Ying McGuire is senior manager of global supplier diversity for Dell, Inc (Round Rock, TX), the wide-ranging company offering computers from servers to PCs and all the peripherals. McGuire has been with Dell for eight years, but took her present job only about a year ago.
The company’s supplier diversity program, McGuire notes, helps to build supply-chain capabilities and develop business as well. Diverse suppliers, she believes, “can be advocates for us in their marketplace, and through partners like NMSDC and WBENC they can help us build loyalty and recognition in the market.
“We believe our ability to grow depends on our investment in the diverse community, and that includes diverse entrepreneurs,” she states.
Another reason to work with diverse suppliers is to be sure that Dell meets its customers’ requirements in that regard. The federal space, education, healthcare and many, many corporate customers have made diversity a contract requirement with their second-tier suppliers, and now, “They’re raising the bar on these requirements. That’s why we need to continue to grow our diversity business: to meet and exceed customers’ requirements and evolving needs.”
Three strategic elements
Summing it up, McGuire has structured a supplier diversity program with three strategic elements: spend growth with and development of diverse suppliers; business development; and meeting and exceeding customer requirements.
McGuire’s group reports to the procurement organization and commodity manager, “and we work broadly within the company, with groups like global diversity and the sales team. We also get support from many executives across the company.”
Ying McGuire: ex-entrepreneur
Although McGuire is relatively new to the job, “I’m not new to this concept,” she says. “I was a small business entrepreneur as an Asian minority and a woman, so I have a good understanding of what everybody is going through.”
In her pre-Dell days she helped put together a trading company based in China and focused on the textile business. She also helped link small Asian businesses and corporate entities as a community leader, working with the Texas Asian chamber of commerce.
Seeking suppliers
Dell, McGuire notes, has “many outreach venues to look for diverse suppliers with great innovative ideas.” The company maintains online registration for potential suppliers, and it works through advocacy groups like NMSDC, regional councils and WBENC, attending dozens of events each year to “find potential suppliers, understand their capabilities and connect them with our purchasing managers.”
In January 2007 Dell launched its own annual supplier diversity summit. “We invited some of our most promising customers and prime suppliers and asked each of them to bring in their own top three diverse suppliers.”
Later in the year McGuire’s group launched its “direct talk” forum. “Meeting diverse suppliers at so many events, I always hear that they need more ‘face time’ with our decision- makers. So we set up a forum held periodically on Dell’s campus to let qualified potential suppliers learn about actual opportunities on the horizon, and have direct dialog with Dell commodity managers.”
The first such forum was held last July. It featured IT professional services, one of Dell’s fastest- growing needs, and about a dozen likely M/WBEs were invited. “We’re going to repeat this format with fast-moving opportunities in other areas,” McGuire adds.
Focus on mentoring
Mentoring suppliers and helping them build their capabilities are focus areas for Dell. “We invest a great deal in diverse mentoring, both formal and informal,” McGuire says. Dell is formally mentoring four diverse suppliers, and helping many others to get corporate-ready.
The company also has its quarterly business review with its current suppliers, giving them candid feedback on all aspects of its business.
Formal mentoring programs include the “quarterback training camp” in collaboration with the Central and South Texas Minority Business Council. As part of this effort McGuire is chairing the training for CS suppliers.
Dell also participates in NMSDC mentoring programs for potential and existing suppliers. As part of one such program, Dell is formally coaching three MBEs who’ve had good success in the U.S., showing them how to compete in the international market.
“We even helped sponsor an NMSDC mission trip to China last June, and I was one of the delegates,” McGuire confides.
AG Consulting
Andres “Andy” Garcia is CEO of AG Consulting (San Antonio, TX). He’s active in the NMSDC and chair of its regional minority business enterprise input committee. He’s also one of McGuire’s mentees, and in the process of signing on to be a Dell supplier.
AG Consulting, Garcia explains, started up in 2002. “I was a casualty of the dot-com era. The IT consulting company I was working for was having financial difficulties and could not pay me the money it owed me, so they decided they didn’t need my services anymore. But I had a lot of clients who really liked me, and they inspired me to make my move and start an IT firm, even though it was a time when many IT firms were failing.”
Garcia has more than twenty-five years experience in IT. He studied CS and programming at the University of Texas-San Antonio, but left school to go to work.
“I’m a ‘border baby’ from along the Texas-Mexico border,” Garcia explains. “My family was very poor.
“I realized at a young age that I wasn’t going anywhere unless I made my own way, so with my motorcycle, my backpack and $50 in my pocket I left my hometown of Laredo, TX and embarked on a mission to make something of myself. Today I own a multi-million dollar company. It’s built on my belief in myself, and, even more important, the wonderful relationships I’ve made along the way.
“Of course I wish I had done more with my education,” he says. “But the experience of life, family and business ups and downs…there’s nothing like it.”
Star Wars stuff
Garcia was working hard to put himself through college in Dallas when he heard that Texas Instruments (TI) was hiring minorities for IT. “I applied,” he says, “and they offered me a job. It was what they called ‘behind the wall,’ in the advanced weapons systems area.”
Before he applied to TI Garcia had been hoping to get into banking and finance. “But here I am, this naďve boy from the border, and all of a sudden I’m going into advanced weapons systems where they’re making laser-guided bombs, high-speed antiradar missiles and other Star Wars stuff.
“You can imagine that banking just left my mind and all I could think about was technology! So they gave me the training and hands-on experience and that was how my career got going.”
The years passed productively. Garcia has worked in all aspects of hardware and software: a varied background. “That helps me understand,” he says. “When we meet with clients I can relate to both sides of the table, since my experience runs from extremely technical to business applications. That helps us quite a lot.”
“We’re always there”
Now it was 2002, the firm he’d worked at for years was shutting down, “and basically I had a lot of clients that I had dealt with along the way.
“I believe very strongly in relationships,” Garcia affirms. “It’s all about relationships, although of course you always want to have the best pricing and value too. But basically it’s about being a trusted advisor who will help them and be there for them.
“I’ve been known to tear up a client’s invoice if we have not delivered what we were asked to do, so sometimes we make money on a project and sometimes we don’t. But our dedication to customer service gets us a very loyal client.”
Outpouring of support
When his clients, some of twenty years standing, learned that Garcia was no longer employed, “A lot of them called me and said, ‘Well, Andy, we want to continue to work with you.’
“Personally I was broke,” Garcia recalls. “I had a family, a mortgage. I was in no position to start a company, rent space and hire people on. But my clients called and offered me contracts. I will never forget one special friend who called me into her office. She knew I was in a difficult position, so she reached into her desk and gave me a startup check for $20,000.
“I started crying like a baby. I was not expecting that outpouring of support from my clients.
On March 19, 2002 Garcia was formally terminated. By March 28 he had his company ready and he opened the doors on April 1. “It’s just sort of taken off from there,” Garcia says.
AG’s first clients were Valero Energy; Eye Care Centers of America; Luby’s, a restaurant chain; and a beer importer called the Gambrinus Co. “That small group of clients really established me to get me going,” Garcia recalls fondly.
Evolving relationship
“My relationship with Dell is still evolving,” Garcia explains. “When you’re a small company it’s very difficult to provide services to a multi-billion organization like Dell. But we already had Toyota as an account, and when you have a client like Toyota it adds credibility to what you’re offering to do.”
Garcia had other credibility, too. He’s chair of the minority business enterprise input committee for his local NMSDC affiliate, where Dell is also on the board, and a committee chair for NMSDC’s national minority enterprise input election committee.
So eventually he did get the opportunity to meet with top Dell purchasing people. “We talked about what we do in the MS Exchange services area, which was the work that Dell was looking for. And now we’re here working on bids at Dell, and getting ready to enter a master relationship agreement with them.
“Through our affiliation with the NMSDC and with helpful clients like Dell we have expanded our horizons,” Garcia concludes. “We have learned how to be a bigger company.”
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