Finding suppliers that check all of the boxes on paper is imperative, but that's only the first step in establishing strategic supplier relationships. These are the types of partnerships that will align with your company's supplier improvement strategies. However, they only develop if you take the time to make sure they function for all parties involved.
This is why managing supplier relationships is a gradual process of nuanced relationship development and maintenance.
At the recent Spring 2017 Prime Advantage Conference, Lisa Reisman of MetalMiner gave a Metals Outlook presentation on how procurement should approach the metals market and all of its fluidity. Reisman contends that most forecasters are notoriously inaccurate and that metal production and consumption numbers are largely useless to metal buying organizations. These numbers aren’t very actionable and fail to correlate to the timing of purchases. The chances of hitting a bullseye when prophesying based off of these figures is extremely small.
Strategic sourcing can make or break your business and finding the right suppliers will require research, meeting with the vendors, and even a certain amount of trial and error. In order to foster the best strategic sources more quickly, there are some general steps that will outline the path to follow:
Refining strategy is a never-ending process. Once you get a project, a relationship, a product line to lift-off, there will always be room for improvement and opportunity to tinker with its underlying strategy. When it comes to sourcing, are there areas that can be enhanced or further developed?
Selecting a strategic partner to entrust with your goals and expectations is not an easy task. There are numerous suppliers in today's saturated market. How can procurement identify the best supplier for their unique needs?
These 5 tips will help you close the loop on expectations, quality, and savings:
So said Karl B. Manrodt, Ph.D. of Logistics and Transportation at Georgia Southern University, at the Prime Advantage 2015 Fall Conference, held in Glendale, AZ, last week. Dr. Manrodt led a stirring discussion with Members and Suppliers on harnessing the potential of various sourcing models in modern procurement. Here are some of the key takeaways from his presentation:
