Suppliers are the entities that provide products or services to businesses. They can be individuals or companies that specialize in the production, distribution, and delivery of goods.
Product-based suppliers deal with tangible goods such as raw materials, finished products, equipment or machinery parts.
Service-based suppliers offer intangible solutions like professional consultants, IT services providers, marketing agencies.
Supplier Relationship Management is a process that helps organizations manage their relationship with key vendors effectively to gain better value from supplier partnerships.
Effective SRM includes:
A VMS is software specifically designed to help procurement professionals find compliant suppliers quickly and cost-effectively.
This tool enables organizations to monitor KPIs such as response time from vendors on quotes , purchase order completeness and accuracy.
A supplier diversity program promotes economic opportunities by encouraging multinational corporations (MCN) sourcing directly from minority-owned small businesses owned by women or underrepresented groups
this approach grants SME’s access to large supply chains they would not normally have if run independently .
Supply chain management encompasses activities related to the design and planning,distribution ports across globe
It involves integrating logistics operations so that businesses can pass information rapidly between trading partners using systems like cloud based ERP platforms which improves data integrity efficiency .