While you may believe that you have a good working relationship with your suppliers, there’s often substantially more that can be done. By giving your suppliers advance notice of when new deliveries may be needed, in what quantity and by what deadline, relationships are improved as suppliers are not caught out by last-minute requests and run the risk of failing to fulfil, and your productivity can grow as your supply chain moves closer to just-in-time.
By integrating an online portal with your ERP and granting your suppliers secure access to their own portions of it, you can flag your imminent supply chain needs, pre-empt time-consuming invoice enquiries and actually drive down supplier costs.
For example, you post on the portal that you need a delivery of your key ingredient in 48 hours. Your authorised suppliers then log on and submit their quotes and timeframes blind to what other suppliers are quoting, giving you the opportunity to choose the cheapest or most efficient deal. Should you produce goods with multiple ingredients, this also allows you the most efficient way of managing the appropriate suppliers, which may number into the hundreds.
The portal, through its secure nature, also allows your suppliers to be shown where their invoices are in the payment process, negating the need for them to call in and query individual fees, and can also include a two-way instant messaging ability, avoiding the time-lag associated with email-based communications.
Food and beverage companies can only be as good their own supply chains and few can afford to take shortcuts in their supply management. By implementing a method for two-way communication with your suppliers, you can create efficiencies within your own operations that will improve your abilities to fulfil your own orders.
Andrew Brown is MD of the process manufacturing systems division of Solarsoft.
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