The International Meetings, Events and Communications division of Grass Roots, has concluded its hotel and venue global supplier Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

Grass Roots works with clients across a broad spectrum of industry sectors, delivering both one-off and multi-year contracted work for a range of needs and budgets. This requires Grass Roots to work with a diverse range of suppliers spanning the globe and has enabled it to establish high service level expectation benchmarks for its supply chain.

The process canvassed opinion from clients and personnel across the Grass Roots global network, which helped to formulate the expectations sought from the supply chain. More than 60 global hotel groups, including key hotel representation companies were selected to participate in the RFP, which spanned 6 months.

Having established more than 10 service level expectations, Grass Roots has now ‘approved' suppliers based upon meeting these expectations. In the instances where suppliers ‘exceeded expectations' they were awarded ‘preferred' status as Grass Roots' focus is not only upon delivering excellence itself, but also recognising and supporting excellence demonstrated by its key partners. Explaining the concept, Alan Newton, Group Supplier Relations Manager, advises, "The process enables suppliers to recognise the high standards we set ourselves at Grass Roots and ensures the selection of like-minded suppliers who will in turn ensure there is consistent service delivery to our clients, in line with their high expectations".

The key ‘expectation' criteria for measuring the suppliers included:

• fair pricing
• dedicated account management
• issue resolution
• quality of product
• delivery excellence
• performance improvement
• business continuity
• health & safety
• corporate responsibility
• financial stability

The RFP process started with global hotel and venue chains but in time will span the various meeting and events supply chain categories within Grass Roots and mirrors client's own procurement techniques. Newton concludes: "This provides our clients with the confidence that they are partnering with an agency who not only provides expertise & delivery excellence, but one that is serious about understanding key client issues & concerns, addressing them in a pro-active manner and at the same time challenging the supply chain to get serious about supporting the issues."