Today was I was at the East Midlands Conference Centre on the Nottingham University Campus. Another good event with some great Minority businesses and Corporate buyers from PepsiCo, HP and Capital One.
Brian Tippens who heads HP’s global diversity programme had come over from the US and was very enthusiastic and obviously very committed. The US just gets this, that having a diverse supplier base makes business sense. There’s two reasons to doing it which is, it is the right thing to do and because you never know where innovation is going to come from.
There were lots of good networking opportunities with the other businesses and I met some great people doing great things.
It was interesting talking to Brian because he offered to put me in touch with his counterpart at Microsoft, Fernando Hernandez who is Microsoft’s Director of Supplier Diversity. One of the little known facts is that Microsoft is one of leaders in the area of Supplier Diversity.
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June 16th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Yesterday’s event was one of the biggest and most successful so far. MSDUK, during the last 10months, have organised six Meet the Buyer event attracting more than 200 ethnic minority businesses and over 70 corporate buyers. Nearly £10m worth of business opportunities were offered during these six events.
These figures speaks about the commitment to supplier diversity from MSDUK’s corporate members. Their commitment is to reach out to a hugely talented pool of suppliers who can not only add value to their supply chain, but also provide innovative and cost-effective business solutions.
At today’s event, it was interesting to listen to Michelle Palmer, MD of Canary Wharf & City. She spoke about her successes in winning business from Enterprise Rent-A-Car and JPMorgan, two of our members.
June 16th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Mayank, these figures speak for themselves! You’ve done a great job developing MSDUK and I know what a modest person you are. I think without your passion and commitment this would never have happened. You’ve shown great skill in bringing these Corporate companies to the table and keeping them there!