As the speed and complexity of supply chain activities continue to escalate, the ability of organizations to meet customer demand becomes more and more challenging. For corporate leaders, the end goal is to minimize inventory investment and lower transaction costs while still increasing competitive advantage and expanding globally.

In almost every industry, supplier relationships can either make or break an organization's ability to service customers responsively and reliably while maintaining cost effectiveness and managing assets effectively. Without an effective supplier relationship management strategy, you may encounter:

1. inability to compete in a global economy,
2. high sourcing costs,
3. high material pricing,
4. inconsistencies in quality,
5. inconsistencies in supply,
6. an adversarial and unproductive battle between supply chain partners,
7. inability to retain good suppliers, and
8. dissatisfied customers.

However, through effective communications and integrated processes, driven by collaboration with suppliers, you can drive supply chain effectiveness and competitive advantage. Rationalizing the supply base to include the strongest, best-performing, and most collaborative upstream partners and then building integrated teams to design and implement programs that enable visibility throughout the supply chain are the core to this strategy.

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