Halloween 2021: Three Scary Consequences of Bad Supplier Management

Whilst Halloween generally focuses more on the fear of the fantastical, and things that go ‘bump’ in the night, it’s also interesting to think about the fears or stresses that you can encounter on a regular basis, particularly for those working in supplier management, who have a strong responsibility to ensure due diligence during the on-boarding of supplier information, or perhaps for quality and technical professionals, who have a responsibility to ensure the accuracy of product information to ensure products from their suppliers are at the highest level of quality, and the information provided by suppliers about their products are accurate and up to date.

Reduce the number of frightening risks with supplier management software.

Disorganised and inefficient supplier management can lead to mistakes, and mistakes can lead to problems. In fact, when you look at the problems that can come from inefficient supplier management, it’s more frightening than the scary holiday that’s just on the horizon.

Risk to brand reputation

When receiving information from suppliers and re-keying the information into your current system, there is always the risk of errors that arise from re-entering the information. If there are errors within the supplier information, this can pose significant problems, which could increase the risk to brand reputation.

Additionally, when working with suppliers, it’s important to ensure that the people you are working with are compliant with company policies, such as sustainability, modern slavery, and the health and safety of their manufacturing sites.

ARCUS^® Supplier Information Management (SIM) eliminates the need to re-key data when on-boarding suppliers by placing the responsibility onto the suppliers and having them input their information directly into the system. Artificial Intelligence allows documents to be scanned at the point of upload with 99.5% accuracy, allowing companies to ensure that their suppliers are compliant.

This is also present within ARCUS^® Manufacturing Site Information (MSI), a plug-in to ARCUS^® SIM, which allows companies to collect detailed information on their supplier manufacturing sites and assess whether they are compliant with regulations.

Time lost to inefficient processes

Time spent on tasks that take longer to do, simply because there is no standardised process, or the company adopts a disorganised approach to the collection of supplier or product information, is ultimately a loss of time which could be spent on projects which help the company to function optimally.

ARCUS^® SIM and Product Information Management (PIM) automates the process for collecting or onboarding supplier and product information. Suppliers are sent automatic reminders to complete or update their information to save you the time that might be sent chasing suppliers for the information that you need.

Risk to customer

Information that isn’t up-to-date, or hasn’t been inputted correctly can cause many issues further down the line, including ones that can place customers at risk. When storing and collecting information about your supplier’s products, this will involve collecting vital information, such as whether there are any allergens present in the products, if it is consumable. Mistakes in the collection of allergen information could result in expensive product recalls for the company, or worse, anaphylaxis cases for those with allergies.

ARCUS^® PIM allows you to collect and store product information in a central repository, where the information is entered directly into the system by the supplier, and requests for updated information are sent automatically, reducing the mistakes in product information, and ensuring information are updated regularly.

To learn more about ARCUS^® SIM and PIM, have a look at the brochure here.