One of our clients, a notable multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation, asked us to find and recommend potential MRO integrators in Europe. They instructed us to look for those vendors that could support them at their site. The customer was in search of a vendor who could manage the six components of the MRO program: 1) inventory management; 2) data, systems, and innovation; 3) procurement and budget management; 4) supply assurance and compliance; 5) storeroom management and people; and 6) performance management, governance, and reliability.
After obtaining a thorough understanding of our client’s desired outcome, we did thorough research on the Internet, looking for potential suppliers in the interested countries and also through our database. Once we had a rough list of 42 suppliers, we telephoned each one to determine whether they were interested in this task. Once we had a list of suppliers willing to do the job, we developed an RFI with an aligned balanced scorecard that included all the prerequisites our client asked us for in any potential supplier. We then made our RFI and mailed it to 12 suppliers. Out of the 12 RFIs mailed, we received replies from 10 suppliers, which were put on our scorecard and ranked. Based on the scorecard, we recommended 9 potential MRO integrators to our client for further action on their part. We managed to wrap up the entire project in 8 weeks.