Collaboration: A New Paradigm.

Typically, we understand collaboration in the value chain as initiatives performed jointly between manufacturers and retailers, like CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment), EDI, VMI, etc. However, Collaboration goes beyond that. For us, Collaboration are all capabilities developed jointly with your partners in the value network (i.e. providers, manufacturers, retailers, and even clients) in order to conquer and satisfy the needs of the consumer. It means that the Collaboration should not have the old approach of "let´s work together and save some cost to share the money saved between us". This old approach lead us to lack of trust, absence of a win-win mentality and even losing focus on what is important: the consumer.

In a recent study we did for Mexico jointly with GS1 Mexico, ANTAD (Mexico´s retailer association) and CONMEXICO (Mexico´s manufacturers association), we wanted to understand the level of Collaboration´s culture, processes and technologies in order to understand the gap and defined required actions for the industry. For this analysis, we based the study in a very complete framework for Collaboration of Accenture, shown below:

In our study, we had the response to 266 surveys, covering almost every area in the consumer goods sector and almost all retailers formats. The study is quite detailed, but some of the main conclusions are:

. The Collaboration practices adoption in Mexico are in a consolidation stage (it means, most of the practices are in the "mainstream" area of the framework). Manufacturers show a better level of maturity compared with Retailers.
- Collaboration is considered important, however the level of adoption limites the execution.
- There is a partial understanding of Collaboration. For example, the win-win aspect of the Collaboration appears in sixth place.
- The knowledge about the Collaboration practices is correlated with the adoption. It may be obvious, but it implies that the industry should understand better what it is before implementing enabling technologies.
- Collaboration is perceived as a required capability to have a competitive advantage in the near future.

In the study, we have shown that implementing some practices of Collaboration, we may have a potential of 3.6 Billions USD to unlock, and they will represent an increase of 0.5 to 1 points in the net marging of both retailers and manufactures. As a result of the effort, the main industry associations are starting initiatives to develop Collaboration in Mexico.

You may find more detail (in spanish) in the following publication:

http://www.accenture.com/mx-es/Pages/insight-strategic-pulse-high-performance.aspx