The most common mistake made at a supplier day is inviting everyone. The result: a room full of people with diverse interests, a program that doesn’t feel truly relevant to anyone, and conversations that go nowhere.
Effective supplier days start with segmentation. Consider three key areas:
Strategic importance — which suppliers are truly critical to your business continuity, innovation, or market positioning? They deserve a different kind of conversation than an administrative supplier.
Level of collaboration — how often do you work together, how deep is the integration, and is there room for co-creation? Suppliers you work with on a daily basis require a different approach than partners with whom you have annual contracts.
Volume and duration — major contract partners and long-standing relationships deserve recognition. But volume alone says little about strategic relevance.
Based on this segmentation, you decide who to invite, whether to combine plenary sessions with separate breakout sessions for each segment, and what information to share—and what not to share—with each group. Sometimes a supplier day features two tracks: a strategic session for key partners and a broader informational session for everyone else.
Live Impact helps you set up the segmentation matrix and translate it into a program structure that suits each group. Read more in the article " Organizing a Supplier Day."