Eden Strategy Institute at Singapore Business Federation

The Singapore Business Federation, the country’s apex business chamber that champions the interests of the Singapore business community in trade, investment and industrial relations, represents 21,000 companies, as well as key local and foreign business chambers.

This year, Eden Strategy Institute was invited to speak at its seminar on Managing Distributors. Mr. Calvin Chu Yee Ming, Partner at Eden, opened the event with a talk on ‘Strategic Alignment in Distributor Partnerships’. His was followed by Mr. Jonathan Yuen, Partner at Harry Elias Partnership, who discussed ‘Legal Issues in the Appointment of Distributors’. Finally, Mr. Henry Goh, Director of Distributor Management Strategy & Commercialization for Asia at Covidien, presented on ‘Identifying Solutions to Problems in Managing Distributors’.

“The Singapore Business Federation has done well to invite presenters using business, legal, and commercial perspectives to offer a holistic experience for the many participants,” says Mr. Chu.

“I am delighted to be invited back to speak again this year, and am impressed with the range of questions and response from the companies here,” he said.

Mr. Chu’s session used case studies of actual client experiences to show how some companies are taking a strategic – rather than opportunistic or adversarial – perspective to understand the market evolution, customer needs, distributor types, basis of channel competition, negotiation dynamics, and resulting selection and performance metrics. These resulted in distributors with superior management, commercial, operational, and financial fit with the principals, which helped to outperform the market.

He went on to show how the budgeting process does not need to be a tedious and stressful exercise. Taking an outside-in approach, it can be an invaluable dialogue for principals and distributors to agree on new market opportunities to jointly exploit, priority areas for continuous service improvement and footprint expansion, and establish joint commitments to create shared value.

Finally, Mr. Chu shared on recent methodologies to uncover distributor insight, ranging from using Big Data and analytics, to neuromarketing and ethnography to identify new opportunities in demand forecasting, inventory management, and service development.