For me, the essence of partnership is the sharing of responsibility for resolving problems. The customer/supplier relationship places this burden too heavily on the supplier. A co-operative customer will work around this, but the terms of engagement rely more on goodwill than on shared knowledge and resource.

We find a good example of how partnership has worked for Next if we look at our long standing relationship with Gresham, the UK-based retail ticketing organisation. Over the last seventeen years or so we've addressed a number of far-reaching initiatives. Each one has brought benefits, but at every stage we uncovered hurdles that had to be negotiated. I'm convinced that a customer/supplier relationship could never have achieved what the partnership has produced.

When we first spoke to Gresham, in 1987, we were printing our own primary tickets using the enormous laser printers at Grattans. At the time we were out-sourcing secondary ticketing from a variety of suppliers. Our first purchases from Gresham were for blank computer stationery, a process involving a level of waste that today would be viewed with distress by environmentalists! We discussed this wastage with Gresham, also asking them to look at how we could print on heavier card.

Cutting down on secondary ticketing

The solution was a bureau printing service. For the first time we began out-sourcing our primary ticketing. One early benefit of this was the idea of integrating much of our primary and secondary ticketing. We saved money and trees, and gained the ability to print targeted marketing messages on our primary tickets. I genuinely can't say now whether this economic brainwave came from Gresham or Next; probably it was a combined effort. The partnership spirit was born.

About this time, Next was highly active in the home products area. Our new approach to ticketing meant that we could print pictures of lamps, soft furnishings and so on on our primary tickets.

By the late 80s, Next's growth had become meteoric. Gresham were shipping hundreds of thousands of tickets to our suppliers every day - often to the same factory. Delivery costs were exceeding the cost of ticket production by a considerable factor. We met with the guys from Gresham and developed an essentially simple system for prioritising orders. The rule was simple: if it's urgent, ship it; if it isn't, consolidate with other orders. A simple solution, but one that could so easily have been missed.

Supplier Direct Billing

The common practice in the fashion industry at the time was for the retailer to pay for the tickets. For obvious reasons, we were keen to move this cost out of overhead and into the supply chain. Gresham complied and began invoicing our suppliers directly. A desirable outcome, but not without its associated problems (retailers who don't yet direct bill tickets, take note!). A situation in which the person paying the invoice has no control over the ordering process is fraught with difficulties. Gresham's bad debt level rose to unsupportable levels as a result of errors in the ordering system. Clearly we had to find a way of placing order and delivery control in the hands of the supplier.

Gresham's on-line order management system is now well known and established in the industry, but when they first proposed it to us, I confess to a degree of scepticism. The concept of putting suppliers in control of ticketing seemed full of dangers to a company that places considerable stress on its brand value. Between us we developed a trail of control and accountability that gave us visibility of the process at every level. The response to the new regime was certainly enthusiastic. For the first time our suppliers were in control of their own destiny. They were able to schedule their ticketing to genuine just-in-time deliveries. Whereas Next would raise the ticket order at the same time as raising the garment order, potentially impacting suppliers' cash flow by delivering tickets weeks or even months too early, the manufacturer could time deliveries and invoicing to his exact production schedules. At the same time, order inaccuracies dropped effectively to zero.

The developments in the system since then have given us enhancements such as analysis of buying and an ideal method of monitoring retrospective discounts.

Back room idea: front of shop innovation

While this was going on we continued to innovate in the outlets themselves. Our shoe box label provides an interesting example. Like most shoe retailers, we display the right hand shoe in front of store, and hold boxes in the storeroom. The show would usually carry a three character code, which was repeated in large letters on the end of the box. Locating the shoes to match those on display was taking too long and producing too many errors. Gresham provided us with a label that featured a picture of the shoe inside the box, so streamlining the stock search function in the store.

Our buying team saw how we were varying our labels for stock room use and requested something similar for front-of-store. More discussions, and Gresham came up with tickets that bore a colour picture of the garment to which they were attached. At the time this was leading-edge ticketing! With digital print firmly in place, we're now looking into taking this further, so that tickets even show the correct colour garment, along with associated items that tone with it.

Automating the distribution centre

Our fully automated distribution centre at South Elmsall brought a new set of challenges. We designed the facility to take the place of more than a dozen regional centres. Items were to be handled and sorted completely automatically, with the absolute minimum of human intervention. We involved Gresham from a very early stage in order to gain their input, and it became clear that we needed to be able to barcode cartons as well as individual items.

High speed automated handling makes it necessary for us to be able to read barcodes with 100% accuracy. This isn't a big problem for hanger garments, but the knocks and abrasions suffered by cartons strip the toner from labels in a depressingly short time. Basically, if they don't rub off, they fall off. We set Gresham to researching adhesion and barcode protection techniques. The over-laminating process that they developed for us is still in daily use today. Using a single barcode end to end we're achieving 100% readability and total distribution control.

So what does this show us? It demonstrates how a successful partnership can continue to grow over the years, and how it opens up new techniques and opportunities for the participants. Next works in partnership with its manufacturers, and the initiatives that have been put in place have been welcomed by companies whose fortunes are closely tied with our own. Gresham visit our manufacturers in Europe and Hong Kong, and the feedback with which they provide us promotes new ideas and innovations.

Partnership was the buzzword of the nineties. But as a principle of business, and a means of providing a channel for shared responsibility to promote creativity, its benefits are timeless.