Improving Communication within your Buying Group
When most people think of a Buying Group IT system, their mind usually goes to the clever things like rebate calculations, spend projections and purchasing agreements.
Whilst all these things are important — and any Buying Group system worth its salt should provide them — good intra-group communication is without doubt the most unappreciated and overlooked part of running a buying group that keeps members engaged, well informed, and highly participatory.
Well informed members make better purchasing decisions, which in turn save them money, which can often increase group spend at the right times of the year.
Over the last fifteen years, we’ve seen groups that don’t communicate at all, and groups that communicate way too much.
Not enough communication is always bad — members don’t know what’s going on with important trading information, they aren’t aware of price changes when they need to be, promotions go unnoticed, and members are unaware of group events, group news and changes in personnel.
Too much communication can also be bad — people get emails about products they don’t sell, events they have no desire to go to, meetings that don’t concern them, and promotions for suppliers they don’t stock.
Like eating a healthy diet, balance is key.
Striking the right balance
One of the ways we’re working to improve communication for our Buying Group customers is by utilizing machine learning.
Machine learning takes vast data-sets, cross references it with other data-sets, and then uses algorithms to “score” the results.
The most famous examples of this are recommendation engines in use at powerhouses like Amazon, YouTube and Netflix.
Recommendation engines are great for showing people information they may not have otherwise come across, but their use should always be secondary to data such as purchasing history.
Purchasing history is a great indicator of what is import to members, and like recommendations it can be scored; a supplier you spend £50k a month with is more important than one you’ve spent the odd few hundred pounds with, so they should be scored accordingly.
In addition to clever AI, we also use good old fashioned user preferences; within our Buying Group system, all member branches provide a “product profile” — an opt-in list of categories they sell within.
Combining all these things together
When a price list has been updated, for example, we utilize all these tools to determine who needs to be notified and when.
- Purchasing history
First, we dig out all members who have bought from this supplier in the past 6 months, and where their sales are in the 95% percentile (the supplier isn’t a one off or highly infrequent purchase). - Recommendation Engine
We then dig out all members who might be interested in this supplier based on commonality (other members who have a similar purchasing profile to theirs who do have a purchasing history with the supplier or similar suppliers). After all, purchasing history is not a silver bullet — a member may not have purchasing history with this supplier because they are a new member to the group, or the supplier might be new. - Product Profiles
We then check that this update relates to a category the member has opted into. Just because a member has history with a supplier, doesn’t mean this update will relate to them; some suppliers have broad product ranges and cross-sell into other categories that some members or branches may not sell. - Update Type
We then determine what sort of update this is. Price list changes or important trading information are things people need to know about immediately. Promotions or minor changes to terms are not mission critical information.
If the update is important, and the member has a high enough score, they will be notified immediately about the update. If the update is not important, or the member’s score is low, the update will be queued and inserted into a daily digest of aggregated updates for the following morning. If the member has a zero score, they will not be updated all as they do not sell this or similar products.
Member to Member Communications
There are two types of communication within Buying Groups: group to member communications, and member to member communications. Group to member communications cover things like trading information, price changes, meeting minutes, events, promotions, and bulk buying opportunities — basically what we talked about in the previous section.
Member to member communications, however, encapsulate things like industry chat, Category Management communications and meetings, product support, and things like stock swapping or member to member sales.
Tools like Slack, Discord, Skype, WhatsApp and Social Media have made it much easier for people to communicate between themselves using a variety of tools.
However, there are downsides to all these tools and platforms:
- Users need to signup for third party applications (try getting 4,000 users from different companies to all signup to the same third party service!)
- There is no central control — when a member leaves the group, they often retain contact with their peers, and therefore have access to possible historic sensitive information or discussions.
To overcome these issues, we have developed a Slack-like real-time chat tool within our Buying Group system that provides a secure platform for one on one and team-based chats. Because it’s within our web-based system, access is granted and controlled by group administrators, so it can be revoked easily when a member or staff member leaves. In addition, users already have accounts to the system, which means there is no need to signup for third party tools.
Our chat system features unlimited chat “rooms”, secure and encrypted file and document sharing, historic chat searching and chat history retention, email roundup emails for missing participants, and other features found in popular tools such as Slack and Discord.
Better communication creates well informed users. Well informed users make smarter purchasing decisions, and helps build engagement and sense of community. A better sense of community and smarter purchasing decisions helps strengthen your group financially, and nurtures loyalty.
For more information about how we might be able to help your group communicate more effectively, please get in touch.
