Know your suppliers
Analyze the historical data of your operations with the different providers to know how each of them works. Evaluate which are the most appropriate suppliers for your company and for your business.
Also study which may be the additional providers in case you need to replace any of your usual providers. Or in the event that you need to negotiate new conditions with one of them. Do you know the main suppliers of your competition?
It also analyzes the comments that customers leave about suppliers that provide them, for example, a delivery service for one of our products. You will thus get very valuable information about the behavior of your partners when you are not in front.
Establish service level agreements and see that they are followed.
Your suppliers must be your partners, your allies, so that the service level agreements you establish must be satisfactory for both parties. To do this you must be very clear about your interests and conditions, so that your partner can easily assess whether or not it is convenient for him to work with you. You should also try to put yourself in their shoes, know their own interests and conditions and see if you can and if it is convenient for you to fulfill them satisfactorily.
The focus of service level agreements should always be to find solutions to problems before the culprits, and these solutions must be implemented in the shortest possible time. See what are the causes that have led to the drop in the service level should be done later.
Compliance with service level agreements is very important for the relationship to deliver good results. You must review from time to time the degree of compliance with the agreements, identify the breaches that have occurred and, now, identify who has caused them and why, taking the appropriate corrective measures for the future.
Integrate their processes with yours
To inform your customers when they call you asking about the status of their order you need to have visibility on the delivery tasks. To do this, you must integrate your processes with those of your suppliers, which today is quite simple thanks to the available technology.
You will also be able to know in advance if delivery times are being met or not and take the appropriate measures in case you see that the products do not arrive at your company on time or are not delivered to the customer on time.
If your need for visibility is very great, you can implement a supply chain monitoring system that allows you to track all tasks or classify them according to the reviews of their products. This system may include the generation of alerts in the event that the time thresholds you have established are exceeded.
Also, the suppliers should be able to control their profiles and manage their products achieving a system that is comfortable for both parts.
