We previously shared how implementing a supply chain relationship management (SCRM) tool will make your supply chain team 3x more productive. Here at Anvyl, we are committed to identifying areas for improvement for your supply chain. Our most recent data exploration highlights the exact point in the supply chain operator’s process that an SCRM software can drive greater efficiency: collaborating with suppliers. As a single source of truth, SCRM makes collaboration between the two parties more seamless.
Supply chain communication that causes delays
Two major pain points of the production process are document management and supplier touchpoints. (We’ve defined supplier touchpoints here as instances where your supplier is contacted for information.) When there are changes to purchase order quantities, production specifications, or lead times, approving and updating these changes on the purchase order itself gobbles up time from your workday. In addition, you are not always given this information from your suppliers proactively, and may need to reach out to them on a manual cadence. So how do SCRM solutions like Anvyl solve for this?
On Anvyl, purchase order documents can be automatically generated and sent to your supplier in a single click. Automated milestones are then used to send follow ups to suppliers as the purchase order is ready to be produced and shipped. As changes arise, suppliers can input these updates directly in the platform, collaborate with you on any unexpected surprises, and you can easily input those updates into a revised purchase order from the same screen without having to cross reference back and forth between emails, phone calls notes, texts, and faxes.
Our findings for greater productivity
Using anonymized statistics from our software, we arrived at the following insights by comparing our customers’ results with data gathered from supply chain teams who aren’t currently using a SCRM in their workflow. The conclusions drawn show overall trends for each metric in relation to the number of orders placed in a year.
On average, our customers are able to manage similar levels of documents in Anvyl as those without a SCRM, but do so with between two and three fewer file uploads per order.
When we analyze supplier touchpoints, we found that supply chain managers using Anvyl expend 3x less effort to maintain communication channels with their supplier teams.
How we know
Automated Document Generation
With automated document generation on Anvyl, our customers save time and energy without having to perform manual document changes and uploads throughout the production workflow. An added bonus for even more time savings occurs when documents are tagged and easily searchable, decreasing the effort required to surface the file weeks later after the order has long been shipped.
When we look at files that require manual upload during the production process, we can see how SCRM users significantly reduce the number of manual documents they need to create each year (below).
Since the Anvyl system automatically creates and sends purchase orders to your supplier on your behalf, on average only 1.6 files need to be manually created and sent for each additional order versus the 4.25 files needed by supply chain teams not using a SCRM. On average, your team is uploading 2 to 3 fewer files for each order placed.
Automated Supplier Touchpoints
Supplier touchpoints are important for supply chain teams to gain insight into their production of goods so they can act quickly against delays or other issues to mitigate any downstream effects.
The Anvyl platform automatically sends information requests to your supplier on your behalf for information about your products at each important milestone throughout the production lifecycle. The automated prompts enable and ensure constant visibility between the time an order is placed to its actual ship date. We empower teams to conversate with suppliers directly in the system and make it easy for suppliers to reply from the system they already know and use, email. By keeping all of the supplier messages together in one place, we help facilitate deeper discussions with your suppliers that are traceable and findable again.
In the below chart, you can see the number of manual supplier touchpoints made in a year for both Anvyl customers and supply chain teams not using SCRM. From the trend lines, it is clear that the difference is quite substantial.
For every 100 orders placed in Anvyl, our customers are only checking in with their suppliers on average 80 times outside of the automated prompts. For teams without a SCRM, we typically see them checking in with their supplier 240 times for each 100 orders. The process of checking in with your suppliers can be done in one-third of the time with Anvyl and that time saved can translate to other operational wins elsewhere on the supply chain.
Drive team efficiency with SCRM
At Anvyl, we are continually looking for opportunities to cut repetitive processes, saving your team time and energy to focus on other areas of the business (i.e. our recent Anvyl Automations for tasks). If you’d like to partner with us to figure out what operational savings our SCRM platform can assist you with, take a look at Anvyl.
