Resilience in Supply Chain Management

Aug 12, 2020

After the widespread impact of COVID-19 became apparent, crisis management kicked in. Organisations strived to preserve the welfare of their staff and wider society, whilst battling to protect their business by re-baselining, cutting costs and preserving cash.

 

Your company’s restart will require collaboration and effort throughout the supply chain and spanning the business. Procurement must re-evaluate the supplier landscape, knowing how to extract the best from suppliers whilst fostering a partnership relationship.

 

During this uncertain time, you may be asking, how can we increase the likelihood of getting the right goods and services at the right time. Prism Supply Chain Solutions have the answer. We have developed a methodology to help make this process easier, by offering practical tools to help your company restart and achieve growth, by:

 

1)  Supplier Risk Management – Be prepared and resilient for any future unexpected disruption or second wave by using this time to get to know your supplier base intimately. The Prism Supplier Pre-Qualification Questionnaire generates critical data on supplier’s trade lines, business lanes, payment terms, management systems, locations and ensures contact details are available to allow a central team to step in where required.

 

2)  Collaborative supplier forecasting – pool your collective intelligence with suppliers to forecast likely requirements, then lock in purchases or options. The Prism Supply Chain Solutions Goods and Services contract can be used effectively to lock in purchases or options with suppliers.

 

3)  Scenario planning – run ‘what if’ scenarios to cement flexible approaches and a problem-solving mentality within teams. If you’re working in retail or FMCG sector, we, at Prism, have the tools to enable you to map capacity and fulfilment requirements and support scenario planning. Specifically, the Capacity Mapping Tool and Distribution Plan are tailored to support all your demand planning needs and provide a step by step guide on how to adapt your business and SKU allocation in stores or through e-commerce platforms to maximise opportunities and minimise logistics costs.

 

Effective procurement and supply chain planning will see organisations bounce back more quickly and propel top performers to long term growth, success and resilience in the new normal.

 

With the right plan, energy and optimism the best procurement and supply chain teams will help businesses to recover and thrive – not just now, but for the long term.