EMC pilots new collaborative buyer process to keep you busy, consolidate schedules and reduce cost

The EMC Buyer team is refining how we assign and schedule some accounts—taking a flexible, collaborative approach that ultimately keeps labor partners busy by consolidating schedules and driving down costs.

Traditionally, we’ve taken a segmented approach to assigning labor. Each EMC buyer was assigned their customer accounts and we would independently work to develop a schedule and assign labor as direction came from project managers. Sounds simple, but we have our problems.

First, if the customer locations are in the same area, the buyers essentially compete against each other, requesting the same labor partner at the same time for different customer projects.

Second, it can mean shorter lead times, sometimes three weeks or less, leaving labor partners scrambling to staff projects.

Lastly, even when we put the schedules together, it doesn’t consider the locations of each job, potentially meaning traveling greater distances, zig-zagging across a territory versus taking a logical path. It also doesn’t address equipment rental needs. These factors drive up costs for both labor partners and EMC.

A new approach

Working with accounts that have customer approvals offering some flexibility with installation dates, we approached a group of key labor partners with a new plan.

Working ahead with members of our presales and project management team, we looked for ways to engage this group of labor partners earlier in the planning process.

We met at least once every other week to review our consolidated list of upcoming projects. Then we got our Buyer team together to think of a more efficient way to award labor for some of these accounts. This involved looking at where schedules and geographies aligned across the customer project list and determining where we had some flexibility.

Instead of EMC issuing competing requests to labor partners, the new process engaged them earlier—in some cases 5-6 months in advance, so they could assemble their crews and know where they were going to be while serving multiple customers.

It’s our goal to use this as a more widespread process going forward. This approach gives labor partners advance warning, so crews are kept busy in an efficient, effective manner. The labor partners involved like having the clearer vision of what their business will look like in the months ahead and being more in control of staffing and expenses.

How labor partners can help

As we determine how to make this a core EMC process, there are things labor partners can do to participate:

Keep in touch with your EMC buyers. While you should keep your profile up-to-date, also give us a call or email and let us know what your capacity is for the year and what areas you can cover. Also let us know the areas where you can pull permits or travel to.

Bid competitively. We would rather give you too much information and get a really good quote than have to return to the bargaining table midway through a project because you underbid the job. We realize we are all here to earn money; we just want you to be thoughtful and competitive. If you need any additional info to bid the job accurately, please reach out to the buyer on that account.

Do your very best. We look at the scorecards for the work you do on the jobs EMC awards you. That feedback really does drive future opportunities. We want to align you with the right scope and the right markets.

Troubleshoot when problems arise. Should you run into unexpected problems at a job, let EMC know early so we can send one of our Quality team engineers to help as needed.

Tell us what we can do to improve. There are variables that will continue to emerge and impact how we work together. EMC is committed to evolving our processes to meet the changing needs of our shared customers. We appreciate hearing your ideas for addressing problems and leveraging opportunities.

The year is shaping up to be busy, and we look forward to working with you in 2023!

Nate De la O-Peterson is Manager of Labor and Sourcing. In this role he manages EMC’s labor buyers.