2.4  Building and maintaining effective professional working relationship with your supplier.

An effective professional working relationship with your supplier is the cornerstone of contract management. If you have a professional and fair relationship with your supplier and maintain open communication:

•  you are more likely to achieve the contract outcomes

•  you can identify and resolve problems before they escalate

•  you can discuss and resolve issues of non-compliance or under-performance in a constructive way.

An effective working relationship is characterised by:

a.

Mutual trust and understanding.

b.

Open, clear and honest communication.

c.

Parties that appreciate one another's objectives, strategy and point of view.

d.

A collaborative approach to achieving contract delivery.

You can establish an effective professional working relationship with your supplier by:

•  establishing shared understanding of the contract (a contract start up meeting/workshop is helpful here)

•  having clear contract management processes and applying these consistently

•  ensuring that key people have good skills and relevant experience to develop and maintain a professional relationship with your supplier

•  having clear performance standards, review processes and undergoing corrective actions consistently and promptly when needed.

You might need to strengthen your relationship with your supplier if you experience issues such as:

•  poor response times to requests

•  lack of a shared understanding about key contract issues

•  limited willingness to respond to requests for information or updates on progress

•  general dissatisfaction about the helpfulness of the other party.

Avoid adversarial behaviour, as this is not constructive and could damage your relationship.

Relationship management for complex/strategic contracts

For more complex or strategic contracts, particularly long-term contracts, you may wish to:

•  establish a behaviours charter or relationship management plan to help improve contract outcomes

•  consider using Supplier Relationship Metrics to promote open and effective engagement with the Commonwealth.

You can do this formally through the contract (where the contract allows) or less formally as part of the contract management plan or as a standalone document. Make sure you get advice from your central procurement area or legal adviser when preparing these documents.