- Procurement
The internet now plays a critical role in access to information regarding the availability, pricing, sources, and technical data about a product. As such, supply chain partners now have readily available information at their disposal. This substantially reduces the cost of purchases and increases collaboration and cooperation. Therefore, members of the supply chain must cooperate in making the information regarding procurement available online in folders that can be accessed easily by members. This will streamline procurement and make the process as straightforward as possible because the best sources of certain products and pricing can be accessed faster.
- Automatic purchasing
Continuous monitoring of the inventory levels is hectic and takes up a lot of time. However, having an automated solution to do so on your behalf can work wonders while allowing you to focus on other things. Ever thought of an ERP solution? The modern ERP solutions with supply chain management (SCM) capabilities can help automate purchasing. You can program your ERP software to automatically place orders with specific vendors when your inventory levels drop below certain levels. Doing this successfully will be a great win because one of the most critical parts of any supply chain strategy is preemptively maintaining the right inventory levels.
- Supply
The most crucial role of the internet regarding supply is to increase the size of the accessible market. Therefore, suppliers that use the internet and various platforms available over the web to market their goods and services can access different markets globally. Internet is transparent and often allows suppliers to achieve greater sales volumes, which is crucial in filling the strategic gaps that had left the suppliers at a disadvantage. With the ease of access to the customers by the suppliers, there is a benefit of reduced costs of transactions because transactions are carried out faster and efficiently compared to using the traditional approaches.
- Collaboration
There is nothing as important as collaboration in modern supply chain management. Without proper cooperation between you and your suppliers or customers, many things will go wrong along the way. Although managing the supply chain over the internet is still at the early stages, it has been proven already that there are countless possibilities for integrating supply chain and procurement functions. At the same time, suppliers want a high, predictable sales volume. Purchasers, on the other hand, are looking for a reliable and efficient cost with low cost.
With the right relationships, both these goals can be satisfied by offering the on production and on procurement needs to the partners through long-term relationships. This will lead to high steady volumes that will allow suppliers to offer their products at a lower and reasonable cost as the purchaser benefits from reducing cost and reliability of supply. Generally, cooperation allows suppliers and purchasers to rely on one another and build long-lasting partnerships that will benefit them mutually.