Suppliers are the lifeblood of successful events.
From venues and photographers to caterers and security, their roles shape the attendee experience.
That’s why it’s especially important for event planners to prioritize supplier relationship management (SRM). In this article, we’ll demystify SRM, highlighting its benefits and providing best practices for your events.
Having facilitated millions of events in nearly 180 countries, Eventbrite has witnessed firsthand the power of effective supplier relationship management.
Leveraging our expertise and deep industry knowledge, we’re well-equipped to offer invaluable insights and advice to empower you on your journey to event planning success.
Join us as we delve into the world of supplier relationship management.
What is supplier relationship management?
Supplier relationship management involves managing and nurturing relationships with your event suppliers and vendors. Common examples of event suppliers include venue managers, food caterers, and photographers.
Here are some of the key aspects of the supplier relationship management process:
- Supplier selection: Choosing which suppliers are right for your event.
- Contract negotiation: Negotiating and agreeing the terms of your partnership.
- Ongoing supplier communication: Keeping in touch with your suppliers to maintain your relationship.
- Performance evaluation: Reviewing how successful their performance is at your event.
- Issue resolution: Overcoming any hurdles or challenges together with your suppliers.
The goal of SRM is to have clear communication and good relationships with these suppliers, so that you can run a successful event and maintain solid relationships for the future.
Take a look at the FoodieLand Night Market as an example.
This food festival is a three-day event where thousands of people gather for food, drinks, games, shopping, and live entertainment. The event has been running since 2019, and now has multiple events every year in different spots across the United States.
To make sure their events run smoothly, the event organizers have built good working relationships with their food providers. The organizers know what food is being served, how much food will be available, and when the providers will be serving it. As a result, it’s easier for them to plan their events in advance and manage the event on the day.
If things go well with your supplier relationships, you can continue your collaborations for future events. This means you don’t have to spend the time finding the perfect caterer because you already have a trusted one on the roster.
And by continually using their business, you may even find that the caterer offers you some cost savings and good advice. It’s a win-win!
What are the benefits of supplier relationship management?
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of SRM in more detail.
Elevate attendee experience
When your supplier relationships are healthy, you can provide attendees with more value and a better experience.
Let’s use the food festival example again to illustrate this.
Imagine that you’re in charge of running a food festival. You’ve made it a priority to focus on supplier relationships, meaning that you’re frequently in contact with your vendors.
As a result, all the vendors know how many people are attending the festival, and how much food they need to bring to serve everyone.
If you don’t have clear and regular communication with your food suppliers, they might be unaware of how many people are attending and fail to bring enough food. Then you’ll have unhappy foodies on your hands!
The secret to a successful event
Having better relationships with your suppliers can help you run a successful event. Period.
Think about the venue of your event as an example. When you have a good relationship with your venue, you’ll have a much better chance of running a smooth and successful event. You’ll have clear communication with your contact at the venue, a better understanding of what you can do with the space, and know when it’ll be available to you.
If anything goes wrong on the day, you’re also more likely to have help and support from the venue. For example, if you have more attendees than planned, the venue may be able to help you rearrange the seating.
We’re not saying that this wouldn’t happen if you didn’t have a great relationship with the venue. But what we are saying is that you’re more likely to run a successful event because of it.
Improve communication and collaboration
An event is only as successful as the team running it, right? Well, that’s where the supplier management process comes into play.
Building solid relationships involves clear and regular communication with your vendors. This improved communication results in smoother event management and improves communication and satisfaction for your whole team — suppliers included.
Let’s take a look at the Lightning in a Bottle Festival.
The event organizers, Do Lab, wanted to create a transformational festival with an authentic, immersive experience for their guests. They had a very specific vision for how the festival would look and feel.
To bring this to life, they had to work with suppliers that understood their vision. For example, they wanted no big white tents, as they have a strong focus on sustainability, and they wanted a bigger emphasis on creative activities in addition to live music.
To make sure that all the suppliers understood this vision, the event team had to communicate openly. As a result, everyone was on the same page, and the event was a success.
How to use supplier relationship management in your next event
Now that we know what SRM is and its benefits, let’s take a look at the best practices for improving your SRM for your next event.
Find the right suppliers
The first step is to find the right suppliers for your event. With the right suppliers under your belt, you’ll be in a much better position to deliver successful events and start building strong supplier relationships.
But how exactly do you know which suppliers and vendors are right for your event?
Here’s some food for thought:
- Identify the types of suppliers you need. Start by figuring out what types of vendors and suppliers you need for our event. If you’re hosting an in-person, corporate event, you might need a venue, food and drinks, a sound system, a presentation setup, and a ticketing platform like Eventbrite. From here, you’ll be able to research the different suppliers you need to make sure you cover all your bases.
- Attend vendor events. Vendor events are gatherings where suppliers showcase their offerings and network with other businesses. It’s a great way for event planners to see what’s out there, and you might even come across suppliers you hadn’t considered before.
While you’re on the hunt for vendors and suppliers, browse Eventbrite’s Vendor Network to see what companies and suppliers are available in your local area.
Segment your suppliers
Segmenting your suppliers is a great way to identify your top-value vendors. As a result, you can prioritize and nurture these relationships to make sure your future events are a success.
And it’s not just us who think segmentation is important for supplier relationships. A supplier relationship management survey from PWC found that around 60% of respondents use segmentation to manage their suppliers.
So how exactly can segmentation improve your relationship with suppliers?
- It helps you nurture the most important supplier relationships. For example, if you have a high-value supplier that you want to continue working with, you might keep in touch more often and use a senior event planner to handle the communication. With a lower-value supplier, you might not need to communicate as often, and you could allow a junior event planner to handle this relationship.
- It helps you allocate your time and resources effectively. Instead of spending all of your time trying to communicate with all your suppliers, you can focus on those that are the most important to your events.
There are different ways to segment your strategic suppliers. The best option depends on the event and what you want to achieve from it. Here are some ways you can categorize your suppliers:
- The size of the supplier
- The type of supplier
- How much the supplier costs
- How reliable they are
- Their ability to meet your desired event experience
Consider using a supplier relationship manager
As the name suggests, a supplier relationship manager is responsible for managing supplier relationships. Their role is to build and maintain strong, collaborative partnerships with vendors to make sure your events run as smoothly as possible.
Having a supplier relationship manager takes some of the pressure off the event planning team. All the responsibility goes to a single person, meaning that they can dedicate all of their time to building and maintaining relationships that’ll help you run successful events.
If you have a dedicated supplier relationship manager, consider the tools they’ll need to make them as effective as possible and help them focus on tracking and building relationships.
And if you don’t have a supplier relationship manager, event management tools will help you keep on top of supplier relationships and make sure your events run as smoothly as possible.
Here are a couple of event tools to consider:
1. Eventbrite
Eventbrite is a complete event management platform that helps event creators build customizable event pages, sell tickets to their events, and market their events.
With our Organizer App, you can store and track all your event information in one location. You can also reflect on the successes of previous events to determine which suppliers are the most successful.
Ready to get organized with Eventbrite?
2. Proactis
Proactis is a supplier management system that allows you to create a vendor directory. You can manage the entire vendor lifecycle, send automatic communications, and monitor vendor performance.
3. Kodiak
Kodiak is a platform for managing supplier relationships across different industries. The software helps you organize supplier data into automated dashboards, which helps you track performance, budgets, and timeframes.
Pro tip: If you’re organizing a large event, get in touch with other organizers close to you and get a recommendation on a good supplier-relationship manager. You can find nearby event organizers through Eventbrite’s search engine.
Encourage collaboration and communication
An environment of honesty and open communication will strengthen your relationships with suppliers. The more you communicate and work together, the better your relationship will be. And when your working relationship is strong, your events are more likely to succeed.
Here are a few ways to boost collaboration and have better communication with your suppliers:
- Use simple communication channels. To encourage communication, use simple and effective communication channels. That way, it’s easy to stay in touch with your suppliers and discuss event information. Slack is a good example of a quick-and-easy communication tool.
- Involve key suppliers in decisions. Encourage collaboration by involving suppliers in the decision-making process (when appropriate). For example, you could host regular meetings to ask for their input about event plans, timelines, and logistics. This creates a sense of shared responsibility, which motivates the suppliers and makes sure you’re all on the same page.
- Provide feedback and recognition. Offer constructive feedback and recognition for their performance, and ask for the same in return. This shows your suppliers that you want open and honest communication and that you’re thinking about the future, both for you and them.
Measure supplier performance
Over time, things change. Your events might be different, your guests might want different things, and the same goes for your suppliers.
They might change their services or up their prices. To make sure that your suppliers are still a good fit for your events, you should continually track and monitor their performance. That way, you’ll know whether the relationship is worth continuing, or if another vendor might be a better option.
- Set performance metrics. Define specific metrics that you can use to evaluate supplier performance. For example, the quality of what they’re offering, cost-effectiveness, responsiveness, and their adherence to your event specifications.
- Observe suppliers at the event. If you’re hosting an in-person event, try to see how your suppliers perform. Are they serving food at a good pace? Is the venue set-up properly for your event? Is the photographer taking enough photos? How do they treat the attendees? Use the event itself as a chance to see your suppliers in action to figure out if they’re reaching your standards or if there are any opportunities for improvement.
- Host a post-event survey. A post-event survey is a questionnaire for your event attendees. It gives them a chance to provide feedback, which gives you a chance to see how your suppliers are performing.
Manage your events and organize your suppliers
From planning professional corporate events to managing charity and non-profit events, SRM is an important consideration for all event creators. It helps you establish a mutually beneficial relationship with your vendors, allows you to run events as smoothly as possible, and can save you money in the long-run.
Once you have your suppliers lined up and you have confidence in them, the next step is to ensure you have full control over your numbers.
You can use Eventbrite’s software to track event attendance in real-time. As a result, you can update third-party suppliers on attendee numbers to keep them in the loop and continue building your relationship.
