White Paper

Supplier Relationship Management: Increasing Your Profitability Through Supplier Intelligence

Source: SAS Institute Incorporated

In today's competitive marketplace, companies must focus scarce resources on the strategies most likely to yield success to their organization. Supplier relationships have become increasingly important in ensuring this success. At a time when many organizations are turning to outsourcing to save money, the quality of your relationships with these suppliers can have a critical impact on the success of your company. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), a subset of supply chain management, is concerned with understanding who your most important suppliers are and how you can focus your time and energy on creating and maintaining more effective strategic relationships with them.

An effective SRM solution is an information system that provides Supplier Intelligence through an enterprise-wide, integrated view of a company's relationships with its suppliers and the commodities or services they provide. It enables you to collect, analyze and leverage all aspects of your supplier data and purchasing history, giving you vital insight into your supply base and purchasing history. An effective SRM solution contains essential components such as ranking, rating and optimization that allow you to reduce your supply base and reduce your overall costs. Ultimately, an effective SRM solution gives your organization a competitive edge by allowing you to:

  • Reduce direct and indirect costs and improve bottom-line profitability.
  • Understand what you are buying and from whom.
  • Minimize the risk of supply chain disruptions.
  • Select the best suppliers to gain advantage over competitors.
  • Streamline the supply-chain management process by collaborating with business units across the enterprise.
  • Assure that your organization's resources are prioritized on the most critical suppliers.

The balance of this paper discusses the following topics in more detail:

  • Why You Need an Effective SRM Solution
    • The Supplier Intelligence Advantage
    • Different Information for Different Levels of Your Organization
    • Tailored for Your Organization
    • Structured Knowledge: Retention and Re-use
  • How SAS SRM Works
    • SRM Foundation
    • Assess Where You Are
      • Scorecarding
      • Spend Analysis
      • Proactive Investigation
    • Explore Strategic Opportunities
      • Ranking
      • Optimization
    • Realize Your Goals
      • Supplier Monitoring
      • Organization Monitoring
      • Contract Compliance
  • The Bottom Line
  • Why SAS?

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