Page 17 - Issue 1 2023

SUPPLY CHAIN

How to strengthen the supply chain

Relationships are key to building enduring supply chains and driving value, explains David Steyn,
Customer Engagement Business Manager at Decision Inc.

he supply chain has changed. Digital transformation has shifted the ways in which
companies and individuals engage along the supply chain across information
Tshared, access to systems, and integrated experiences. As a recent Harvard
Business Review article points out, ‘companies need to change the way they forge and
manage relationships with other entities in the supply chain to facilitate new types of
alliances and agreements.’ It is relationships that will add value to the chain, that will
provide stability in uncertainty, and that will ensure organisations have the tools they
need to retain customers and build sustainable businesses.
In the past, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise relationship
management (ERM), and supplier relationship management (SRM) have not had equal
weighting. CRM has, by market demand and default, seen the most investment, with
SRM and ERM taking what’s left of the share. Now, due to lessons learned during the
pandemic and a drive towards a more balanced approach to ecosystems and the value
chain, the three need to be more evenly balanced to ensure companies can compete
more effectively on every front.

Reassessing supplier management David Steyn
While ERM – providing better support for employees and building environments that
curate and uplift talent – has seen an obvious change thanks to the Great Resignation
and the skills gap, SRM is equally important. It has become critical for companies to informed decisions. And that will make
invest in how they approach supply chain management and to reassess how they it far less arduous for suppliers – they
engage with suppliers to minimise disruptions and improve overall service delivery. also lack visibility into the procurement
The era of relationships has begun, and in the supply chain, this means treating process and often this tarnishes the
suppliers like partners in the business, not as a source of tension or a complicated relationship and the experience on both
business process. This means addressing legacy challenges within the supply chain and sides. They feel that they’ve submitted
making supplier management part of the overall business strategy. a mountain of paperwork into a black
hole and that’s not a great way to start a
Challenges of the supplier relationship long-term relationship.
One of the most common challenges faced by suppliers and organisations alike, is Moving forward, companies need
onboarding processes. Larger companies tend to put suppliers through a very tedious to find a balance between the demands
and complex onboarding process – to respond to a tender a supplier must be on a of procurement and building robust
database, getting onto the database can take months, and the paperwork is long, supplier relationships. This means
tedious and complicated. This can alienate great suppliers by rewarding only the smoothing over ineffective processes
tenacious and can cause friction in the relationship before it’s even started. For the like the onboarding process, investing in
business, the onboarding process is designed this way to eliminate risk but often digital platforms that provide visibility
deteriorates into bottlenecks, credential chasing and manual vetting. on both sides, and which make suppliers
Ironically, it’s these manual processes that will expose the organisation to feel less like support staff and more like
unnecessary risk. People make the calls, do the paperwork and log the entries, often service providers and partners. If the
circumventing processes in response to urgency, and a supplier can slip past those very business can centralise and digitise its
controls put in place to minimise risk. Then there is the added challenge of limited supplier management function, then it
supplier visibility across different silos and piles of paperwork. How can the organisation can redefine how relationships are built
fully realise the potential of an exceptional supplier if their data and feedback are not in and create a more robust and engaged
a digitised system that offers immediate visibility into performance? This has a knock-on value chain. This will not only benefit
effect on both the supplier and organisation. the business in terms of growth and
stability but will embed trust and shared
The solution is digital platforms expectations throughout the supply
Organisations need data. Data that can provide them with visibility into supplier chain.
performance, and that can ensure the company always engages with the right suppliers.
They also need digital solutions. It is digital solutions that ensures the onboarding Find out more about our Supplier
process isn’t tedious and time-consuming and that all the relevant information is Management Solution to get started on
captured accurately within a central space that allows for procurement to make your digital journey today.

EngineerIT | Issue 1 2023 | 17