Never Take Your Suppliers For Granted

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article |Suppliers|Never Take Your Suppliers For GrantedThere are many pillars upon which a competent business rests. See how even the most successful business operates with only 20% of its staff turning up for work, or only 20% of its IT systems functioning that day, and you’ll see just how quickly even the most titanic corporations can lose value quickly.

This is why it’s important to never take those pillars for granted. Included in this definition, often forgotten, is the network of suppliers you use. No business can function without a supplier of some kind, even the most self-reliant and self-sufficient firm that seems to construct most of their output themselves. Even those businesses that craft raw materials for other production capabilities will need to rely on tools, security, IT infrastructure and more from a separate source, and this applies to your business also.

This means that it’s important to consider the value of your suppliers, and to understand just how to build that business relationship effectively. This can help you both isolate the best and worst suppliers you may have to use, and that can be important.

Consider the following advice:

Customized Services

The best suppliers offer customized services to help you realize your ambitions as a firm in the best manner possible. This is because over and above the normal applications your firm may have for their product line, applications such as metal stamping, plastic moulds and storage solutions can add or subtract from your final product depending on how you use certain implements. When you realize this, you can hold onto those suppliers that are familiar with your firm and are willing to work with you to the best solution.

Loyal Goodwill

There’s a sense of goodwill that develops when you continue to use the same services. Perhaps this may even run two-ways. If you are known as a client that pays their invoices within a matter of days, if you have clear and consistent communication and you’re also forthright about your needs surrounding a new project, then you are both an exciting and dependable client to work for. If you appreciate your suppliers in return and practice goodwill from time to time, they will return that, potentially even placing you at the top of their priority list.

Supporting Your Local Businesses

Supporting your local businesses can be a worthwhile stance to take in itself. Sure, blindly supporting the businesses around you without any consideration for how they treat their customers or clients is not the way forward, but at the same time, if you have the choice between two suppliers and one is local and smaller and can fulfill your orders just fine? It may be worth utilizing them, to bond with the strength of community, and to abide by ethical business practices that may just return back to you. You never know just how this web of complex mutual support can truly improve and raise a local economy, and help you craft more thorough business ties.

With this advice, we hope you’ll never take your suppliers for granted.

How to Make Your Management Process More Agile

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article |Agility|How to Make Your Management Process More AgileIn contrast to startups, which often experiment until they gain their footing in the market, established businesses are notoriously slow to change.

This is unfortunate because we’re currently experiencing the biggest global upheaval of any time in history since the industrial revolution.

In order to adapt to a climate charged by automation, market shifts, and globalization, companies need to evolve to meet changing priorities and conditions.

That’s how you maintain your competitive edge.

It’s the essence of agility.

Why Agility is Important for Your Business

Agility is defined by McKinsey & Company as “… the ability of an organization to renew itself, adapt, change quickly, and thrive in an environment characterized by rapid change, ambiguity, and turbulence.”

This is often driven by necessity during a major paradigm shift, but the need is also present during market fluctuations and other upheavals, major and minor.

It’s no longer the domain of tech companies, as industries from manufacturing to finance are entering a tech-driven phase.

These transformations are shaped by:

  • The introduction of disruptive technologies
  • Fast-evolving business environments
  • Rapid information democratization and digitization
  • Competition to find and recruit new talent

When a business prioritizes adopting an agile business model, they’re better able to weather business downturns and see challenges as opportunities for growth and innovation.

Agility allows your company to:

  • Empower employees
  • Adjust strategies to meet goals
  • Meet unanticipated events with confidence
  • Respond to uncertainty with speed and flexibility

In order to become a lean, flexible company that can rise to the top of your market, you must be willing to take a critical look at procedures and enact change, infuse staff with the ability to take ownership of successes and failures and embrace a new corporate mindset.

If you want to improve your company’s level of agility, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Where are we struggling, and what can we do to change this?
  2. How do we implement an agile mindset to incorporate both sides of the productivity equation?
  3. How can we embed a more customer-centric focus on our corporate culture?
  4. How can we empower our employees to take greater accountability for outcomes?

Part of this process takes a bit of self-awareness and honest assessment.

The rest can be gleaned by mirroring companies that have successfully achieved greater agility.

Factors That Contribute to Business Agility

While 90 percent of the most successful enterprises feel that agility is critical to their success, only 26 percent of corporations feel that their company has achieved the level of necessary flexibility.

What’s more, a survey conducted by Korn Ferry for Focus found that only 74 percent of the respondents who felt agility was critical incorporate it into the hiring/promotion process. This number drops to 66 percent of peer, non-WMAC enterprises.

What are the traits that define agile corporations?

You’ll find that the best of them exhibit the following characteristics.

#1 They Support Employee Engagement

Transform your workforce from a team of individuals who wait for orders to a cooperative force that acts proactively to make decisions.

You should obtain feedback and involve staff members in the decision-making process.

When staff feels invested and involved in the success of the enterprise, they’re better able to align themselves with the company’s goals and mission.

However, those goals must be clearly stated and understood by the staff at every level.

#2 They Use Advanced Technology to Enhance, Rather Than Replace, Human Productivity

Between fatigue and inattention brought on by boredom or redundancy, core business functions are prone to human error.

Using automation not only makes your business more efficient – and core processes like cost accounting more accurate – it also saves time and money.

Take inventory management, for example. Overstocking is an issue for many businesses because keeping the right balance of goods-on-hand to meet demand is often a guessing game.

If you don’t have a product in-stock, your customers will find another supplier. Too much inventory, and you’ll end up marking items down just to get rid of them.

With the traditional way of inventory control, the average ratio of sales to inventory is 1:1.43.

Inventory management software offers data-driven automation and takes the guesswork out of ordering stock while freeing inventory and production managers to focus on more critical activities.

#3 They Model Non-Traditional Corporate Structures

There was a time when executives liked to refer to their companies as well-oiled machines.

In a report conducted by McKinsey & Company, the concept of a modern, agile enterprise likens them more to dynamic organisms than static, rigid structures.

The focus is on rapid forward movement without losing stability and working within cross-functional teams rather than adhering to a strict top-down hierarchy.

#4 They Focus More on Developing Leadership Than Managing Staff

Change begins at the top.

In order for an agile corporate culture to flourish, managers have to become more than just middlemen and women who pass on and enforce orders from the decision-makers to the rank and file.

You need to give those under your direction purpose and a vested interest in successful outcomes. This can be achieved by recognizing and developing talent as well as giving staff a higher level of autonomy.

Engage in continuous employee management activities that foster growth and career development. There’s even performance management technology that’s designed to aid leaders through employee training and education. However, nothing beats the personal touch of human-to-human interaction.

Final Thoughts

We’re experiencing a sea change in how business is conducted in the 21st century.

If you want to remain competitive, agility is essential.

Developing even a few of the above characteristics will increase efficiency and return a great ROI in terms of time and money.

About the Author

Joe Peters is a Baltimore-based freelance writer and an ultimate techie. When he is not working his magic as a marketing consultant, this incurable tech junkie devours the news on the latest gadgets and binge-watches his favorite TV shows. Follow him on @bmorepeters

How To Create A Good Relationship With Your Suppliers

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Suppliers provide the crucial goods and services that you require to successfully run a business. This is why it is important to create a good relationship with them. Often businesses can fail because they haven’t worked on establishing a good working relationship with their suppliers. It’s best to think about what each supplier offers rather than the cost. Of course, you need to think about managing costs overall however building a good relationship and having an excellent level of understanding between you and your supplier is just as important.

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | How To Create A Good Relationship With Your Suppliers

Suppliers can provide quality materials and help you acquire what you need. If you have great communication levels between you they will often have a quick turn around. Meaning that Gasket Seal that you need pronto to complete a job is more likely to arrive promptly. In order to meet deadlines and targets, you will find that you sometimes have to ask them to go the extra mile and having a relationship with a supplier can go a long way into making this possible. Just like when creating a client base, you need to create a solid record of professional and timely behavior combined with the added personal touch.

Have a look below at some of the ways you can help to create a good relationship with your suppliers:

Pay On Time

You have to remember that your supplier is also a business, and this means that they want to earn money and get paid just like you do. If you know that you might have problems meeting your obligations, make sure this is worked into the contract you have between you before signing. It’s always best to be upfront when experiencing problems with payment. So, give your supplier a call as soon as you know of a problem and reach out to them in order to arrange a payment date. This is a much better working practice than leaving it and waiting for them to chase you for payment of overdue accounts.

Make An Effort To Know Them

It’s far to easy to keep things online and via email nowadays however phone calls and face-to-face go a long way in business and should be considered as important. Although everything can be done with emails it’s best to get to know your suppliers and catch up once in a while. Try visiting their office or inviting them to any company functions. Coffee or lunch is a great none pressured way to network with existing and potential suppliers, it enables you to build a personal rapport.

Make It Easy For Them

You should aim to give your suppliers adequate lead time and always communicate your needs. Crises can’t always be avoided, however, your suppliers won’t appreciate your custom if your their client that always rings last minute for supplies. Your suppliers aren’t going to be able to anticipate your needs although on occasions they may be able to supply at last minute.  What you order may need time to prepare, and sometimes they need to order in parts themselves. Work with suppliers closely and make sure they understand what your future needs may be. The more they know the better.

These are just three ways that you can help to create a good relationship with your suppliers, do have any others that you can share in the comments section below?

Logistics For Your Business

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It can become somewhat of a conundrum. Working out how to get your products from the manufacturers, to the storage, and then from that warehouse to the customer. All of the logistics need to be worked out and in play pretty early on in your business planning. Setting up your website, working on getting finances sorted, they are all part and parcel of a startup too. If you are selling a physical product then you’re going to need your logistical situation setup or at least well thought out and ready to go.

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Before we take a look at the different points that go into logistics it is important to know how it will impact your business and what it actually is.

Many people get logistics confused with supply-chain. It is a part of it, but the two terms aren’t interchangeable. Logistics is the movement of goods and supply chain is that movement – however, it is also sourcing, cost of goods, relationship management and everything else.

“Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics.”
 
Tom Peters – Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell
Fast Company, March 2001

Priorities

It is something that most of the tie you don’t even think about. Because we are so used to having our deliveries the next working day, or same day. And when we go into a shop, we expect the products to be on the shelves. But behind the scenes, there are a lot of logistics in play. It has to be a well-oiled machine. When you are a customer, you get irritated when things aren’t available when you think they should be. When you are the owner – you need to make sure everything is where it should be.

Speed and cost will influence each other, and your customers too – what matters more? Speed or cost?

Planning

The whole process relies heavily on your ability to plan production and demand. You will know that you need 6 weeks for X product to arrive from China, and 3 weeks from mainland EU – so you can opt for a lower price for a longer shipping time. And you will then have a longer lead-in time for the product launch and release.

Process

You are going to want to try out a few different types of freight methods. If you have planned correctly, you can choose to have a more extended travel time, slower, but ultimately cheaper way or you have time to find the right contract logistics company for you. Your internal logistics matters here too. How fast can you process orders? Working on the basis that your initial planning has gotten products from manufacturers to your warehouse in good time, you’re ready to ship to customers.

If you are promising a specific shipping date, then you should make sure that you are 100% sure that is what you will be doing. Managing your customer’s expectations is always the aim. The whole logistics process is what will keep your business running smoothly and your customers happy.

Warehouse Working Tips

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article |Warehouse|Warehouse Working TipsWorking in a warehouse or owning a warehouse as part of a business as is a unique way of working. Instead of sitting behind a desk in an office all day you’ll be categorising, organising and sending out products from your location and coordinating deliveries to the business.

A warehouse is an important component of any business and this year we are going to see exactly how it can benefit you this year with these easy tips.

Review and mend

The first tip for effective working in a warehouse is to review the effectiveness of current processes and work out how to change them. Now and again you will need to think about the best way to review your processes and this could be something which changes the dynamic and productivity of the space.

Warehouse layout

The layout of a warehouse needs to make sense. There’s no point in having the least sold products right at the front of the warehouse where they are easier to access and the highest sellers in an awkward place. It is always important to have a receiving area and office next to the doors where trucks will load and unload items. And also make sure that your packing area is close to the doors for easy distribution.

Forecast ahead

The warehouse of an office needs to always keep an eye on the future when to comes to products. For example now that winter is slowly on its way you may receive shipments of Christmas gear and you will want to leave this in an easy access location as these will be used very soon. Always think about what will be trending and which products will move fast and arrange your shelves accordingly.

Keep on top of stock

The most basic thing you need to be able to do as a business owner is keep in the loop with your stock and know when you should be getting more of a product ordered. You should have a spreadsheet which marks down the inventory every time an item is ordered and this will ensure that you always know where you stand and that you can always make the most of your deliveries to the office.

Train your staff

Working in a warehouse is a lot different to working in an office and it is incredibly
Important that you train your staff and keep them safe. For example when products need to be moved around the warehouse you will need to train your employees with a forklift operating licence to ensure that they can move items safely. You need to also train those who don’t have a licence to be careful when a forklift truck is on the move and to always wear a hi-vis jacket and stay in sight of the machine. Accidents can happen in a warehouse so make sure that your employees are aware and know how to stay safe.