Optimizing your relationships with suppliers to save money, raise quality, and build innovation.
Without supplier management, companies risk devastating quality problems, escalating costs, and ill-timed product shortages. When a part fails or a plane arrives late, customers do not ask who the supplier was; they hold the company responsible.
Many companies not only manage their suppliers to keep costs down and reliability up; they form partnerships with suppliers to deliver higher quality goods and services and lower cost than they could on their own, sharing risks as they explore new technologies and markets.
How can companies create and maintain high-performance supplier partnerships? How can they successfully manage their suppliers? And how can suppliers work most effectively with the companies that buy their products?
Based on extensive research and consulting experience, Metrus Group has designed a program of strategic supplier measurement that can avoid problems while building a strong long-term relationship which benefits both supplier and buyer.
Ideally, strategic supplier measurement is part of a larger strategic measurement system which also tracks employee, customer, financial, and other key areas. Integrated into that system, supplier measurement is linked directly to the company's strategy and goals, and is used in day-to-day decisions.
To get the most out of supplier measurement, Metrus Group will work with your company to identify the most critical supply chain goals. By setting priorities, putting the most appropriate measures into place, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and establishing milestones, Metrus Group can help your company extract far more value in your supply chain. Our consultants can also show which issues have the highest impact on customers and financial outcomes.
A supplier measurement system must consider each critical dimension of supplier management:
Processes. Process is frequently the key to success. Metrus will analyze and provide recommendations on your key processes and key systems, including the integration of supplier input and, if applicable, technology sharing.
Structures. Partnerships can be helped or hindered by power relationships, performance management and reward systems, geographic proximity, and other structural issues. Metrus can analyze existing structures and recommend improvements to them.
People. People are the key to change, not to mention trust, information sharing, and teamwork. Culture, shared beliefs and behaviors, and motivation have a proven, dramatic impact. Metrus is a leader in working on people issues.
Measurement. Sound measurement enables organizations to work together, while minimizing risk, assuring quality, and encouraging innovation. Metrus is an acknowledged pioneer and a leader in strategic measurement systems.
The Metrus Supplier Management Audit was designed for organizations that:
- Are not yet ready to create a full-scale strategic measurement system
- Are missing strong supplier measures in their balanced scorecard or strategic measurement system
- Have a pressing need to bring supplier issues under control.
The Supplier Audit provides an objective analysis of your current supplier management process. The audit is designed to identify your current strengths and opportunities to increase value, and to help you build steps to becoming top notch in supplier management. From start to finish, it can take less than four weeks.
- Higher quality supplier products, services and relationships, leading to overall higher quality products and services, which lead to greater customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention and wallet share
- Lower overall costs
- Greater innovation and new business opportunities.
Additional Tools:
- Metrus Sample Supplier Self Audit
- Metrus Supply Chain Consulting - Contact: e-mail or phone (908) 231-1900
The following article is available at our Recommended Reading page:
- Building Supplier Partnerships: The Role of Measurement, by David Zatz
Facilitated Consultation [Contact me.]
For more information, contact us by e-mail or at (908) 231-1900.
Visit our Recommended Reading section for a white paper on supplier management and strategic supplier measurement.