In a business environment characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity — ranging from hurricane-force financial winds to persistent voids of information — supplier readiness is key to sustaining success.
During a recent keynote and fireside chat hosted by Burns & McDonnell, Dr. Berkley Baker, founder and CEO of CIMI Solutions, joined Chief Procurement Officer Kelly Jeffcote to explore how alignment across capabilities, incentives and behaviors enables suppliers to perform safely, deliver value and build lasting partnerships.
At the center of Baker’s message was a simple but often overlooked truth: Innovation alone is not enough.
“The question isn’t, really, should we innovate or not? Innovation is already happening,” said Baker, who has served as a startup catalyst for more than 80 initiatives through the Advanced Technology Development Center at Georgia Tech and the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs. “The question is really around: Am I innovating in a way — is there readiness there — so that we can scale, so that it can stick?”
For strategic partners supporting complex projects, the distinction is critical. Baker emphasized that readiness sets the foundation for innovation to be translated into safe, repeatable and sustainable outcomes.
Without proper preparation, he said, even the most promising ideas and approaches can introduce risk rather than reduce it.
“Innovation plus readiness is where we see progress,” Baker said.
To help organizations make readiness a reality, Baker introduced the CFOSS framework — a five-part model that evaluates alignment across five dimensions: core, financial, operational, strategic and social. These pillars, he explained, represent the full spectrum of value that must be aligned between suppliers and their partners.
Too often, misalignment occurs when suppliers emphasize only one dimension — typically involving cost or efficiency — while missing what matters most to the customer.
“There’s a mismatch,” Baker said. “I don’t want to have these conversations where I’m talking to a core customer about a strategic value proposition. I want to align it.”
This multidimensional view of readiness is especially relevant as projects become increasingly fast-paced and interconnected.
“Sometimes we get busy going through the day, just trying to hit the schedule milestone,” said Jeffcote, whose team works with a large supply base working with Burns & McDonnell. “We forget to pause and make sure that in any partnership, for it to be advantageous to both sides, we’ve got to understand the goals of each side.”
That pause, she explained, is not a delay — it is an investment in success. Early misalignment is one of the fastest ways to derail adoption, strain relationships and compromise outcomes.
Beyond alignment, Baker said, is sequencing: engaging the right parties in the right order. His research has found that successful adoption often begins with core customers who deeply understand the problem, followed by broader participants who shape how solutions scale. Skipping this progression, he warns, can lead to costly missteps and stalled innovation.
For suppliers, this insight translates into a practical takeaway: Readiness is not just about capability but also about timing, prioritization and understanding where to focus first.
Also key: True differentiation among suppliers often shows up not in ideal conditions, but in moments of disruption.
“It’s how you respond when things don’t go as planned,” Jeffcote said. “Anybody can respond to an RFP. Anybody can pull together a price. Anybody can tell you what they can do. But we’re in a dynamic supply chain environment right now, and more things don’t go as planned than do. And so, how are we going to work together when it gets hard?”
That mindset — treating challenges as opportunities to strengthen partnership — is what elevates suppliers from transactional vendors to strategic collaborators. It also reinforces the role of transparency, another foundational element of alignment.
“I like to say radical transparency,” Jeffcote said. “Tell me the good. Tell me the bad. I can deal with all of it. But if you don’t tell me, that’s where we get into trouble.”
In an industry where safety and reliability are nonnegotiable, such openness enables teams to anticipate risks, adapt quickly and maintain performance even in uncertain conditions. Readiness serves as a bridge between innovation and impact.
And when suppliers align across the CFOSS dimensions — pairing that alignment with clear communication and intentional sequencing — they position themselves to meet and exceed expectations.
It’s a clear path forward, Jeffcote said: “If we’re not innovating — if we’re not committed to change and advancing — then we’re stagnating, and that’s not where any of us want to be.”
