Putting Your Partner Relationships Under a Microscope

Putting Your Partner Relationships Under a Microscope January 5, 2009

Posted by Meg Suggs in Actionable Intelligence.
Tags: Partner Performance Management, retailers, Scorecarding, suppliers, vendors
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Today we’d like to continue our series of ways to get through these tough economic times by eliminating errors and inefficiencies. In a previous post, we discussed avoiding chargebacks, managing deductions, and incorporating scorecards into business. Now at the start of 2009, we’d like to discuss Partner Performance Management for a successful new year.

For many partner managers, the e-mail-and-spreadsheet approach for managing thousands of suppliers is quite overwhelming. Furthermore, little to no light is shed on vendor performance. And in terms of globalizing your organization, the transition to global sourcing and demand-driven inventory models means a longer and more complex supply chain with less of a buffer for mistakes or delays.

Image Source: http://www.labessentials.com

With little or no room for error these days, companies need visibility into trading partner problems as they occur rather than down the road in order to avoid supply chain disruptions, limit the cost of vendor deductions and get products into customer hands more quickly. They also need to improve the quality of shared business processes to find and fix issues across purchase orders, invoices logistics, deductions and vendor compliance.

When looking for help with Partner Performance Management, we recommend a solution that can:

Identify who’s under performing as well as who is going above and beyond. It’s not just about identifying the problems, but also about what’s being done right. Congratulating vendors on a job well done is great for positive reinforcement and paints the clear picture of exactly what your company is asking for. A solution that can give you a full view of your vendor’s performance, whether it be good or bad, is key in creating a successful relationship.
Quarantine bad transactions, stopping and holding a bad transaction before it enters or exits your system, saving your company time, money and headache medicine.
Simplify the vendor setup process across thousands of partners for On-boarding Project Management. Any sort of solution that can setup online invites, task alerts and milestones according to your internal vendor setup processes and monitor program progress can be a huge blessing.