For a supply chain to be optimised and successful, all stakeholders involved in a supply chain process should work together towards the same goals. Achieving supply chain collaboration might seem like a daunting task when considering all of the stakeholders, operations and employees involved, but it can be done by taking one step at a time.
Five Steps To Supply Chain Collaboration
Choose Your Partners Carefully
A major factor that influences supply chain collaboration is the relationship you have with your partners. Enabling open communication can go a long way in ensuring that products and services reach their destinations much faster with much less hassles. Your partners should know what your goals are, what your preferences are and should immediately be made aware of challenges and opportunities that you are experiencing so holistic solutions can be implemented across the board.
Integrate Business Processes
To ensure supply chain collaboration you have to ensure that all aspects of a supply chain are working together. Logistics software plays a crucial role in enabling warehouse software, transport software and courier software integration with each other as well as with marketing, admin and financial operating systems.
Ensure Increased Visibility
By enabling full integration for supply chain processes, increased visibility will be realised. The importance of complete visibility cannot be stressed enough in a supply chain context. All stakeholders need to have access to information to see what they need to achieve and what the measurables for success are.
Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Collaboration needs to be built on a company’s strengths, not weaknesses. Trying to turn a weakness into a strength by collaborating with an external party will not benefit you if you do not consist of the internal capabilities to cater to the needs created through that collaboration.
Rather, identify your strong points; are you good at selling, do you have enough internal skills to configure or build your own software systems? Expand on your strengths and work on your weaknesses internally.
Consider Available Infrastructure
While your company may consist of skills to build collaborative supply chains across Africa, you will first need to consider the infrastructure at your disposal to realise this potential. Should you buy a warehouse software solution that promises to enable increased visibility over all geographical warehouse operations, you need to ensure that the software caters for the environment in which it will operate. A system that promises increased delivery but does not take road conditions, traffic and a lack of infrastructure into consideration will not deliver the results promised.