a customer that is difficult to manage and who is perhaps giving us more problems than benefits. It is also highly likely therefore that, in doing so, we can save some of our energy and instead invest it in new customers who may have a different respect for our work and our terms.
It should not however be forgotten that unfortunately generalizing in this case is not possible. Indeed, we can only afford to touch on such topics when our client base is solid enough to allow us a certain degree of decisional margin in this regard.
