The Connected Corporation

The relationship between a company and its suppliers frequently consists of arms-length haggling over the price of a part or service. Today, customers and suppliers may actually share data, design work and even research and development with a resulting increase in each firm's competitiveness. This book shows how these new customer-supplier alliances - which "The Wall Street Journal" describes as a "revolution" - enable companies to lower costs, raise quality, shrink cycle times, and boost value for customers without added expense. Using interviews with employees, ranging from top executives to purchasing and sales people, this work takes the reader inside the leading-edge companies as it demonstrates, step by step, how customer-supplier alliances can greatly increase any firm's competitiveness, market share and financial strength, regardless of its size or industry.