Supplier Management: The Best-in-Class Approach to Drive Performance

A common approach to Supplier Management often gravitates to monitoring and measuring supplier performance.

While this is certainly critical, a more comprehensive perspective is needed to effectively manage end-to-end supplier engagement.

This perspective starts further upstream and includes sourcing and supplier selection criteria as part of the overall management process.

This is the level where expectations are set and contracts/supplier agreements are put in place.  

Similarly, once agreements are established, the glue that holds a relationship together, beyond measurement, is the constant visibility needed to keep a plan and a supply chain on track.

This paper will look at the upstream decisions that influence a sourcing decision from a Best-in-Class perspective, the supplier monitoring and measurements they have in place, and the role that upstream visibility plays to keep the relationship on track.