I have a confession to make. I’m a planner. The sort of Type A personality that worries about everything going wrong and tries to put in a contingency plan.
On my first trip to China last month I was aware that I did not speak or read Mandarin and as such I thought it was wise to book a meet and greet from the platform to take us out of the station. I thought I’d planned this part perfectly. Train from Shanghai to Beijing, sorted.
Meet and greet at the station, booked.
We stepped off the train into what can only be described as… an airport pretending to be a train station. There were people everywhere, lots of noise, for me it was overstimulation central.
I could not see anyone who was obviously meet and greet. And then, out of nowhere, this older Chinese man appears with a luggage trolley and starts shouting at me in mandarin, gesturing for me to follow, and suddenly we’re moving at speed through the station.
I am just slightly taller than Danny Devito, but I can tell you this man was not. The speed he travelled at was immense, I was having to run to keep up. He’s shouting in Mandarin at the crowds, refused to wait for the lift, and strapped the luggage trolley and my two heavy cases on his back and carried them down the stairs. Even with this load I’m running to keep up with him!
We’re weaving through crowds, down corridors, across what felt like entire terminals. I’m half wondering if we’ve just been kidnapped, half too committed to stop. And then after what feels like a lifetime going through a maze we get to the taxi rank.
He doesn’t leave, he waits for us to order a taxi, shows us where to go to wait for it, and then hands his phone over with a QR code for payment. It was £10 which I happily paid. He then disappeared. To this day, I have no idea who he was.
But I do know this, that moment could have been stressful, confusing, and honestly a bit overwhelming.
Instead, it was handled, not how I expected it to be done, but I would never have found that taxi rank on my own.
And it made me think about something we see all the time in procurement. We often focus on cost, but sometimes if we spend a little more we get the value of convenience, ease time-savings and perhaps over the long term cost savings.
- It’s having someone step in when things don’t go to plan.
- It’s not having to think, fix, chase or stress.
- It’s knowing you’ll be looked after, even when the situation isn’t perfect.
That doesn’t always come at the lowest price.
***From 1st September, our prices will be increasing***
We have not increased our prices for three years and we are the lowest cost Centre of Excellence in the UK.
We may not be the cheapest option, but we, like my whirling dervish Chinese friend, will help you get it right the first time with much more ease and save you precious time. If I’m honest, I’d pay for that man again in a heartbeat and I know a large number of our past students say the same about us.
If you sign up before September to join us, or to move on to the next level we will honour our current prices.