Regardless of the business or industry, you operate in, vendors and suppliers will always have an important task in ensuring your company’s success. Because of this, it is essential to have a formal mechanism of evaluating the performance of your vendors to improve your business profitability and operations.
Not all suppliers will work well for your business though, as it will depend on the relationship you build with them, as well as what the suppliers offer – for instance, you might not need to purchase all the possible offers from the Crown Stationery Net 30 application, but you might need to look to other suppliers to fill your office’s needs from stationery to other items. Regardless of the specific suppliers you work with though, you need to keep your focus on the quality of service they offer; not just the prices of the products they supply.
In order to help you have a better idea of how to rate the experience your office suppliers give you, here are some useful indicators you can use to track their performance and increase overall productivity.
Establishing performance indicators
When you set your sights on working with specific vendors such as the Crown Stationery providers, you will need to next determine the characteristics the vendor needs to fulfill in order to keep working well with your enterprise. This is through establishing some performance indicators.
The specific criteria you use should be on a regular basis. The considerations include the history of complaints, its number of certifications, company size, and its financial stability. An instance would be seeing if the supplier has a procedure for documentation for all the services or products they supply or the speeds of their responses to requests of quotes.
The criteria you ultimately use will mainly depend on your own needs. For instance, you might investigate the delivery track records of Crown Stationery if you are looking to see if they have a reputable sales record on that front, and the certifications they hold from their industry.
Classify the vendors you deal with
If you happen to deal with a large number of vendors and want to create a survey to evaluate their performance, then you are better off creating a classification system instead of surveying each supplier. Separate the suppliers into tiers that help you have a better idea of more crucial suppliers to your business, such as Tier 1 being the most important suppliers and Tier 5 being the least essential.
Find a method to evaluate them
There are some common methods of evaluating supplier performance, which include software applications, system metrics, surveys, and evaluation forms. For instance, you can make a survey where your employees can answer some questions and rate the vendors on various criteria such as the quality of products they supply.
In addition to that, you can also do periodic audits to monitor the vendors and suppliers to measure their performance. The main aim here is to generate reports or measurements at the start of the purchase, and also throughout the course of time as the relationship changes between your business and the vendor.
Regular vendor reviews should include discussions on what your business is buying, the quantities of products (such as stationery), the prices of the products, and possible improvements in the qualities of the products.
Find out who is calling the shots
When you have established the factors for evaluations, you will need to know who will evaluate the information in your company – and that really depends on the resources you want to allocate into evaluating your suppliers. Depending on the workload, you may want to assign one person or a team with this job, like assigning the task of performance monitoring to the procurement officer or representatives from the purchasing department.
Always keep a good relationship
Always consider your vendors and suppliers a part of your team, and communicate with them on a regular basis. That said, while technology is great, do not overlook the personalized touch of face-to-face meetings or a phone call. Additionally, keep talking with suppliers to iron out any possible payment issues, and ensure that they understand your business needs.
Final thoughts
It is important to keep evaluating the relationship you have with your office suppliers and ensure their products satisfy business needs that you have – which ultimately results in a competitive advantage for your own enterprise.
