Crafting a more transparent supply chain

As busi­ness­es respond to the dis­rup­tion of the past two years, infor­ma­tion shar­ing will be key to gen­er­at­ing long-term rela­tion­ships between man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors based on trans­paren­cy and trust.

For man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors, trans­paren­cy is essen­tial, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the event of major sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions caused by events such as the Suez Canal block­age and Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. “You need to know why there’s been this dis­rup­tion and be able to com­mu­ni­cate that with your cus­tomers,” says Andy Reid, the head of inter­na­tion­al prod­uct mar­ket­ing and glob­al com­pet­i­tive intel­li­gence at cloud-based ERP provider Epi­cor.

Cus­tomers are also demand­ing more vis­i­bil­i­ty about where prod­ucts are sourced from. That means man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors need to know exact­ly where and how prod­ucts are being made, par­tic­u­lar­ly if their sup­ply chains are com­plex and multi­na­tion­al. If com­pa­nies don’t do this, they could lose out. “Com­pe­ti­tion is real­ly hot in this area,” says Reid. “If you can’t sup­ply a prod­uct or give your cus­tomers enough infor­ma­tion about how it’s made, some­one else will.”

But sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy can be eas­i­ly improved with the sup­port of cloud-based soft­ware. Epicor’s sup­ply chain man­age­ment soft­ware can track even the small­est of indi­vid­ual prod­uct parts back to source. Reid says: “If you’re a hard­ware dis­trib­u­tor that’s also doing some assem­bly as a val­ue-added ser­vice, you need to be able to track where the indi­vid­ual parts have come from, so if one keeps fail­ing you can go back to the sup­pli­er, resolve the issue and main­tain qual­i­ty. Our sys­tems can cap­ture ser­i­al num­bers and infor­ma­tion about indi­vid­ual prod­uct parts and store them secure­ly.”

But track­ing the per­for­mance of sup­pli­ers, main­tain­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and keep­ing costs down can be a major chal­lenge as you grow your busi­ness. “Dis­trib­u­tors oper­ate in a high­ly com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment,” says Reid. “They tend to be high vol­ume, low mar­gin busi­ness­es and are always look­ing for ways to keep costs down, increase mar­gins and prof­itabil­i­ty. To do that, you need to pri­ori­tise infor­ma­tion man­age­ment.”

For com­pa­nies that approach sup­ply chain man­age­ment with the right sta­ble of tools, they can min­imise inven­to­ry risks and costs while con­form­ing to indus­try stan­dards. Vis­i­bil­i­ty into cost­ing, track­ing, coun­try of ori­gin and man­ag­ing the flow of raw mate­ri­als is essen­tial to achiev­ing trans­paren­cy through­out the sup­ply chain. Epicor’s cloud-based soft­ware sup­ports this, while help­ing to reduce annu­al audit costs with reg­u­lar inven­to­ry count­ing, enabling prof­itabil­i­ty at scale.

Improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with sup­pli­ers is also key. Epi­cor does this through its sup­pli­er por­tal, which enables cus­tomers and busi­ness part­ners to inter­act online using a self-ser­vice tool. It pro­vides either an inte­gra­tion solu­tion (for sup­pli­ers who can con­nect to com­pa­nies) or a web por­tal (for sup­pli­ers who can’t) through which busi­ness­es and their sup­pli­ers can com­mu­ni­cate. It enables doc­u­ments to be viewed, sta­tus infor­ma­tion about sourc­ing requests shared and graph­i­cal charts with insights into EDI data pro­vid­ed. These web-based ana­lyt­ics present sup­ply chain activ­i­ty and alert man­u­fac­tur­ers to unex­pect­ed or non-com­pli­ant sup­pli­er actions. It allows for real-time vis­i­bil­i­ty into orders, car­ri­ers and ware­hous­es so teams can respond to sup­ply chain breaks imme­di­ate­ly.

Andy Coussins, SVP and head of inter­na­tion­al at Epi­cor says: “There is a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty at hand for man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors. This will only be realised by using emerg­ing infor­ma­tion­al tech­nolo­gies like mobile, ana­lyt­ics, and cloud along­side oper­a­tional tech­nolo­gies like sen­sors, machine-to-machine com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and robot­ics. Tomorrow’s man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors need to be lead­ers when it comes to adopt­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Those who want to run the sup­ply chain of the future will need to shed the old mind­set of wait­ing for a new tech­nol­o­gy to become the norm before embrac­ing it.”

Sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy means know­ing exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing at every stage of the sup­ply chain, enabling swift com­mu­ni­ca­tion with stake­hold­ers based on reli­able data. It enables com­pa­nies to min­imise deliv­ery dis­rup­tion, iden­ti­fy oper­a­tional improve­ments, uphold stan­dards and boost trust with sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers.

Part­ner with Epi­cor today to build a trans­par­ent, resilient and prof­itable sup­ply chain. epicor.com

Pro­mot­ed by Epi­cor