Managing spend & finding the best deal is a thing of the past. Suppliers are the pillars of supply chain industry. It is profound for business to build & nurture strong relationships with suppliers through transparency of information & encompassing performance, risks, innovation, satisfaction with mutual collaborations at regular frequency.
Manufacturing comes to a halt with no procurement & hence procurement function within supply chain & ERP systems must not be overlooked. Let’s look at some of the vital features to be ensured when you opt for digital transformation
- Supplier Bank
Solution must have a master placeholder in DB to record all your suppliers/vendors. Capture all vital meta data that are essential to strengthen your relationships with your suppliers & meet compliance. Establish work flows to activate a supplier account
- Forecast Demand
Always keep a check on what is in stock, what is coming through, open purchase orders & customer orders ensuring optimum order quantities are requested from the supplier. Intelligent algorithms support establishing trends on sales of line items, trend on suppliers & help you manage the dynamicity & project your demands accurately. Amend projections & seek internal business approvals to notify suppliers ahead of time
- Raise Purchase Orders
Raise timely orders & make informed decisions with a 360 view of your business: Demand, sales trend, purchase history, lead times of suppliers, quality of goods delivered, rates & services. AI enabled solution aids procurement department to make wise & timely choice. Established work flows ensures a check before getting it released to the supplier
- Goods Receipt
We all place order through ecommerce & ensure we receive right products, quantities & packing quality before we sign the delivery man off. So the importance of this goes across irrespective of the buying is for personal or commercial reasons.
Ensure what is received & what still remains against each individual raised purchase orders. Set aside the stocks until verified on quality terms & notify warehouse, sales & accounting functions
- Supplier Returns
It absolutely makes no sense to hold inventories, we did not request or the one’s not meeting enterprise quality checks as it holds up the space in the warehouse adding to the cost. Ensure the goods are returned to suppliers immediately once verified on quality grounds
- Queries to meet business outputs to make informed decision
Last but not the least, most vital aspect is to be able to query & slide & dice information for making timely & important decisions with data in the system. Know what is pending to be received, what is received & under test, what needs to be returned. what is available for sales, variety of quality issues, which supplier delivers timely & in full etc., demand vs sales, demand vs purchase, purchase vs sales etc..
The key to having a system in place that makes it easy to view your suppliers and analyse all of the risk factors. Leveraging technology for procurement operations is inevitable for making informed decisions to strengthen your relationships with supplier & in turn maintain happy customers & enjoy their loyalty in return.