Ensuring Business Continuity with a Streamlined Supply Chain
Disruption within the supply chain has caused unpredictability in the availability of materials and this, coupled with new ways of working, has created an unprecedented situation for many organisations. These dynamics mean that being tightly integrated with your supply chain has never been so important. While many suppliers have worked rigorously to meet growing demands, businesses are having to prioritise their business activities with supplier management being a key focus.
Efficient supply chains are essential to meeting the challenging needs of a business, it’s customers and suppliers – something that becomes much easier with the right digital tools. Here are nine ways you can boost the efficiency of your supply chain to ensure business continuity, meet growing demands and mitigate the impact of similar events in the future.
1. Simplify communications for stronger collaborations
Simple communications remove communication barriers between you and your suppliers and improve decision-making so your business and your suppliers can work together more efficiently to meet the demands of customers, forecasts, promotions, seasonal spikes and prevent the build-up of unnecessary inventory. Good relationships with supply chain partners rely on sharing valuable information in real time so you can get the right product to the right customer at the right time and adjust demand as needed.
2. Improve data quality for well-informed decisions
Many organisations find it challenging to gain comprehensive and accurate data in real time from multiple sources, usually because of the misalignment between their systems, teams and suppliers. The impact of poor-quality data cannot be underestimated, it can cause a brand to lose its reputation, incur hefty fees and huge avoidable costs. Improved data quality from suppliers gives you a real competitive advantage: it minimises confusion, helps streamline communication, ensures well-informed decisions and helps improve:
- Planning and scheduling
- Demand planning
- Order optimisation
- Responsiveness in real time
- Inventory management
3. Streamline purchase order management with a single source of truth
Purchase order processing may not seem like the most exciting thing. But doing it well can save you a lot of time, effort and money. A single source of truth allows partners and suppliers to make accurate decisions based on the same information. The centralised location minimises duplication, reduces workloads, increases efficiency, reduces costs and helps standardise processes. It allows for a more comprehensive inventory, helps with volume purchasing and volume delivery to cut costs, resulting in more competitive prices. It allows a centralised contact for suppliers and keeps records and inventory in one central location to reduce data silos. When critical supply chain disruptions hit, it allows you to understand the impact the disruption is going to have and enable you and your suppliers to develop alternative routes.
4. Focus on KPIs to assess and improve supplier performance
As far as your customers are concerned, your suppliers are your business. I know that everything can’t be under your direct control, but your organisation will be accountable to its customers for problems caused by a supplier. Procurement risk factors are a widespread problem, with supplier dependency and quality control being the main concerns. Problems stemming from suppliers can have an adverse effect on a brand’s reputation and ROI. However, supplier KPIs do help, especially when they focus on quality, ethics, prices, continuity, savings, compliance, risk and delivery.
5. Automate supplier on-boarding to drive efficiency and compliance
Automated supplier on-boarding reduces on-boarding times, on-boarding effort, overheads, workloads and increases flexibility. It allows staff to collect important supplier information from multiple sources and easily update information to ensure compliance and minimise risks.
6. Improve user experiences to reduce training needs and increase employee value
Increased standardisation means less duplication of staff efforts, resulting in a reduction in workloads and training needs. Centralised and streamlined purchase order management reduces the time and effort spent on tasks, leaving users to focus on more valuable tasks. Better user experiences allow users to dedicate focus to a specific area to specialise and further increase their value to the business.
7. Use one platform to reduce administrative costs
A supplier portal brings together purchase order management, quotation requests, demand forecasting, quality notifications and supplier KPI visibility. By using just one platform, you can simplify interactions between suppliers and purchasing teams to significantly reduce the time and effort spent on admin tasks. A single platform helps improve data quality, data accuracy, build more efficient processes and communications, resulting in stronger collaborations with suppliers. Managing supply chain data in one portal can also make it easier to manage transactions from many touch-points.
8. Watch supply chain costs to increase your ROI
The cost of meeting demands, and forecasts is where the supply chain really matters for a business to thrive. Streamlined procurement can save money, but unnecessary inventory can stifle cash flow. So do assess the costs of serving your customers and where costs can be reduced depending on which customers yield the least profit. This can also apply to your products or services. Ask: which products or services cost the most time, effort and money without yielding a good ROI? Increasing ROI can just be a matter of reducing or eradicating costs based around certain areas of the business, for example:
- Demands and forecasts
- Procurement
- Storage and inventory
- Product development
- Manufacturing
- Transportation
9. Manage your inventory effectively
Anything you need to store, or transport relies on an inventory, so most supply chains will rely on their inventory. Working capital and cash flow can be directly affected depending on how well you manage your inventory. Good inventory management can help you:
- Better forecast to meet customer demands
- Reduce inventory holding costs, especially costs incurred from unnecessary items
- Reduce delivery times from suppliers
- Speed up delivery to customers
Where to from here?
Now is the time to integrate your supply chain and push responsibility back on to suppliers. As geopolitical circumstances continue to put pressure on supply chains, we are all looking at new ways of working and how to become more agile and efficient.
To bring this simplicity and efficiency to your supply chain, the NTT DATA Business Solutions solution it.mx direct spend portalADD allows you to monitor your supply chain, collaborate between you and your suppliers and improve the efficiency of your resources. You can discover more here.