In the past year, businesses have faced countless disruptions in their supply chains. Large events like COVID-19 and political unrest have forced businesses to rethink their operations and consider a more flexible approach. Additionally, organizations come to understand the importance of strong and collaborative relationships. But as more organizations move to a virtual or remote model, how can you continue to collaborate effectively?
The future of the supply chain relies on organizations adopting digital tools. By embracing technologies that allow data collection and real-time decision-making, you can build resilience in your organization. Wouter Pas and Andreas (Andi) Thonig of Tradeshift join Deloitte’s Marcus Kutzner to discuss the recent challenges organizations have faced and how to shift these into opportunities. Here are some of the Key Takeaways:
What challenges do businesses face today?
Currently, supply chain organizations struggle in three areas:
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Balancing the effort for supplier enablement with the benefit new suppliers can bring.
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Ensuring there are no unwanted supplier risks associated with tail spend.
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Enabling a strong supplier collaboration without spending too much time or resources on any one supplier.
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, Pas, Thonig, and Kutzner do offer advice for working professionals who need support managing their supplier relations. It all starts with making sure you are digitally connected to your suppliers and buyers. Right now, 85% of all global trade is disconnected, which leads to increased opportunities for disruption and miscommunication and jeopardizes the strength of your supplier relationships. Utilizing the right software and tools, organizations can consolidate their supply chain data and create an experience that is effective for everyone.
The Tradeshift B2B marketplace
Our marketplace model helps to lighten the burden that you and your suppliers face while creating a resilient supply chain. The marketplace operator (the middle man) takes over the time-consuming parts of negotiations, vetting, screening, and assisting with onboarding. This leaves more time for you and your new supplier to connect, and with our marketplace platform, connecting and obtaining information about buyers and sellers has never been easier.
Tradeshift’s powerful chat tools enable buyers to ask the right questions of the right people, offering robust and transparent communication at all points in your chain. Marketplace operations have the ability to input, edit, and update information or products at any time, leading to high-quality and relevant information. And, best of all, our marketplace feature offers no added risk — if you aren’t happy with your model, you can easily shut it down and test out a different one.
Pas, Thonig, and Kutzner say that the future of the supply chain relies on organizations adopting digital and collaborative tools. Embracing technologies that enable real-time data collection and decision-making will help you to create an organization centered around resiliency. To learn more about Tradeshift Marketplace and how you can utilize this tool to strengthen your supplier relationships, reach out to one of our experts. To see a demo of how Marketplace works, check out our full product webinar.
