Your Supplier Risk and Relationship Maturity Score overview

Radar Chart

Here are some tips and valuable resources

Within your job, maintaining partnerships is a strategic opportunity, not just a transactional process. Building stronger, more collaborative relationships with your suppliers enhances visibility, streamlines operations, and helps mitigate risks. By fostering digital collaboration, you can drive greater efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure a more resilient supply network, ultimately contributing to the long-term success of your organization. Here are some tips and tricks.

  • You indicated that you do not see increasing demand to connect on individual customer platforms to share data on transactions and production. Industry leaders are already in the process defining their supply chain roadmaps and interest in digitizing supplier collaboration has been increasing. You can anticipate the request by mapping your own customers and process onto how you already collaborate today.
  • You indicated that your system architecture does not allow for standard integrations with cloud applications. When you’re next in a position to define or adjust your source systems, it would be a great plan to try and foresee an integration workstream that includes the baseline of standard integration documentation.
  • You responded that your customer collaboration is not handled by a centralized function. That’s ok but, if you have the capacity, it would be great next step to consider establishing a centralized team—ideally one that covers all of your production sites—for consistent and efficient collaboration with customers. 
  • You told us that your data is not shared consistently across your customers. Requests for information may vary in scope and format but the important thing is that such data can always be transformed into a standard format. You should consider implementing uniform data collection and documentation on your side so that you can always start from a position of common understanding when there is a request to share. 
  • You indicated that you would not like to be involved in your customers’ transformation journeys around SC supplier collaboration. At a minimum, we would recommend that you engage with your customers to better understand their digital roadmaps. While collaboration is transactional at its core, it will still require some level of adoption from your side to ensure operations run smoothly. 
  • You indicated that your planning decomposition does not include processes for supplier collaboration. That’s ok, a great start is to identify where the interaction points are, and to start collecting information on how it is prepared and executed today.
  • You indicated that you do not have a uniform way of working with suppliers for sending and receiving supply chain transactions. No problem, theres no “one size fits all” solution in terms of collaboration. Classify your suppliers in groups with common supply chain characteristics, and think about standards fitting per group.
  • You responded that your external manufacturers’ KPIs are not aligned with your internal KPIs. KPIs consist of datapoints, timestamps, a calculation and a review process. Identify where the common ground can be at a certain level of aggregation to start building on an end-2-end view. 
  • You told us that you do not have a uniform (digital) way of sharing and reconciling inventories held at your suppliers. Start small by requesting to your suppliers for your inventories held, at batch level: the expiry date, total batch amount and inventory on hand.  
  • You indicated that your current supplier collaboration is it still manualNo problem, it’s never too late to explore digital collaboration platforms to centralize supplier interactions and streamline processes! Major features to consider are its integration, exception-based workflow, visualization and user interaction capabilities. 
  • You indicated that you do not frequently review and update your supplier segmentation results. We suggest implementing a periodic review process to reassess supplier segmentation and adjust your strategies accordingly—suppliers at the borderline of a segment may require a different partnership approach.
  • You indicated that your contract templates with external manufacturers have not been updated to reflect the digital era. We recommend that you revise your contract templates to be in-line with your company’s current digital requirements and compliance measures. Ensuring that your templates are up-to-date is a great way to support your business in its digital transformation initiatives.
  • You responded that your contracts have not been digitized beyond being storing as PDFs in an electronic vault. Supplier performance should always be measured against standard parameters, so we recommend that you consider storing your contract standards (lead times, targets etc.) separately in your contract management or ERP system.
  • You told us that you do not have a process for tracking contract compliance and performance. That’s ok, the best place to start is with your most important KPIs. We recommend that you incorporate review cycles into your supplier relationship management to prepare and discuss performance in line with your biggest priorities.
  • You indicated that you do not have visibility into your suppliers’ supply chains. We recommend engaging directly with your suppliers to map out their supply chain for greater visibility into critical raw materials and sources. 
  • You indicated that you are seeking visibility into your suppliers’ supply chains. That’s great, having increased visibility into their critical raw materials and sources will aid your operations. The first step should be to engage directly with your suppliers to map out their supply chain. 
  • You indicated that you do not have standardized process in place to share updates on BOM recipes and production instructions with your external manufacturers. We recommend that you develop standardized protocols for sharing BOM updates and production instructions so that you can already define your governance as of the initial transfer of product/technology.
  • You indicated that you do not have visibility into your external manufacturer’s production performance. That’s ok, it may seem daunting but you can start small as there is no immediate need to make your monitoring real-time. You may want to consider beginning with aggregate datapoints and metrics, as these will help you to identify continuous improvement initiatives.
  • You responded that your continuous improvement initiatives are not conducted jointly with your suppliers. A good startimng point is to perform a round-table to identify opportunities for improvement. You can then pilot a CIP cycle and assess if it is worth continuing. 
  • You told us that you do not receive (near) real-time production data from your external manufacturer. No problem, you can start small by identifying planned and completed timestamps on important production milestones. You can then select one of your trusted, qualified suppliers with whom to trial the data sharing to assess its value before rolling-out more widely. 
  • You indicated that roles and responsibilities are not defined for how to (re/pro)act based on data. When data is being shared between groups, it can result in uncertainty or misalignment around who should react to the information. A quick win for you here would be to consider developing a decision tree of scenarios that outlines clear roles and responsibilities for who should do what, when. 
  • You indicated that your incoterms are not limited or uniform across suppliers delivering for the same brand. It’s good practice to standardize incoterms to make your product flows simpler but we also recommend sharing the documentation with your business excellence teams so they can use it as a blueprint for updating performance management calculations.
  • You indicated that you do not have shared visibility into real-time shipment status and transportation parameters. That’s ok, but you may want to consider piloting a tracking solution to provide real-time visibility into shipment status and conditions. A good place to start could be defining the requirements for the data you would like to see.
  • You responded that delivery exceptions or delays are not automatically communicated to or by your suppliers. We would recommend implementing a digital collaboration tool that uses exception-based alerting. If that’s not possible right now, you can start by registering the reason code for each delay and then incorporating these into your next improvement cycle to help prevent repeat exceptions in the future. 
  • You told us that you do not use a standard data format for logistics data shared with or received from your suppliers. Requests for information may vary in scope and format but the important thing is that such data can always be transformed into a standard format. You should consider implementing uniform data collection and documentation on your side so that you can always start from a position of common understanding when there is a request to share. 
  • You indicated that you do not have a uniform method for sharing or receiving shipping documentation from your suppliers. While we would recommend investing in a cloud-based collaboration tool, a handy interim step can be to set up an external SharePoint page (or similar), through which documentation can be shared to / from partners outside your organization. You should ensure that this approach includes basic version controling. 
  • You indicated that you do not have a supplier categorization model based on common supply chain characteristics (beyond procurement segmentation). Although segmentation gives you an idea on the supplier’s importance in relation to your business, the collaboration process and data requirements may vary. As such, as a quick win, we recommend also grouping suppliers based on similar supply chain characteristics, such as manufacturing stage, number of transactions, and digital maturity.
  • You indicated that you do not involve suppliers in the digital transformation of your supply chain functions. We suggest identifying one friendly supplier to represent each supplier group, who can give you feedback on your transformation design. Ultimately, your suppliers will need to adopt your design, so it makes sense to incorporate their insights early in the process.
  • You responded that you do not know who your suppliers’ suppliers are for your brands. A useful first step that allows you to start small is to document the next tier. At a minimum, you should identify the supplier name, their production site locations, and the material group(s) sourced.
  • You told us that you do not have visibility across your multi-tier supplier network on macro risks. Risk-detection across the supplier network is high on the agenda for industry leaders. We strongly recommend that you start by researching how you can identify and resolve your current network blind spots.
  • You indicated that your internal KPIs are not aligned with your external manufacturers’ KPIs. At a base level, KPIs consist of datapoints, timestamps, calculations, and a review process. We suggest that you start by identifying common ground with your external partners and establish a certain level of aggregation so you can start to build an end-to-end view. 
  • You indicated that supplier quality metrics are not integrated into your internal QMS. As a first step, we recommned that you identify the external datapoints that can enrich your metric calculations. You can then pilot data collection with a trusted supplier.
  • You indicated that quality issues and non-conformance data are not shared in real-time with your suppliers. We recommend following a 3-step approach to elevate your Quality reporting:
    1. Standardize your non-conformance reporting processes
    2. Identify your requirements list (e.g., real-time reporting and tracking of quality issues, supplier self-service portals to log non-conformance, automated notifications and alerts for stakeholders, escalation mechanisms for critical issues, analytics and reporting dashboards)
    3. Evaluate scalable cloud-based solutions that offer real-time collaboration
  • You responded that you do not have a uniform method for sharing or receiving quality documentation from your suppliers. While we would recommend investing in a cloud-based collaboration tool, a handy interim step can be to set up an external SharePoint page (or similar), through which documentation can be shared to / from partners outside your organization. You should ensure that this approach includes basic version controling. 
  • You told us that you do not use standard project management tools to jointly manage events. We suggest that you consider using some of your internal project management templates to track progress and status, and publish these to an external SharePoint page (or similar) as an ad interim solution for making the documentation available to partners. 
  • You indicated that you do not have a joint process for tracking and reporting quality KPIs. A good starting point is to aggregate datapoints and metrics against which you can conduct periodic reviews. This will help you to identify continuous improvement initiatives. 

Valuables resources for you:

supplier network collaboration

As promised, you can book a free 30-min strategy session

Our experts are happy to listen to your challenges and share valuable tips.