Weekly Supplier Reviews

(Courtesy www.nexicom.net)

Communicating with suppliers can be a challenge for any organization.  If the supplier is local to the operation, then it is easy to communicate on a weekly if not daily basis.  Simply travel the short distance to the suppliers base of operations or have them travel  to your home base.  It's best if you have the one on one communication to build trust and get to know each other personally.  This helps the partnership flourish.

However most of the time the distance between operation and their suppliers is too great to travel frequently.  So you have to resort to scheduled phone calls (telecoms) or a video conference. Most likely it will be by phone.  With time differences of 3 hours or more, it becomes a challenge to coordinate schedule times, often with one party calling in from home or early in the morning.

Some important points to remember when setting meetings up with suppliers:

1. Ensure that one person is in charge of setting up the telecoms and has appropriate call-in numbers to ensure that the meeting will start on time and everyone is present.  It is maddening when some people have incorrect or outdated information and valuable time is lost.
2. Have an agenda available in advance and follow it.  The meeting leader's primary task is to keep everyone speaking to agenda items and not going off on a tangent.
3. Assign action items to anyone and have a completion date agreed to.  Once the completion date arrives check with the parties involved to determine if all items are complete.
4. If action items aren't completed, don't keep extending dates endlessly. You may have to set up a separate meeting to close the item.   Additionally you may have to involve management to help close the issue without further delay.

Video teleconferencing can provide face to face communication essential for a good supplier relationship
(Courtesy www.itthoughtoftheday.com)