National Library and Library Network in Finland - Cooperation Being the Driving Force of Success

Kristiina Hormia-Poutasen esitys Danish Research Association -tapahtumassa Tanskassa 15.9.2011

Marketing-Sales Cooperation and its Relation on Direct Sales Performance: an Example of a Medium-sized Oil Company

The study touches upon marketing-sales departments’ cooperation and investigates marketing-sales cooperative model within the case company. So that research increases understanding of linkages between Marketing and Sales departments with an illustrative example of Russian medium-sized oil company (LLC Neste St. Petersburg), the subsidiary of Finnish-based Neste Oil. The empirical study is done from marketing and sales perspectives. And for sales main attention was brought to direct sales, both B2B and B2C. Research considers all five domains of cooperation, and among others, study reveals the attitude towards external (market) and internal (product) knowledge, and its mutual use by marketing and sales managers. A qualitative research method, participant observations, and in-depth interviews with upper-management made it possible to explore all facets of joint work. Moreover, research responses the changes in a model of cooperation between marketing and sales when moving from medium size to large company.

Designing the transformation from a boiler supplier into a solution seller

Competition for customers in business-to-business markets is rough, and in order to survive a seller has to be able to deliver more value to its customers than its competitors. This thesis is done for the sales department of an energy technology company operating in business-to-business markets. The company is a relatively small in its field, and it aims to expand internationally and differ itself from its competitors by providing better service for its customers and selling solutions. This study aims to design the transformation from a product seller into a solution seller by defining what is a solution and how solutions are sold, and creating an action plan for sales. Data for the study is collected in ten theme interviews, and analyzed with thematic and content analysis. The action plan is constructed based both on the data and theory. According to the findings of the study, solution is defined as a specially designed unique combination of elements – such as products, services, knowledge, experience and thinking – that work with and complement each other, and bring value to a particular customer. Solution sales requires capabilities to anticipate; build relationships with customers; identify needs and define requirements; cocreate solutions by customizing and integrating elements; and provide postdeployment support. Vision for the change is to sell solution through sensing customers’ needs and responding to them, and the steps of the action plan are to (1) cascade customer-focus, (2) involve other departments in solution sales, (3) develop customer relationship management, and (4) involve the whole organization in solution business.

Benefits and challenges of supply chain finance business process automation : A case study in ING Bank

Supply chain finance, a financial product provided by the bank, has gained increasing attention and popularity over the last few years. Supply chain finance helps the corporate clients to optimize their financial flows along the supply chain. One characteristic of supply chain finance is that it aims to provide automated solutions. Therefore, the business process automation of supply chain finance is a very interesting and important topic for study. In this study, the business process automation of supply chain finance within the case organization, ING, is analysed. The purpose is to: (1) Identify the benefits to understand the importance to automate supply chain finance business process; (2) Find out the existing automation degree in the supply chain finance business process within the case bank to see what’s the situation now and how to improve in the future; (3) Discover the challenges in the further automation of supply chain finance business process. Firstly, the study finds out that supply chain finance business process automation can bring many benefits to the bank. Automation can improve productivity by using less time and human labour in the business process, and by providing scalable solutions. Automation can also improve quality of the service by reducing the human errors. Last but not least, automation can improve internal governance by providing enhanced visibility of the business process. Because of these potential benefits, many banks are actively seeking solutions to automate their supply chain finance business process. Then, the current automation situation with the case bank is analysed with the help of business process modelling. The supply chain finance business process within the case bank can be further divided into several sub processes: daily transaction, buyer sales and setup, supplier onboarding, contract management, customer services and supports, and contract termination. The study finds out that the daily transaction process is already a highly automated, which is carried out through the web-based trading platform. However, for other business the automation degree is relatively low. Among these business processes, supplier onboarding is most needed for further automation. Then, some solutions are also suggested to automate the supplier onboarding business process. In the end, the study also foresees some challenges during the further automation of supply chain finance business process in the case bank. Some suggestions are also given to deal with these challenges.

Purchasing portfolio analysis and supplier classification

The purpose of the thesis is to classify suppliers and to enhance strategic purchasing in the case company. Supplier classification is conducted to fulfill the requirements of the company quality manual and international quality standards. To gain more benefit, a strategic purchasing tool, Kraljic’s purchasing portfolio and analytical hierarchy process are utilized for the base of supplier classification. Purchasing portfolio is used to give quick and easy visual insight on product group management form the viewpoint of purchasing. From the base on purchasing portfolio alternative purchasing and supplier strategies can be formed that enhance the strategic orientation of purchasing. Thus purchasing portfolio forces the company to orient on proactive and strategic purchasing. As a result a survey method for implementing purchasing portfolio in the company is developed that exploits analytical hierarchy process. Experts from the company appoint the categorization criteria and in addition, participate in the survey to categorize product groups on the portfolio. Alternative purchasing strategies are formed. Suppliers are classified depending on the importance and characteristics of the product groups supplied.

Supplier Segmentation for Nordic Petrochemical Industry

Objective of this thesis was to map possibilities for systematic supplier management in field of chemical process industry. Through this study it was aimed to develop a tool for supplier management that could be integrated with operations in business unit. With developed tool suppliers should be able to be segmented based on their willingness and capability, and segmentation could be applied in purchasing decisions. In this thesis there was made a survey of methods that are recognized in literature to manage and allocate suppliers. This thesis recognizes segmentation as a method to group and select suppliers in procurement. Based on literature, a proposal for segmentation framework and evaluation criteria factors will be constituted. Based on theoretical proposal, in an expertise workshop a final segmentation framework was constituted, which covers segments with descriptions and evaluation part. Evaluation part includes an evaluation framework which helps to score suppliers with selected factors and leads to total grades in willingness and capability. These total grades will be the coordinates and they determine the segment where the supplier under evaluation belongs. In this thesis segments definitions, objectives, and road maps will be described.

Mathematics inspired by Darwin. Adaptive dynamics of dispersal and cooperation

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection, the process occurring based on fitness benefits and fitness costs at the individual level. Traditionally, evolution has been investigated by biologists, but it has induced mathematical approaches, too. For example, adaptive dynamics has proven to be a very applicable framework to the purpose. Its core concept is the invasion fitness, the sign of which tells whether a mutant phenotype can invade the prevalent phenotype. In this thesis, four real-world applications on evolutionary questions are provided. Inspiration for the first two studies arose from a cold-adapted species, American pika. First, it is studied how the global climate change may affect the evolution of dispersal and viability of pika metapopulations. Based on the results gained here, it is shown that the evolution of dispersal can result in extinction and indeed, evolution of dispersalshould be incorporated into the viability analysis of species living in fragmented habitats. The second study is focused on the evolution of densitydependent dispersal in metapopulations with small habitat patches. It resulted a very surprising unintuitive evolutionary phenomenon, how a non-monotone density-dependent dispersal may evolve. Cooperation is surprisingly common in many levels of life, despite of its obvious vulnerability to selfish cheating. This motivated two applications. First, it is shown that density-dependent cooperative investment can evolve to have a qualitatively different, monotone or non-monotone, form depending on modelling details. The last study investigates the evolution of investing into two public-goods resources. The results suggest one general path by which labour division can arise via evolutionary branching. In addition to applications, two novel methodological derivations of fitness measures in structured metapopulations are given.

Risk Assessment of a Supplier in the Pharmaceutical Industry

The topic of this Master’s Thesis is risk assessment in the supply chain, and the work was done for a company operating in the pharmaceutical industry. The unique features of the industry bring additional challenges to risk management, due to high regulatory, docu-mentation and traceability requirements. The objective of the thesis was to generate a template for assessing the risks in the supply chain of current and potential suppliers of the case company. Risks pertaining to the case setting were sought mainly from in-house expertise of this specific product and supply chain as well as academic research papers and theory on risk management. A questionnaire was set up to assess the found risks on impact, occurrence and possibility of detection. Through this classification of the severity of the risks, the supplier assessment template was formed. A questionnaire template, comprised of the top 10 risks affecting the flow of information and materials in this setting, was formulated to serve as a generic tool for assessing risks in the supply chain of a pharmaceutical company. The template was tested on another supplier for usability and accuracy of found risks, and it demonstrated functioning in a differing supply chain and product setting.

Supplier Delivery Quality Evaluation in Maintenance Supporting Spare Part Business

The focus of this thesis is the issues related to the operational purchasing level supply chain process. Due to this limitation, the physical product quality issues do not belong to the primary concerns of this thesis, whereas the bilateral processes between the supplier and the purchasing organizations are of interest. Also, the issues related to the delivery timing are excluded from the study. Because the perspective is on the issues involved in the supply chain operations, the bilateral communication issues between supplier representative and purchaser are also considered.