Customer-Supplier Partnering: A Strategy Whose Time Has Come

Organizations are increasingly involved in creating strategic partnerships. Competitive advantages accrue to customers and suppliers who partner well because the opportunities to add value and reduce costs on both sides of the equation are enormous. The result has been a clamoring for information on how to make these customer-supplier alliances work in practice. By undertaking a historical analysis of the evolution of customer-supplier relations, this article derives the importance of a national account management program and key elements of a national accounts strategy. A checklist is provided for firms to see how they measure up in terms of partnering capabilities.