In the earlier blog we talked about what it takes to lay a strong foundation to build effective supplier relationship. In this blog we will discuss stage 2 on the path to supplier excellence.

The second stage is IMPLEMENT SUPPLIER INFORMATION MANAGEMENT.

Large organizations have a vast supplier base with tiers of suppliers stretched across the globe. This translates into multitude of data which if not managed well the organization would be unable to evaluate the suppliers fairly. Thus organizations need to manage supplier information by;

1. Organizing

• Define the parameters that would be considered for supplier evaluation by evaluating the industry benchmarks.

2. Collecting

• Develop a portal where suppliers can feed their information on regular basis.
• Investing in supplier portal makes it easy for the buyers to keep a track of information submitted by the suppliers.

3. Categorizing

• Assign commodity managers to monitor critical categories.
• Group suppliers based on priorities and type of purchases viz. strategic partners, preferable suppliers, general suppliers.

4. Creating Alerts

• Alert suppliers to update information on regular basis as decided by the organization/department.
• Receive alerts for non-compliance by suppliers in terms of information updates to take appropriate action.

5. Integrating

• Integrate supplier information with other tools like Supplier Performance Management, Accounts Payable, etc.
• Enable the organization in managing key performance indicators & supplier scorecards.

In the next blog we will discuss stage 3. So stay tuned!