You must be committed to benchmarking and finding out what the best companies in the globe do in their supply chain before venturing into a Strategic Alliance. You also must determine if your target organization’s supply chain or purchasing department is involved in strategic planning so that they can get the maximum benefit of understanding what they buy, how they buy it, where they buy, and that they are buying it at better than competitive levels. Many companies as recently as 5 -10 years ago set goals of purchasing 3% of their annual goods and services budget from minority-owned businesses, and 2.5% for women-owned businesses. We lately have seen numbers as high as 11-15% for both. States like California USA have set goals as high as 50% for their public utilities of which large corporations such as AT&T and PG&E are included. Women-owned business participation in corporate contracting is advancing at a much faster rate than minority participation....
Educating small businesses on doing business with big businesses.