Having efficient supply chain management is crucial for your business.  Being able to distribute your products and services from manufacturing warehouses to your customers is key to the success of your business.

Supply chain management can be a catalyst for swift growth, managed poorly, and your customers will suffer as a result.

Inefficient supply chain management will affect your company’s production rate.  In turn, this can result in order delays, backlogs and some very unhappy customers!  Here we look at why supply chain management is essential for your business and how you can improve it.

 

How to Improve Your Supply Chain Management

1. Watch Your Suppliers 
   If one of your significant suppliers goes under, it can disrupt your supply chain process and even negatively impact your revenue.  Keep a careful watch on your suppliers and look out for warning signs that indicate they may be unable to supply you.  Have a process in place that carefully monitors your suppliers and, if need be, replace them if they become unreliable.
2. Move To The Cloud 
   Is your business still working with monstrous, unreliable spreadsheets?  If the answer is yes, it might be time to consider moving to the cloud.  There are many benefits to using cloud-based supply chain solutions.  For example, they will easily be able to automate information that would take hours to process manually.  This means that you’ll always be working with the most up-to-date, accurate information available.
3. Analyse Your Results 
   The supply chain doesn’t just stop when your customers receive their products.  It’s crucial to analyse the performance of the process – what worked well?  What didn’t?  Are there ways you can improve?

   Your supply change statistics can also tell you a lot about your customers.  From a glance, you can instantly see your bestsellers and top-performing products and services.  Your lower-performing products will also be visible.  This can become valuable information when building your supply chain strategy as you’ll be able to understand what stock you’ll need extra of and what products you might struggle to shift.

4. Choose The Right Software 
   Choosing the right software is the key to successful supply chain management.  Your software should work with your company and your employees, not against it.  When it comes to picking the best supply chain management software for your business, there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.  The good news is there are many different options out there to choose from.

   If your business is still growing, opt for flexible software that will evolve as your business does.  Do your homework and make sure that the software you pick gives you everything you need.  Don’t settle.  If one software doesn’t do everything you want or need it to do, then it’s likely not the best solution for your business.  This is often why many companies feel that they need multiple different software solutions to assist with their supply chain management, but this doesn’t need to be the case.

   Having one solution that fits all your needs will be more time and cost-effective in the long run.  Mistakes will be less likely to be made from trying to communicate and manage data between multiple platforms.  There are many bespoke supply chain management software solutions out there that can be specifically tailored to suit the needs of your business.  Most effective solutions will offer integration options so that you link up your accounts apps and manage everything from one place.

 

Managing Your Supply Chain From Start to Finish

Having a full 360° view of your supply chain in real-time can help you to stay on target and continually deliver a consistent service.  Ultimately, having full visibility of your supply chain process will help you to provide the best experience for your customers.

The best way to have a full 360° view of your wholesale distribution and supply chain processes is to use a cloud-based platform like NetSuite.  NetSuite will be able to consolidate your accounting, inventory, CRM, and more onto one account.  This means that you’ll be able to instantly and easily access supply chain information.

 

Here at Cofficient, our team of experts are specialists in working with wholesale distribution companies.  They have real insider experience and can easily guide you through using NetSuite.  They can help you tailor the software to suit the needs of your business enabling you to get more out of it.

We’re passionate about our software, and we’re sure you will be too.  Book a free demo today to discover how Cofficient can help your business.