By Venus A
Every serious business owner knows that the supply chain is at the heart of business success. And the key to a sustainable supply chain: cultivating trust between suppliers and customers.
Nevertheless, many businesses still struggle to establish trust-based supplier relationships. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic that has plagued the globe, a lot of companies are still stuck with the idea of enforcing sustainability through developing and monitoring policies and compliance.
So, if your business is one of them, we’ve outlined a handful of reasons why you need to adopt a supplier relationship that is founded on trust:
It ensures continuity of supply.
Having a buyer-supplier relationship that is based on trust means that each party in the relationship can easily understand how they can allocate their time and resources in the management of their supply chains.
This, in effect, ensures that you can easily secure the contents of your shelves.
You can easily innovate your products and services whenever necessary.
Since both parties know and understand a company’s vision and long-term objectives, you and your suppliers are better equipped to make suggestions about how you both can innovate your product or service offerings and improve your processes.
Because of this, you can easily set goals whenever you have to innovate and work on accomplishing these objectives.
It protects you from reputational damage.
Stockholders today have expressed their preferences for businesses that extend their sustainability policies to their supply chains.
In fact, according to a study carried out by Unilever in conjunction with Flamingo and Europanel, about 33% of consumers nowadays choose to purchase products and services from businesses that they believe to be environmentally and socially responsible.
As a result, companies like Ralph Lauren and Target have made a commitment to develop sustainable sourcing guidelines and to source their materials from responsible suppliers.
It can help reduce environmental impact.
Making the planet a much better place is not only an individual responsibility.
With corporations being one of the biggest contributors of the environmental changes that we see and experience today, it is important that companies work together in responsibly managing the impact of their supply chain activities on the planet.
Not only can working with a supplier you trust, reduce your impact on the environment; you can also increase your consumer reach since customers today prefer brands that do go to the environment and society.
