Convincing a client to adopt a high-value and cost saving innovative product
The Goal
The goal was to expand market share of U.S supplier Hayes Lemmerz at Renault with an innovative product: a sheet-steel wheel attractively designed to resemble an aluminium wheel but without the high price. This wheel, called Versastyle, gives customers of mid-range vehicles (Mégane, Fluence) better value with a cost saving of 60 € per vehicle.
SNECI’s Role
Between Renault and the American supplier Hayes Lemmerz, a long-term partner of SNECI, SNECI played a key role as a coordinator of the project trusted by both companies. Renault particularly appreciated how SNECI assisted Hayes Lemmerz in understanding its requests and expectations. The steady work of SNECI’s technical, commercial, quality and project teams allowed Hayes Lemmerz to create a new business with Renault. In late 2008, Renault chose the wheel for one of its projects.
After the start of production, SNECI’s mission continued with other teams in logistics and quality to ensure the success of the daily increase in volumes of the Versastyle wheel and the smooth delivery between Hayes Lemmerz’s Spanish and now Turkish production site and several Renault assembly plants around the world.
SNECI highlighted the strengths of the Versastyle wheel for Renault through good communication with the automakers’ design, engineering, project and procurement teams. Renault was attracted by the wheel’s style, its ability to meet expectations for technical strength and corrosion resistance, and its economic advantage over an aluminium wheel. In late 2010, the product was launched on a special series at a pace of 2,000 wheels per month.
Because the market was satisfied, Renault chose Hayes Lemmerz’s Versastyle wheel for larger volume applications on the Megane and Scenic. To date, the trend is for deliveries of 350,000 wheels per year in Spain and Turkey, and Hayes Lemmerz has become the leading wheel supplier to Renault-Nissan.
SNECI’s Added Value
SNECI effectively accelerated the relationship between Hayes Lemmerz and Renault. By assisting Hayes Lemmerz to better understand Renault’s expectations, SNECI answered the needs of both companies. Mutual understanding is the core of the value SNECI provides. SNECI is a bridge between different cultures to facilitate trade and expedite business. "The customer knows that SNECI is a close ally on which it can rely,” says Bertrand Marie, who led SNECI’s team.
Getting a Asian office supply company on the supplier panel of top Tier 1s
Goal
The goal was to assist an industrial company in Malaysia in becoming an important supplier for the international Tier 1s.
SNECI’s Role
SNECI brought its supplier partner Precico all the support it required to enter the automotive market. “We have worked with them for eight years,” says SNECI Business Development Director Herve Champion. Before SNECI arrived, Precico was a manufacturing subcontractor mainly in office material and telephones. Very quickly, thanks to his experience in the automotive sector at Fiat, Magneti Marelli and Valeo, Hervé Champion identified Precico’s potential as an automotive supplier. “After analysis, we prepared a marketing product plan with Precico's top management to be able to approach targeted clients," he says.
SNECI's methodology to identify products on which Precico should be positioned was based on two main criteria:
- The attractiveness of targeted clients
- The product positioning to propose to satisfy targeted clients
Each of these criteria had sub-criteria in terms of technology, organization, quality, industrialization and competitiveness.
After weighting these criteria, it was decided with Precico's top management to start our marketing product plan approach with Valeo and Continental in Germany for simple plastic painted parts like switches.
Within SNECI, we created a multicultural team with different client mentalities: a French, German and Chinese. "The audacity of this melting pot was one of the key factors of success," reflects a SNECI team member. We then made a marketing product plan presentation aligned with Valeo's needs, stressing the strengths of Precico for each criteria: technology, organization, quality, industrialization, competitiveness and localization.
We then contacted the targeted people within Valeo with whom we identified the market potentials and implemented an action plan with project progress meetings to be sure that the milestones would be met. On an industrial level, SNECI assisted its partner by sending one of its engineers to Malaysia to bring support on project advancement and to allow its competencies in assembling decorative parts with electronics to be recognized.
Since then, Precico's activity has been 60% in the automotive industry. As SNECI teams explain it, "Valeo is Precico's most important client in the world since they supply them in Europe, Asia, Tunisia and Mexico, which allowed us then to supply BMW and Continental. We are now in advanced negotiations with other suppliers." SNECI also brought them another major customer in the industrial field, Neopost.
SNECI’s Added Value
SNECI allowed Precico to understand what the auto industry expects of suppliers in industrial terms and in quality. Customers initially used Precico for simple parts and gradually asked for complete modules associated with electronics. Then, thanks to SNECI and its role as a Business Developer, Precico won more customers for its products, especially Continental. "Still, it took us almost two and a half years to get Precico on the Continental supplier panel," admits SNECI. This was an important victory for SNECI. The budding relationship with the Hanover supplier has potential for considerable growth.
Now the projects on which Precico is consulted and retained involve complete modules with electronics, not just parts. Precico’s initial expertise was in plastic injection; now it has added a thorough knowledge of processes in painting, laser welding and assembly with electronics.
For Precico, SNECI called on many of its competencies: identification of target customers, sales prospection, assistance with commercial development, project management, preparation for quality and industrial audits, assistance in upgrading quality and daily support.
As President of SNECI Isabelle Bailly puts it, "To advise, we are constantly listening to our clients because the world and its needs always evolve...Thus, it's not over until it's over, but it's never over."
Finding new clients
The Goal
Italian supplier IMA, who also has an industrial site in Romania and a joint venture in India, needed new clients, as the supplier’s main client was soon going to stop working with the company because it was looking to reintegrate that kind of competency. Thus, IMA had to find new outlets for its products, while SNECI had to bring added value to prevent IMA from entering a negative spiral.
SNECI’s Role
To respond to this challenge, SNECI Project Manager David Rigaudie developed an innovative methodology and launched an e-mail campaign on a grand scale. “We were in the middle of the automotive crisis. We thus had to roll up our sleeves, fight and go beyond our planned missions. It was a big leap into the unknown," Rigaudie explains. He decided to execute an e-mail campaign aimed at finding new customers for IMA’s products. Rigaudie and his team first defined the message. Then the Marketing and Industrial teams at SNECI validated the files and identified the targets, mainly purchasing managers and supplier quality managers. “We launched the campaign, then assured the follow-up with new contacts to verify that the message had been received and understood,” says Rigaudie. The campaign resulted in a number of requests for quotations, including that of the Spanish supplier Antolin.
Thanks to its expertise and knowledge of the automobile industry and its players, SNECI found new clients for IMA while increasing IMA's activity when one of its historical clients was shifting its purchasing strategy. There was supposed to be downturn in the activity in the medium-term, but the opposite happened. SNECI also managed the entire technical and commercial negotiation and continued to manage the project during the development phase. The project proceeded correctly without delays or technical problems.
SNECI’s Added Value
SNECI created an innovative and successful solution thanks to the inventiveness of its teams. SNECI's expertise and the depth of its client database, which has more than 15,000 contacts, permitted it to target the right contacts and find new commercial outlets for IMA’s products. The immediate result for SNECI is that the relationship was strengthened, all the more so by the fact that David Rigaudie speaks Italian and is very familiar with Italian culture. This improved the relationship and trust between SNECI and IMA, and also between IMA and its new customer, Antolin.
Thanks to our solution, we created a strong competitive advantage enabling the perpetuity of IMA for the long-term.
Collecting over one million euro in outstanding invoices
The Goal
SNECI regularly monitors and supports the logistical side including following invoice activity and giving operational support to industrials. In this case it was a question of assisting the industrial side in managing the ebb and flow of invoices. This meant drafting up invoices for the company and ensuring payments were made on time. “One of our partners had a million euros outstanding when we took on the task,” says Annabella Vicente, SNECI Sales Assistant and Project Director. Some invoices were several years overdue.
SNECI’s Role
SNECI took over the case in an emergency situation that resulted from a lack of communication and not enough knowledge of the final customer's internal process. Another difficulty was that it involved several of the partner's factories across continents, components and customers. SNECI conducted meetings with the customers to understand the reasons for the outstanding invoices and then made new delivery orders and invoices according to the formats requested by the clients. We also made sure that the right documents and invoices were sent. A "shuttle document" of follow-up corresponding to the expectations of all parties and regrouping all of the necessary information was created to ensure effective reporting and operations.
In six months, SNECI managed to collect the million euro of outstanding invoices. SNECI's proposed methodology is now applied by all factories.
SNECI’s Added Value
The added value of SNECI lies in its proximity to the customers which enables us to understand their internal process. SNECI proposed a methodology of invoicing and sending invoices to sensitize the Finance Department on "how to do it right from the first try." This methodology allows SNECI to explain well to the partner what has not been correctly or well understood. SNECI also reiterated to its partner the details of how clients operation with an emphasis on the various steps and stages of alert. "We upgraded our partner in that area," says Vicente.
Finally, cultural aspects are different from one country to another. “Not only mastering both French and Portuguese, but also having grown in a bi-cultural environment greatly improved the communication," concludes Vicente.
