In a world where technology has continued to improve the way we communicate and gather feedback, why shouldn’t your supplier performance management be as simple and easy?
In brick-and-mortar businesses, wooden suggestion boxes have been replaced by online reviews or kiosks where customers can hit a ‘smiley-face’ button to signal their satisfaction. Businesses can solicit feedback from customers in a way that is convenient and simple for the customer (leading to better response rates) and prompted in the moment when their experience is top-of-mind (leading to more accurate responses). Rather than gathering dust in a box, feedback is collected in real-time, so managers can observe changes and intervene to correct negative trends.
This same approach can take your supplier performance management efforts from a bureaucratic check-box, to a source of valuable insight into contract health and performance trends.
The Case for More User-Friendly Supplier Performance Feedback Methods
Supplier performance is just as important to procurement teams as customer experience is to restaurants: it can cost time, money, and internal client satisfaction.
However, many procurement teams simply don’t have the bandwidth to collect feedback on supplier performance—and if they do, the standard approach and tools can look suspiciously like the customer suggestion box: long, complicated surveys with low response rates, sent out manually and infrequently.
To be proactive and stay on top of their suppliers’ performance, procurement leaders need to have a finger on the pulse of their supplier poll. This requires a constant stream of data and information so you can determine trends and insights at a glance.
Technology can help you streamline and simplify your supplier performance management activities. Here are some of the reasons you need to evaluate the way you conduct your process:
- Getting to actionable conclusions faster. Supplier Performance Management solutions take care of the manual parts of soliciting supplier performance feedback (creating and sending surveys, collecting and aggregating responses), so procurement teams can maintain an up-to-date picture of their supplier performance without the tedious and time-consuming work.
- Intervening with performance issues before they become a problem. Frequent feedback gives procurement teams more visibility into the progression of contracts, allowing teams to zero in on performance issues before they impact the organization.
- No more pulling teeth to get survey responses. As many teams have learned from experience, getting contract owners to fill out supplier performance surveys can be a headache. Modern survey methods meet stakeholders where they already are—and in today’s world, that means mobile devices—and reap the rewards in their response rates.
To learn how Euna Procurement can help you enhance your supplier performance management, request a demo today!