Establishing systematic supplier management as a strategic process
In order to remain competitive, quality, innovative capacity and security of supply are required. These can only be achieved together with suppliers as value creation partners. For this purpose, supplier management should be anchored as a strategic process in the company.
Supply chain stability through strategic supplier management
Ensuring supply and minimizing risks is one of the most important goals across all sectors. The upcoming Supply Chain Act will further strengthen this trend. But in the long term, factors such as quality and innovative strength are required in addition to the stability of supply chains in order to be able to survive in competition.
For all these goals, close cooperation with suppliers is indispensable: through professional supplier relationship management, you can promote innovation and growth and thus secure competitive advantages. To intensify cooperation with the right partners, supplier management should be anchored as a strategic process in your procurement.
Development of a strategic supplier management
We offer you professional analyses, supplier evaluation and categorisation, strategy development and implementation of a supplier relationship management.
As the first step, we analyze the current maturity of your supply chain. With the aim of bringing your supply chain performance to a top level, we then define a concrete catalogue of measures on this basis in the next step. To prepare you for strategic supplier management and supplier integration, we also use an added value analysis to show you how the introduction of new supplier management can impact your company.
Supplier development or integration programs are based not only on traditional characteristics such as product quality, price, conditions and logistics performance but also on factors such as innovative capacity, sustainability, technology, and security of supply. This makes it possible to identify and exclude suppliers with potentially inadequate performance at an early stage. Measuring the innovative capacity of suppliers is a challenge in this context, which requires above all qualitative assessment points.
The evaluation of your suppliers is particularly important to find out where a strategic focus is worthwhile in order to make target-oriented investments. Based on a comprehensive catalogue of criteria, we conduct the supplier evaluation and obtain feedback from all relevant departments of your company (procurement, product development, production, logistics, etc.).
We design a strategy for the targeted implementation of supplier management for you. Based on the supplier categorization, we determine the optimal approach for each individual supplier. We show you which suppliers are worth developing further, cooperating with or partnering with, and how you can optimally design this. In this way, you systematically use the potential of your suppliers.
If deficits or development opportunities have been identified in the evaluation of key suppliers, we support you in improving the performance of your supplier through targets and individualized measures. For supplier development, the weaknesses identified in the evaluation process are taken up as development points. For example, delivery quality can be improved and processes harmonized in joint workshops.
By developing suppliers categorized as particularly strong, their performance potential can by fully utilized. In this way, you gain the right partners for strategic supplier integration. The suppliers can participate in the process and product improvement for the company or even be integrated into the development processes of your company.
Even a highly qualified procurement team that achieves top conditions in negotiations needs the appropriate skills to be able to strategically manage supplier relationships.
As the interface between internal departments such as product development and external suppliers, procurement is the ideal pivot for raising potential in supplier management and promoting innovation for your company. We train your procurement department in this respect and develop it into a high-performance team.
E-procurement is a prerequisite for digitalization in procurement. The processes in the cooperation with your suppliers are also becoming increasingly digital. Professional supplier relationship management therefore requires fast and efficient preparation of purchasing data through innovative tools.
For this purpose, we analyze your needs and define a target profile according to the new processes. We evaluate suitable service providers for a tender and conduct the corresponding negotiations for you so that you receive the best tool for your requirements. Once the contract has been awarded, we provide you with full support for the content and technical implementation.
In order to be able to exploit the potential of strategic supplier management in the long term, consistent supplier monitoring is necessary. This goes beyond the mere monitoring of key figures on supplier performance. By identifying risks and development potential in the areas of processes, quality and efficiency, the focus is on improving supplier performance.
Active risk management enables you to plan ahead and react to changes in the market at an early stage. In this context, the decisive value levers do not lie in technology, but in the correct interpretation of the data that arise along the value chain.
We design and implement an individual supplier risk management system for you that ensures regular supplier evaluations and has early detection mechanisms. In this way, you can take active measures to avoid risks in your procurement in the future and avoid default costs.
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