5. How can you maintain your independence and control your risks?

The partnership approach obviously raises the question of the risks involved in sharing strategic information with suppliers. The main risks are :

• leakage of information to other customers of suppliers, who are often competitors;

• dependence on a supplier, making subsequent separation difficult;

• isolation of suppliers of future breakthrough innovations;

• the difficulty of implementing classic purchasing optimization levers such as competitive bidding, negotiation, use of "low-cost" suppliers, etc. ;

• bad faith on the part of suppliers who don't really believe in transparency.

Different levels of protection must therefore be put in place to mitigate these risks: