Crimson & Co is proud to announce Managing Director Richard Powell's appearance in the 'How I Made It' Business section of The Sunday Times Newspaper.

How I made it: Richard Powell, Founder of Crimson & Co

Ask Richard Powell where his head office is and his face betrays an amused smile. Even though his management consultancy employs 30 staff, it doesn’t have one.

Everyone at the £4m-a-year Crimson & Co works from home when not attending to clients at their premises. Then they all meet up once a month at a serviced office.

“When I used to work for big consultancies, you would turn up at the office and nobody would be there apart from a secretary,” Powell said. “What this lets us do is get the best people in the whole of the UK. It doesn’t matter where they live.”

The middle child of three, Powell was born in Crosby, the Liverpool suburb. His father was an engineer at BICC, the cable layer, and the family moved house every few years, ending up in Chester when Powell was nine. He studied economics and accounting at Leeds University before getting a job in the freight forwarding division of a shipping company. After six years he joined Coopers & Lybrand,  the accountants.

Powell always dreamt of running his own firm. “From the age of 18 I had loads of ideas for which I developed business plans,” he said. “But I never went through with them because each time I looked at the plan I thought, this will never work.”

Then in 2003 at the age of 37, he had an eye-opening moment. When a client asked if one of his team could stay for an extra two days, all Powell could think of was the additional paperwork it would involve. It was the last straw. After asking two colleagues to join him, Powell left to start his own consultancy.

“I asked myself, would I want to be with this firm in 20 years’ time? Absolutely not. It just made me feel horrible thinking about it,” he said. “I had always thought about starting up a business and I knew I would regret it if I didn’t give it a go.” Using his experience, he specialised in making supply chains more efficient for manufacturers and retailers.

Powell remortgaged the family home to raise the £50,000 he needed for living expenses for six months for himself and his wife and three children. His two colleagues — Crispin Mair and Simon Butcher — did the same.

The three of them got started, working on laptops from their homes: Powell in Chester and the others in Berkshire. Every few weeks they would meet halfway — at a hotel lobby in Birmingham airport — to swap notes.

They secured their first client after only three weeks. Allied Domecq, the drinks maker, sent them to Scotland for two months to make their bottling more efficient. With their fees promptly paid, they set about hiring staff. Even so, the first two years were a struggle and they would often be down to their last £500.

Right from the start Powell took the unusual decision to do away with an office, telling his staff to work either from home or in clients’ offices. “Every month for a whole day everybody stops what they are doing and we all meet in Birmingham or London. We hire a big office and do training and development,” he said.

“So we actually meet significantly more than in the big consultancies and there is a fantastic team spirit because of that. We could be twice the size before we would need an office. Our clients love it because they are not paying for that office.”

The other big advantage, he said, is that he can recruit from anywhere in the country. To do the back-office work, Powell has a business support manager in Carlisle, marketing people in Stoke and London, and someone in Chester who looks after recruitment.

He admitted that while some potential employees love the idea of a company without a head office, others do not. “Sometimes it is more difficult to recruit people because they just can’t get their minds round it,” he said.

Hiring people with the right outlook is crucial. “We have an acid test in our recruitment process — would I want to sit next to this person on a 14-hour flight to Mexico?”

His biggest mistake came in 2006, when the firm was so involved in delivering the work the partners had secured, they failed to line up more for when it ended.

“We took our eye off the sales pipeline,” Powell admitted. “We had some very big jobs but when they ended, recession hit and we were left with 40 people in the business and practically no work. That is a monster to feed.”

The solution was to get one of the directors to focus more on sales. He said: “The lesson we have learnt is to spend a lot longer developing our sales pipeline and having many clients’ names in there instead of focusing on just a dozen.”

Powell, now 45 and with a 41% stake in the firm — Mair also has 41% after Butcher left last year —thought the secret of his success was being a perfectionist, and his ability to build teams.

He gave this advice: “Go with your instinct. But make sure there is a plan B — because what that does is it allows you to be less stressed about plan A.”

Crimson & Co’s Managing Director Richard Powell's second monthly column is now live on FDI Matters.

People and capability: the constraints and the catalysts 

In 2003, a Harvard Business Review panel concluded that “despite years of process breakthroughs and elegant technology solutions, an agile, adaptive supply chain remains an elusive goal: maybe it’s the people getting in the way.”

This illustrates an undeniable truth; business plans, whether focused on growth, contraction, acquisition, integration or even business as usual, are based on strategy and hard numbers, but their success depends on people and capabilities.

So how do you make sure the people, and their capabilities, are fit for whatever purpose the business has in mind? How do you identify in advance, and maybe on a global scale, where capabilities may fall short so you can do something about it? A common phrase in the world of UK fast moving consumer goods companies in the 1980s and 90s was “if you can’t change the people, change the people”, but it is our experience that without taking the time to understand the capabilities that are needed, there is no guarantee that a new team will be any more equipped to deliver.

In the recent ‘Shaping the future’ research carried out by the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the need was identified to build capability across organisations at an individual level, instead of just employing short-sighted talent strategies focused on generic areas such as leadership and communication.

The market is catching on; over the past 12 months we have seen an upsurge in demand from clients to create the most appropriate organisation to achieve their business goals, with role definitions based on required outcomes and capability specifications covering both general and technical areas.

Whilst the recruitment of a small number of high level managers can have a catalytic effect, sustainability comes from making the most of people already in the organisation. Organisation, roles and capability must be aligned with business strategy, gaps should be identified against this framework and prioritised development plans put in place to give people the training and experience they need.

Without this, people are a constraint; with it, they become the main driver of ongoing success.

FDI Matters includes news, views, analysis and thought-leadership for the foreign direct investment community.

Richard’s next column will be published in October.

View the full article here

Crimson & Co is pleased to announce Managing Director Richard Powell’s article on streamlining distribution in Handling & Storage Solution magazine’s September supplement on supply chain.

Getting ahead of the rest

In the article, Richard says focusing on the need for seamless distribution is crucial to creating competitive advantage.

He goes on to explain that in order to improve distribution, companies need to look to today, not to where distribution might be in 15 years’ time.

“The first prerequisite is to put the basics in place. This includes optimising the distribution network so there is the right amount of capacity in the right areas, balancing transport flows and taking intelligent decisions as to where and when to outsource to the right partners.”

Handling & Storage Solutions publication includes reviews, articles, technological advances and products related to the Handling and Storage industry.

View the full article here on page 4

When negotiating for a major brand, such as Playboy, talking to the right people at a supplier who understand its value is crucial. 

This is the view of Tom Woodham, director of consultancy Crimson & Co, which was given six weeks to set up sourcing strategy for drinks at the Playboy nightclub in London, which opened in June.

He told 'Supply Management' communicating the overall worth of the Playboy brand to suppliers such as Diageo and Bacardi was critical in negotiations. “Getting to the right people so that we had the marketing team for the brand owners involved, because they saw the value potential in working with a brand like Playboy, whereas the standard sales guys weren’t as aware of that. So it was about working with the right level within the suppliers,” he told 'Supply Management'. As a result, it was important to assure suppliers they would see the benefit of a relationship. “The other key thing was building conditions into the tender so that they could see they would get a return.” These included making clear to suppliers the potential brand awareness and promotional opportunities provided by special parties, press releases and shelf space in the club's three separate bars.

The purchasing strategy introduced covered a £2.5 million spend on drinks for one year at the venue, which is owned by London Clubs International.  Woodham and his team implemented a seven stage sourcing process. Key to its success was working closely with the stakeholders, especially the managers of the club’s three different bars. “They all had slightly different favourites and slightly different desires, but we were very clear that we wanted one set of drinks across the club,” said Woodham. “So we had different side meeting with each of them and then got all together to work out a plan.”

Tom Woodham, director of Crimson & Co, explained how his team were given six weeks to set up sourcing strategy for drinks at one of the world’s most prestigious new venues, The Playboy nightclub in London, which opened in June.

Supply Management is one of the world's foremost bodies for purchasing and supply management professionals. It aims to keep the profession, and others interested in purchasing and supply issues, up to date with the latest developments and thinking, and provides a forum for debate.

View the full article here 

Further coverage of Crimson & Co's work with London Clubs International can be found here:

Retail Times magazine

Following an interview with Retail Systems Magazine, Crimson & Co feature in an article on warehouse management in the August/September issue of the magazine.  

Warehouse management – A logistical nightmare?

If you can’t get stock into the store or delivered to the consumers’ homes on time, you won’t last long in retail.  But understanding exactly what is happening in Logistics and delivery remains problematic for many UK businesses.

John Sewell, Principal at supply chain consultancy Crimson & Co comments:

“In the past delivery was just to stores and it accounted for a relatively small portion of retailers’ costs, but in the next year or so more and more retail will go online,” he explains. “I’ve been working with retailers who are effectively giving up on half their stores, because their e-business operations are growing fast.

“Not enough retailers take the time to understand what they could do differently in delivery in a way that could transform their costs.”  Sewell points to some long-established catalogue and door-to-door retail operations that have maintained high customer satisfaction and loyalty in part through skilful manipulation of expectations, offering incentives for customers to order in bulk, or to wait slightly longer for a cheaper delivery fee.

In the end, he says, it comes back to the need for visibility across the supply chain.

“Delivery needs to be something retailers actively manage month by month,” he says.  “If the best thing to do is to do your own delivery then do that. It’s about introducing creativity, rather than just outsourcing and then complaining when service providers put prices up.”

Retail Systems is a technology title for the retail sector which aims to bridge the gap between the purely technical journals and the more business-issue led titles within retail media.

Crimson & Co is pleased to announce Managing Director Richard Powell's first monthly column in FDI Matters.

The column, titled ‘Manage risk to create value,’ explains how traditional supplier risk assessments are not fit for purpose and how businesses can avoid the pitfalls that have affected many well-known companies in recent years.

FDI Matters includes news, views, analysis and thought-leadership for the foreign direct investment community.

Richard’s next column will be published in September.

View the full article here 

Crimson & Co’s comments in the wake of the UK riots have received exposure in a number of titles including Supply Management, Logistic Partners, Manufacturing and Logistics IT, The Retail Times and Global Cold Chain News.

Commenting on the affects the riots are having on the supply chain, Crimson & Co Director Dave Alberts said:

‘The worst night of civil disorder in living memory has again highlighted the impact that a catastrophic loss of stock can have on business profitability. Unless stock can be replenished and shops can reopen quickly, customers buying habits and preferences can rapidly change . Contingency supply chain planning, often premised on catastrophic events outside the UK, can help restore  livelihoods in a short space of time. It remains to be seen whether the contingency planning model can accurately handle the issue of domestic anarchy these disturbances have produced.'

View all of the articles here:

Manufacturing and Logistics IT

Global Cold Chain News

Retail Times

Supply Management

We would like to congratulate our client CitySprint, the UK’s largest privately owned SameDay Distribution company, for winning a Best Business Award for ‘Best Innovation’ 2011.

CitySprint, credited Crimson & Co in an article on their Best Business Award for 'Best Innovation' on the FMCG news website.
 

View the full article here 

Crimson & Co is pleased to announce coverage in the European Supply Chain Management magazine for an article on streamlining distribution.

The three page spread crediting CEO Richard Powell and Crimson & Co summarises how streamlining your distribution function means thinking what distribution has meant for your business to date.

Using recent work with cosmetics and pharmaceutical clients to outline best practices, writer Powell explains: ‘Operating your warehouse or distribution perfectly is not enough nowadays; best practice for distribution must include distribution planning, network design and optimisation of the distribution parameters, all done in an end-to-end business context.’

European Supply Chain Management attempts to give readers an insight into new solutions, business best practices and company experiences, alongside business case studies, that illustrate how these ideas are put into practice.

View the full article here 

This year’s Supply Chain Distinction Awards 2011 set to take place in Berlin on June 15th – attracted a number of applications vying for top honours. It was a tough filtering process and so we are proud to say that Crimson & Co has been shortlisted for the Supply Chain Distinction Awards 2011.

Crimson & Co’s latest book entitled ‘scprime®: The Journey to Supply Chain Excellence’ has received 12 glowing reviews from publications such as Supply Chain Standard, Logistics Business, Packaging Today and FDI Matters.

The review in FDI matters, written by John Hancock, Editor of the title and a journalist, praised ‘scprime®: The Journey to Supply Chain Excellence' for being the best way of communicating an understanding the supply chain and for explaining the stages of success.

Hancock writes: “While the book is no bedtime read, it is the best planned and laid out business reader I have seen for years.”

The in-depth review goes on to commend Crimson & Co for “managing to put what you might expect to be a very complex IT based multiple level spread sheet into a paper format that actually makes finding the part you wish to use very easy.” 

Hancock ends the review claiming the book is well worth its £45 price tag. ‘”The journey to Supply Chain Excellence' by Crimson & Co would pay for itself with the achievement of Mastery in any of the hundreds of issues, functions and tasks covered.

For more information, to arrange a meeting or for a copy of the book, please contact: Neha Gadhvi

Crimson & Co continues to recruit outstanding individuals to meet growing demand.

Tony
Tony is a senior Consultant with more than 10 years' experience in process redesign, performance improvement and delivering complex change programmes. He previously worked for PA Consulting and IBM on a number of high profile projects across the private and public sector.






Tiara
Tiara joins Crimson & Co from Arriva plc. Recently completing an MBA, Tiara has seven years' experience in global manufacturing, electronics, and transportation companies, gaining extensive materials planning, lean operations, ERP systems implementation and strategic sourcing experience.

Niki

Niki joins Crimson & Co from Unilever where she gained significant demand planning and forecasting experience. Prior to her latest role, she worked in logistics and manufacturing at Unilever, bringing a wealth of FMCG supply chain experience to Crimson & Co.

More than half of buyers responding to the latest Supply Management poll have made changes to purchasing agreements after they have been signed. Of the 100 buyers polled by Supply Management, 61 per cent confessed to making the amendments after they had been signed, compared with 39 per cent who said they had not.

The Supply Management poll follows research on 50 firms which found that food and drinks manufacturers are reporting inefficiencies in their supply chains caused by the cost-cutting measures of retailers. Manufacturers said retailers were creating inefficiencies by changing their ordering process to make more frequent but smaller stock orders.

Natalie Henfrey, senior consultant at Crimson & Co, argues that well-structured agreements should have the flexibility to adjust to the current market and should be supported by a robust supplier review process where proposed changes and their implications are discussed.

“Suppliers should also be fully aware of the risks they face if the retailer changes the agreement – by modelling the impact on their own costs and supply chain so they can understand potential inefficiencies,” says Natalie.

View the article

Crimson & Co has commissioned a piece of independent research at Cranfield University into business strategy and competitive advantage; assessing to what extent supply chains can deliver 'step-change' competitive advantage.

Cranfield University is one of the top five research-intensive universities in the UK.  As a wholly postgraduate university specialising in supply chain and management, Cranfield is positioned between traditional universities and business and industry, combining the academic rigour and long-term perspective of a university with the commercial and business focus of industry. The emphasis is on creating new management thinking and understanding the drivers of improved business performance.

This research piece will be undertaken by a team of supply chain experts, led by Tom-Philip Mamak under the guidance of Janet Godsell MEng & Man MBA CEng MIME PhD. They will combine academic research and company analysis across a range of industries in order to test and confirm the theoretical framework developed.

Crimson & Co, the UK’s leading end-to-end supply chain consultancy, has launched its first book, entitled “Supply Chain Excellence - Driving sustainable improvement”. The book, co-authored by Crimson & Co consultants with a foreword from Janet Godsell of Cranfield School of Management, is designed to help current and future clients generate step-change improvement in their supply chain to support business strategy.

The Supply Chain Excellence benchmarking approach is designed by Crimson & Co to be applicable to a wide range of businesses and provides focus on strategic objectives. Designed to drive action, it enables business units to clearly see how they can get better across their whole range of supply chain processes through process improvement and/or standardisation, cost reduction or simply identifying and fixing weaknesses in the supply chain.

Nick Miller, Principal Consultant at Crimson & Co and editor of Supply Chain Excellence comments “Supply Chain Excellence has been developed and honed over many client engagements and we are delighted to have taken this a step further with the publication of the book. Clients already using Supply Chain Excellence have realised significant benefits, including raised service levels, reduced costs and standardisation of processes. We are excited about the impact Supply Chain Excellence will have on the effectiveness of our current and future clients’ supply chains.”

Crimson & Co client Paschal Fitzgerald, supply chain development manager, PZ Cussons commented:
“Crimson & Co provided a fast and effective customisation of their Supply Chain Excellence content to the unique requirements of our business. The resulting material was invaluable in enabling us to assess our global operating units and create structured improvement plans to support our stretching business objectives.”

Supply Chain Excellence is available for purchase for £45.00. For more information on where to purchase it please contact Helen Kirkpatrick.

With supply chains stretching around the world, all participants need up-to-date information to make their business work efficiently. Technology can help but good planning is essential.

Commenting in The Times on the 10th June 2010, Jon Nicholas, Senior Consultant at Crimson & Co observes 'there are no easy answers to the challenge, companies are advised to get closely involved in the process rather than trying to outsource it too early to a third-party supplier. Using a 3PL, you don't necessarily get an accurate picture of what's going on and you also lose flexibility. Provided you can get accurate feeds from the disparate sources in the supply chain, you can learn how to manage the information. As long as they can provide the information you need, all you need is a consolidation tool, and that's not expensive. Doing it piecemeal yourself may seem hard, but it is a good way to learn. As long as information is available from suppliers, then the team can start collating it. Some good companies have gone through doing it in a slightly ad-hoc, labour-intensive way, getting a real feel for what's going on, and then stepping back and looking at how they can do it better. This means they are now looking at it from a position of knowledge. They are prototyping on the way.'

View the full article on page 14

Nick Miller, Principal Consultant at Crimson & Co identifies what sort of supply chain will suit your top management.

The supply chain represents a significant cost for an organisation, however, it can also be used to drive growth and competitive advantage rather than just being a cost centre.

1. Aligned to basic business needs
2. Aligned to multiple needs through segmentation
3. Adaptability

Adaptability is the key differentiator, providing an engine for growth and delivering significant competitive advantage. In order for their business to have the edge, this is the supply chain the CEO needs.

View the full article

Crimson & Co recently attended the ‘Convenience Retail Show’ at the NEC. Talking with many of the exhibitors and retailers it was encouraging see the amount of opportunities there are to enhance business performance through delivering a high-performing 'convenience focused' supply chain.  This echoes the findings of our recent article which has been published as a result of our retail expereince and work with a 'large convenience store chain' client.

The article addresses 'what a convenience retailer needs from a supply chain'.  It recognises that successful convenience retailers are aware of the fact that the supply chain is important to their business and often the instinct is to focus on minimising supply chain costs, but points out that the supply chain can be instrumental in delivering customer satisfaction and enabling the expansion of the business.

View the full article

In March, Criticaleye, the UK's leading community of business leaders published a feature article called 'Digits' in its award winning 'Review' publication. This insightful article contains key statistics from the past six months research from members.

Crimson & Co has undertaken significant research into supply chain costs and has discovered that typically 80% of business costs are attributable to the supply chain. This highlights the potential value that can be added through efficient supply chain management, especially in periods of economic uncertainty.

View the article

Is management communication of a corporate culture and values to its workforce little more than a mantra?

Good communication and culture transmission can bring huge benefits to an organisation when carried out correctly, equally, many organisations struggle to do so and suffer the consequences. Too many executives ignore the importance of good communication and then wonder why things go so wrong. In the UK food & drink industry, like other sectors of UK manufacturing, performance and delivery are dire and the sizeable benefits disregarded. Effective communication and the transmission of values is missing from all but a handful of the biggest organisations.

John Keighley, Senior Consultant at Crimson & Co comments "There's a massive untapped amount of knowledge on the shop floor, but there are challenges. How do you collect it, filter, investigate and prioritise?" However, when such processes are in place, the rewards can be significant. John cites his involvement with a UK food manufacturer. "Their cultural change need was to encourage all their staff across six factories to challenge the operational status quo and encourage a 'Can Do' culture. And by achieving this within the first 12 months, this company added another £5m to their profit of £30m." John notes that the companies succeeding in this area fall into two categories; those that had been faced with the choice of acting or failing and those that are led by visionaries.

Effective transmission and communication begins with a well-defined culture, then making that culture part of day to day business. Employees must be given the opportunity to challenge behaviour bottom up in line with the values. All this is a challenge that should not be underestimated. But, where it is done well, it can have a huge impact.

View the full article

On the 2nd of March 2010, Crimson & Co launched its in-depth review of the Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) market.

APS systems enable the optimal allocation of raw materials and production capacity to meet demand. There are various sophisticated tools available on the market to support integrated supply chain planning and execution. In addition to this, there have recently been significant developments in functionality available to support mature S&OP processes with the analytical rigour and depth of scenario planning they require. However, the various systems available in the marketplace have very different strengths and weaknesses, and suit different levels of planning sophistication.

For more information and insight into how an APS solution can help you better manage your supply chain, please contact us.

It was announced today that Crimson & Co, one of the most successful specialist supply chain consultancies of recent years, will partner with Consilia in support of its operations restructuring services.

Consilia Partners are a senior executive management team that support key stakeholders to significantly enhance the value of their investments. With its partner organisations, Consilia provides the following services:

• Business and profit improvement
• Working capital/cash release
• Operational restructuring
• Investment strategy
• Financial restructuring
• Pre- and post-deal transaction support

Crimson & Co will be the exclusive supplier of supply chain and operations improvement consultancy services to Consilia.

After the excess and celebration of the festive season, January is traditionally a time for cutting back. But for 2010, purchasers are expecting this mood of austerity to last for the next 12 months.  “Cost-cutting” will be the main focus for 38 per cent of respondents to the latest SM100 poll, which asked buyers to identify the top priority for procurement in their organisation. With an additional 22 per cent saying their main concern was to get more spend areas under purchasing’s control, the dominant tone seems to be: spend less and control more.

But scratch deeper and a more complex picture emerges.

In any economic climate, cost-cutting will be a top-three issue for purchasing, says Tom Woodham, director of supply chain consultancy Crimson & Co.  But this year, he expects cuts will be less of an issue than supplier relationship management. “I think a lot of people have been exposed in terms of supplier relations,” he explains.  Although in some cases this exposure has been when the supplier has gone out of business, it has also been the realisation that the supplier is more valuable to the purchaser than the other way around.

View the article

'Why should we be content with waste and inefficiency on a grand scale?'

Procurement in the NHS is desperately inefficient, a state of affairs which has prevailed for many years. Whilst it can be effective at a local level, the huge number of buying points creates many different needs and processes, which, in turn drive huge inefficiencies into the supply market. Any 'central' procurement delivered so far has been seen as presenting a series of qualifying steps to be allowed into the real market, comprising of the local organisations with buying power. As a consequence, there has been limited strategic market management, a proliferation of suppliers for similar products and no way of tracking the effectiveness of spend. The formation of NHS Supply Chain has only partly addressed these issues as regional procurement hubs serving hospitals in each of the SHA areas were created at the same time. This created three tiers of procurement, each looking to achieve procurement excellence and deliver cost savings. However, the customer did not know whom to use for what purpose.

What is the answer? Most organisations recognise the need to buy at the level at which they can achieve maximum influence in the market. In the case of the NHS, for most circumstances, this would mean at the national level. It is important to emphasise that this aggregation would apply simply to the act of procurement and not to the determination of need. The accumulation of demand should also be operational, rather than strategic, allowing the NHS to optimise the inbound supply chain for cost and sustainability purposes.

An alignment of inbound physical supply chain management with procurement at the maximum appropriate level of aggregation will deliver significant savings to the NHS. However, the only strategic driver for change is placing consolidated orders for committed volumes.

View the full article

We are delighted to announce the news of three new joiners:

Veronika Strausova
Veronika joins us from Airbus where she gained significant procurement experience in addition to her inventory management skills. Veronika has worked throughout Europe and has a deep understanding of international supply chain management in a blue chip context.






Matthew Atkinson
Matthew joins Crimson from L'Oreal where he gained extensive demand planning and forecasting experience. Prior to this, he worked across the supply chain at Innocent - from production planning, to supplier managment to demand planning. Highly analytical, Matthew brings a wealth of FMCG experience to Crimson.

Tessa Barrett

Tessa has a strong operational background with a specific focus on lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement initiatives. Tessa has a comprehensive understanding of FMCG supply chains and has worked across Asia Pacific and Europe. Her previous role involved analysing global raw commodity markets.

Crimson & Co wish all its staff, clients and friends a Merry Christmas and the very best in the New Year.

2009 has been a fantastic year for Crimson & Co as we continue to grow, work with more new clients and achieve successful outcomes with all of our clients. We are excited about 2010 and look forward to the challenges and opportunities it will bring!

Following the announcement that Tamarack joined Crimson & Co on the 20th October 2009, the news was featured in Supply Management; both in their daily update to members and on their online magazine.  The article read:

Crimson & Co takes over rival consultancy

UK supply chain consultancy Crimson & Co has completed a takeover of competitor Tamarack Consulting for an undisclosed fee. The deal, finalised last week, means Tamarack will cease trading and Crimson will take on its resources including staff, client base and intellectual property.

Richard Powell, managing director of Crimson, said: "Tamarack's clients include several powerful retailers and consumer goods companies and, as these are historically strong areas for Crimson & Co, we are excited about the opportunity to expand the relationship with these clients."  John Sewell, senior director at Tamarack, added: "Joining Crimson & Co builds on our commitment to develop supply chain strategies that deliver tangible bottom line results."  Among Sewell's recent clients are J Sainsbury, Argos, Avon Cosmetics, Asda, RHM (Manor Bakeries), Ahold and Somerfield.  Crimson & Co's recent clients include Avon Cosmetics, British American Tobacco, PZ Cussons, Tesco, Shell Lubricants and Novartis.


View the story

This year’s CIPS Supply Management Award attracted record entries – with almost 200 applications vying for top honours.  We are proud to say that our client, Leisure Connection, made the shortlist for the ‘Best cross-functional teamwork project’ category, which is a great achievement.

This year’s CIPS Supply Management Award attracted record entries – with almost 200 applications vying for top honours.  We are proud to say that our client, Leisure Connection, made the shortlist for the ‘Best cross-functional teamwork project’ category, which is a great achievement.

It was announced today that Tamarack, the supply chain strategy and performance improvement consultancy, will join Crimson & Co, one of the most successful specialist supply chain consultancies of recent years. As a result of this, Tamarack will cease trading.

Richard Powell, Managing Director of Crimson & Co, stated:
"Tamarack will reinforce the breadth of our offerings and extend Crimson & Co’s strong position in the supply chain industry."
“Crimson & Co has a strong cultural identity and Tamarack will be a perfect fit.”
"Tamarack’s clients include several powerful retailers and consumer goods companies and, as these are historically strong areas for Crimson & Co, we are excited about the opportunity to expand the relationship with these clients."

John Sewell, Senior Director of Tamarack, commented: "Joining Crimson & Co builds on our commitment to develop supply chain strategies that deliver tangible bottom line results for our clients.”
“Tamarack clients will benefit from Crimson & Co’s strength in depth, their practical experience of working with companies across the globe and their knowledge base of cross industry best practice."

Further details Julie Lowell, Marketing Manager

Outside M&A and product innovation, the only vehicle to achieve competitive advantage in a recession is supply chain excellence.  To move into a leadership position and trigger sustained market performance when recovery comes, companies must ensure they have best-in-class alignment of their supply chain, marketing and product strategies.  In this context we consider:

• How better to align your product and marketing strategies with your supply chain
• The current economic climate. What options do companies have? Why do some companies thrive in this period?
• Demand driven supply chain strategy. What is it? How is it different? What are its benefits?
• Getting started. How to begin the transformation to a demand driven strategy
• Enabling the process. Implications for organisational design, performance measurement and information systems

In order to give best practice advice, Nick Miller, Principal, Crimson & Co has produced the following:

Checklist: Supply Strategy and Competitive Advantage
(PDF Document - 46kb)

Achieving Competitive Advantage: Aligning Product, Marketing & Supply Strategies
(PDF Document - 109kb)

Online video of the forum

An effective supply chain toolkit that identifies weaknesses for corrective action must be thorough in its methodology, broad in ambition and customisable for a range of industries and business types.

The Crimson & Co Supply Chain Excellence Toolkit meets all these requirements. It compares an organisation’s supply chain against industry best practice in order to provide an impartial assessment of process strengths and weaknesses. The objectives are typically raised service levels, reduced cost and an increase in working capital. The supply chain is divided up into six functional areas; buy, make, plan, deliver, demand and foundation. Each of these functional levels is further broken down into process maturity profiles. Each element of the functional area is then assessed on the maturity of the process. The modular nature of the system permits customisation and enables a business to select the parts that are applicable to its operation and have the most impact in their industry.

View 'The Manufacturer' article

Long supply chains may seem a liability in the current climate; but, warns Simon Butcher, we must not throw the baby of recovery out with the bathwater of recession.

In the current economic climate sales are down, costs and are up and finance is no longer readily available. For organisations with long supply chains these issues are exacerbated by long lead times, high MOQs and high inventories. These pressures drive companies to make changes to their supply chain cost - often logistics cost even though it is rarely the crucial element of supply chain cost. However, fundamental alterations to survive the recession must take into consideration ability to perform in the subsequent upturn.

For an organisation facing declining demand there are several options; reducing, deferring or cancelling orders will have an immediate impact but how will the supplier respond when you want to ramp up production? If the goods have already been made you could store them in the market or sell off surplus. Again these options have associated risks. The problem is that in a downturn the organisation would like to do the former (least damaging, earliest actions) but in an upturn the latter is preferable - providing flexibility to instantly meet new demand.

Planning for the upturn is difficult due to unreliable demand and the time lag between increasing demand and the ability to respond. Cheap suppliers are likely to have gone bust and there will be a shortage in both international and domestic transport capacity. Whilst there is a trade off in unit cost between EU and far east manufacturing (EU production typically leads to lower inventory whereas the far east will have lower labour costs) the loss of sales faced in an upturn is likely to be greater from companies using far east manufacturing due to the simple inability to get stock on the shelves. Supply chain agility is critical to mitigate this risk. The focus should be on procurement and manufacturing, i.e. the gap between emergent demand and the ability to supply to it. Logistical actions will not have an impact on their own; a co-ordinated, holistic response across the supply chain is what is required.

View the Supply Chain Europe Article

The supply chain provides an obvious area of focus for managing a response to the current economic situation. Whilst supply chain management is a well developed concept, most organisations have failed to implement it as an element of an integrated market strategy. The response therefore often takes the form of a cost-cutting exercise, rather than strategic realignment.

In this context we benchmark:

• How the ‘supply chain’ is positioned within their respective companies in terms of organisation structure but also in terms of its involvement in the corporate strategy and its alignment to the marketing and product strategy.
• How their companies are responding to the current economic downturn. Where is the focus? What lessons are being learned that will change business processes in the future?
• How their supply chains support this sort of change.

Specifically it considering:

• The strategic positioning of supply chain.
• The organisational response to the downturn.
• The role that the supply chain plays in supporting this response.
• The opportunities to use the supply chain more strategically.

View the Criticaleye discussion write-up
(Supply Chain Management A Route Out of Recession - PDF document - 97kb)

Crimson & Co’s latest advert took pride of place in the ‘Supply Chain & Logistics Supplement’ distributed within the Daily Telegraph on 31st March 2009.

The supplement addressed issues such as climate change, cost containment and outsourcing amongst others.  The supplement will also be issued at the Multimodal 2009, which is on 28 - 30th of April at the NEC in Birmingham, as well as the SCL Europe summit 2009, which is on 8th -10th June at the Swissotel, Dusseldorf, which Crimson & Co will be sponsoring.

View the Daily Telegraph ‘Supply Chain and Logistics Supplement’

"About 24% more firms moved from the back of the pack to the front in the 2001 downturn compared with the subsequent period of economic calm, according to an eight year study that analysed the net profit margins."

Our Head of Supply Chain Excellence, Dave Bennett has produced a workshop on 'How to use the downturn to have a fitter, faster, stronger supply chain'. The workshop enables attendees to assess the relative standing of their supply chains and explore ways to drive improvements. This uses a Supply Chain Excellence process framework which incorporates cross industry best practice. Finally, it demonstrates how this approach has delivered very significant benefits to a market leading consumer good business as it has globalised its business operations.

Download the Workshop Presentation (PDF Doc 4.2mb)

We are delighted to announce news of two new joiners, Dave Bennett and Karine Bartle.

Dave Bennett
Dave joins as a director of Crimson & Co having worked in the field of supply chain management for 20 years, both in consulting and line management/director roles. His previous companies include Coopers & Lybrand, Accenture, HP, Cable & Wireless and Exel/DHL. Whilst directing the healthcare business in DHL, he was responsible for the outsourcing of all procurement and logistics in the NHS – still the largest outsourcing contract awarded by the UK Government.

Karine Bartle
Karine joins us from DHL and has extensive international supply chain management experience in the Far East, USA and Europe. She has a strong operational background with a specific focus on retail and consumer sectors.