How good is your supplier experience – and why you should make it better
At a time when supply is tight, and our suppliers need to decide which customer orders are fulfilled first, we need to find ways to become a customer of choice.
Your suppliers can often face unnecessary administrative burden, poor information sharing, and slow communications. You need to find a way to make it as easy as possible for them to work with you in order to become a favoured customer and ensure they direct products and services your way.
In September 2022, HICX supplier management solutions released their Voice of the Supplier Survey results and it has some startling home truths for procurement teams.
With over 500 suppliers interviewed across a range of sectors, there are many takeaways for every procurement pro out there.
How does your supplier experience stack up?
An urgent piece of work comes in, you don’t really have the time to fit it into your busy schedule but your internal stakeholder is really pushy. You eventually give in and put a rudimentary tender out to market and hope for the best.
Under pressure, it is often easier to go with the path of least resistance but you know if you had the time you would have done some market sounding or market research first.
When push comes to shove it’s often the supplier voice that gets left out of this dialogue – all conversations happen inside the organisation only.
This attitude can seep into the supplier management when the contract is signed, and as a result it can become an ingrained way of being and an accepted culture within some organisations.
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