Problem
A household-name Japanese electronics manufacturing company was hit hard by the credit-crunch because people rapidly cut back their high-street spending at the same time as the yen surged in value with respect to the pound and the euro.
Solution
Consequently, the F.D. and CEO of the European subsidiary company (15,000 employees) instigated a ‘cost-busting’ programme across all employees. The idea was that all supplier contracts were to be re-negotiated for a 20% cut in costs without any drop in service level.
Approach
We were asked to design and run an “Advanced Negotiation Skills” course for the company. In discussion with the programme sponsor, we identified a dozen key individuals to come on the course. We interviewed them to understand the kind of negotiations they were involved in and the recurring issues they face and we designed and ran a bespoke programme for them with follow-up coaching as part of the package.
Results
The follow-up coaching took place over the two months after the programme and, unfortunately, this straddled year-end, which meant that the individuals did not have enough time to conduct the re-negotiations to the extent that was originally planned.
Despite this, savings of over £200,000 were identified as attributable to the programme. This was on an initial investment of £20,000 and so repaid itself 10 times within two months.
