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0 SUPPLY CHAIN PROBLEM SOLVING TOOLS

It's no wonder that supply networks are becoming larger and more complex. Customer expectations
have compelled this expansion, and now suppliers, retailers, and producers must maintain as
seamless a supply chain as possible to remain competitive. Effective supply chain management
software is the key to efficient supply chains (SCMS). Through numerous tools, SCMS allows supply
chain managers to monitor every step of the supply chain, from order fulfilment to compliance.
These are some of the most critical instruments for supply chain management.

1. Strong Leadership

Leadership is vital at all times, but it is especially important at times of crisis and uncertainty. To
ensure procurement excellence in 2022, procurement businesses will need inspirational,
imaginative, and pragmatic executives. If procurement wishes to be perceived as a value driver
rather than a cost saver in the larger value chain, the Chief Procurement Officer will need to
establish and articulate the procurement function's importance. Establishing great procurement
leadership requires someone who understands the importance of leveraging supplier relationships
and can communicate that message both vertically and horizontally within the organisation.

2. Transformation/Process Managers

Smart, slick, safe, and long-lasting supplier management will necessitate changes in strategy,
process, and systems, and these core transformations will necessitate change advocates. Master
coordinators between senior management, line managers, and project managers are transformation
and process managers. They're expectations jugglers, needs aligners, and are frequently categorical
competency jugglers. It's critical to have transformational and process leaders in place to ensure that
a supplier management strategy is correctly connected with the larger company plan and adopted
by the entire procurement organisation!

3. Sustainable Procurement Initiatives

Given procurement's potential to touch the supply chain network at the supplier level, procurement
is one of the only functions in a company that can truly execute and actualize quality and
sustainability programmes in the line. Smooth supplier management in a modern organisation
entails long-term supplier management in the face of external factors including climate change,
population growth, and new domestic and international legislation. Supplier management should be
rooted in broader sustainability and ethical procurement strategies at all times.

4. Supplier Segmentation

In any organisation, centralised supplier, contract, and spend control is tough. However, as a supply
network becomes more complicated, so do the issues that come with having a larger supplier base,
such as decreased supply visibility and greater supply chain risk. It is vital to classify and segmented
the supplier base in order to understand on from who we buy from and why we buy from them. In
order to support procurement agility, top-performing procurement teams frequently have strong
category expertise and well-segmented supplier networks. There are numerous segmentation
approaches and frameworks, but the following are some of the more well-known, Kraljic Matrix,
Spend: A, B, C, Criticality, Supplier Risk, Innovation or Collaboration Capacity & Performance and
Customer Impact.
5. Supplier Information Management Database and Registry

As previously said, understanding from who we buy from, what we buy from them, how much we
buy from them, and why we buy from them is a key aspect of smooth supplier management. Starting
with the most crucial aspects of a buyer-supplier relationship on who, what, and how much, a
strong register, or database, of supplier information, data, documentation, certification, contracts,
spend, and more is essential. This may need company to pack belongings and leave this city. A good
supplier information management system makes supplier base segmentation easier, improves data
quality or governance, harmonises operations, and boosts team cooperation.

6. Streamlined Supply Chain Compliance

Transparency and visibility in the supply chain are difficult to achieve, but by implementing
procedures and systems for efficient supply chain compliance, it may take the first step toward a
more transparent supply chain network. Supplier reporting of documents, data, and certifications
shouldn't be burdensome. There are many modern ProcureTech solutions on the market that can
help to streamline onboarding and self-assessment activities, relieving your procurement team of
the time-consuming task of issuing questionnaires, compiling information, uploading documents,
and reviewing responses. Suppliers are also offered more engaging UI/UX to execute compliance-
based activities, resulting in a win-win situation. One of the secrets to seamless supplier
management is to become more process-driven rather than people-driven, eliminating as many
opportunities for overly manual effort or human error as feasible.

7. 3rd Party Intelligence

It's critical that procurement professionals and technology providers alike take use of today's variety
of 3rd party intelligence tools and data sources. Financial, social, environmental, and country risk
insights can all be included. Natural disasters, IT security compliance, CO2 impact, GHG scores,
Categorical Price indices, Categorical Risk indices, and more are all available third-party intelligence
sources.

8. Modern Performance Evaluation

Adopting current supplier performance evaluation systems and frameworks will automate the ability
to generate procurement information and data insights based on the criteria of organisation that has
agreed to evaluate. There are 3 things that need in order to modernize supplier evaluation, and truly
gain data-driven buyer insights, and those are clear KPIs / Supplier Evaluation Criteria on the What,
Find the right Data Sources on the Where, Build Business Intelligence on the How?. This makes
sense, given that external vendors and partners account for around 65 percent of all innovations.
This emphasises the importance of supplier and partner contributions to a company's bottom line.

9. Spend Analytics

It's critical to have control over supplier spend in order to manage a supplier base smoothly and
strategically. Spend analytics with more advanced capabilities gives a better picture of costs, risks,
and possibilities. Some of the primary benefits we believe can result in smoother supplier
management are Management of categorical spend, Identification of cost centers, Improve supplier
delivery performance and Optimization of working capital.

10. Supplier Collaboration Space

Smooth supplier collaboration necessitates smooth supplier management. It’s to ensure that the
users have the tools that they need to collaborate and innovate with the top suppliers. SRM, in our
opinion, is a stepping stone toward transforming the way buyers and suppliers do business in order
to accelerate organisational development, improve sustainable commerce, increase top-line income,
and ensure good global effect. Without exploiting the supply chain assets and the value or
competency of suppliers have to give, that won't be able to reach to full potential as a procurement
organisation. Adopting common collaboration spaces between our procurement team and the
suppliers helps to maintain a direct line of communication, share or archive key material, co-manage
projects, handle corrective actions and issue bids.

11. Cross-application Integration

Supplier data is one of the cornerstones of smooth supplier management, whether we like it or not.
The ability to share or mirror data among various systems is just as crucial as gathering and storing
data. This means that our digital procurement ecosystem should include solutions with open-API
designs that can easily and quickly transport data back and forth. With a focus on cross-application
integration, our procurement organisation will be able to work with best-of-breed or point solution
providers while also having a backbone of heavy S2C, P2P, and ERP solutions in place.

References:

https://supplychaingamechanger.com/the-supplier-management-secret-recipe/