Suppliers, if you’re in business you’re not going to be able to manage without them. Good suppliers have a huge part to play in helping a company succeed. However bad supplier can have the opposite effect.
For example, take a look at recent supplier impacts on KFC. The impact from poor performance can be considerable.
Most businesses will have specific processes around supply management and selection. The results of these should be to deliver consistent performance against requirement. But what happens if things go wrong? What are the signs of a bad supplier how do you weed them out from the good ones? These days we are surrounded with information so you think this process will be easy but it can be surprisingly challenging.
In this article will list five common attributes of a poor supplier
1. Lack of capability
While it might seem obvious that you need a supplier that is capable of providing against your requirement it goes without saying that you should explore how your supplier intends to support you from the outset. Capability might include a number of attribtues from aspects like capacity, technology, manufacturing capability (do they have the tools through to adequately trained resource through to logistics capability (for delivery), customer service for handling queries etc – understanding the breadth of your own requirement (it’s not just parts) can help drive out those suppliers that don’t match it.
2. Lack of accountability
Suppliers that do just what they want to do without thinking of the consequences on you is asking for trouble. Do you want someone who, when issues arise take their share of the blame and works with you to improve performance. Or do you want someone that just ignores performance issues and just expects you to be content with any performance good or bad. Suppliers that show a lack of accountability are far more likely to try and pass the blame onto others especially you as the buyer.
3. Poor communication
We wrote about communication here.Good communication is imperative in a procurement relationship. Whilst in today’s global economy there might be language or cultural barriers that can present a challenge if the supplier has good communication skills it can help in preventing various issues and challenges affecting the delivery of parts. Communication should be honest and direct and include the relevant statistics and factual evidence that you require without the supplier witholding inforamtion for thier own commercial benefit.
4. A lack of cooperation
Most good supplier relationships will involve an element of collaboration. Where the proposed supplier is reluctant or resistant to collaborate either with you or third-party this should cause concern. A lack of collaboration might reduce opportunity for performance improvement, enhancing joint capabilities, through to things like joint cost reduction activities. The days of the authoritarian customer supplier relationship should be long gone and today it’s widely recognized that a collaborative relationship is what’s required.
5. Not forward thinking
The relationship with your supplier is at its best when it is viewed as a long-term partnership where both parties position themselves to complement each other over the longer term. This makes it easy to react to issues (such as fluctuating demand, or material shortages) and business change.
Despite the fact there is a myriad of tools and techniques available to us it’s not always easy to spot those bad suppliers we hope that this article has been of some use into exploring those traits that may not be advantageous to your buyer’s supplier relationships. If you have any thoughts of your own feel free to leave them in the comment section below.