SRM solutions crucial in supply chains

PROACTIS, a global spend control and e-procurement solutions provider, revealed growing indications that most private, not-for-profit and public sector organisations are recognising the vital need to consistently maintain accurate, up-to-date information for their entire supplier base.

They can see that, in addition to needing supplier information to support purchasing and accounts payable activities, it is critical to maintain compliance with regulatory requirements and effectively manage risk associated with supplier non-performance and noncompliance.

Furthermore, Proactis is seeing an increasing number of organisations adopting supplier relationship management (SRM) software solutions as the most cost-effective way to enable the capabilities they need.

Supply chain becoming focus for regulatory compliance

One example of a growing range of regulatory compliance requirements is the “Transparency in Supply Chains” clause in the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.

In practical terms, compliance with this act and others like it requires companies to implement a methodical approach that will ensure their entire supplier base also complies with the act. Companies with a supplier base of any significant size that requires a robust, largely automated series of integrated capabilities need to:

• Collect and maintain accurate and complete information for every supplier;

•  Gain a thorough qualification of each supplier’s capabilities, certifications, policies and procedures; and

• Monitor all the possible changes, required actions and actual performance KPIs for each supplier.

Proactis said that comprehensive supplier management process has many benefits to the procurement process — it enables the organisation to be more effective in supplier selections and appraisals, monitors changes to suppliers and screens suppliers against sanction lists for financial compliance, among others. The supplier management process helps to streamline all kinds of supplier interaction and commerce. It is also becoming a necessary component of customer’s premises, he can immediately pull down the recent service history of any lift truck requiring service directly onto his pocket PC to help in assessing the service requirement. The technician can then message Crown’s parts distribution centre, ordering any necessary items which may not be carried as part of the standard stock in his service van. These parts are quickly picked, packed and shipped to the technician’s local facility for collection. When the service of the lift truck is completed, the service technician sends a comprehensive service report directly to Crown’s database, where the customer’s service history is automatically updated. “Crown takes service very seriously, and invests heavily in personnel, spare parts and facilities. We have invested in new and expanded service facilities, the most recent being the facilities in Rayong, Thailand and Johor, Malaysia,” said David Sultana, marketing manager, Crown Equipment, South-east Asia. Crown Equipment’s new service management system will bring together everything a field service technician needs to carry out the most efficient repairs and maintenance to customers’ forklift fleets. regulatory compliance.

SRM technology becoming a priority

The effect of this trend is clear — a growing number of organisations are making deployment of SRM software solution a priority, noted Proactis.

“Whether they refer to it as SRM or supplier information management (SIM), many organisations are recognising that a methodical, comprehensive approach to supplier interaction and monitoring is becomingvirtually mandatory,” said Simon Dadswell, group marketing director at Proactis.