In today’s economy, supply chain management and logistics are highly important. If your supply chain is not effective and efficient, it can affect your business’s productivity and profitability. Supply chain management plays a significant role in the overall success of a company due to its vital role in bringing raw materials to the manufacturing plant and sending these goods to its respective suppliers.
In this article, you will learn about the core elements of supply chain management and how it affects your business. Alongside this topic, we will cover its integration into logistics and how they both form a successful and efficient business in the eCommerce marketplace.
Table of Contents
What is Supply Chain Management?
The 3 Core Elements of Supply Chain Effectiveness
What is Logistics?
Takeaway
What is Supply Chain Management?
Supply Chain Management (SCM) is beyond collecting raw materials and producing them into finished products. Supply chain management ensures that every step of the supply chain is carefully planned and carried out. From the process of procurement to transportation and other logistics measures, supply chain management covers how goods or services are carefully transported, organized, and accounted for. The orchestration of a good supply chain involves having a keen understanding of mitigating issues regarding supplies and skillfully responding to problems that arise.
Supply chain management covers all areas, from the production of goods to their final product. It is a systematic process that allows goods or services to be produced or delivered without trouble. A good supply chain helps businesses function more efficiently and with better organization. Excellent supply chain management also helps in reducing costs and additional expenditures.
The 3 Core Elements of Supply Chain Effectiveness
If your goal in the business is to create lasting success for your company and yourself, your supply chain must be sustainable. Contrary to popular belief, sustainability helps companies spend less amount of money while strengthening their business relationships. To accomplish this goal, companies must incorporate careful efforts in ensuring that the plans they create for their business are measurable and helpful to the ecosystem of industries and the globe.
Since supply chain management is vital to the performance of a business, there must be strategic plans that are set forth by the leaders of a particular business. To dive deeper into supply chain effectiveness, here are the three core elements that make the difference…
The 3 Core Elements
- Have your audience be at the center of your work.
Spend time researching what essential strategies you can take to reach your audience better. For example, suppose your business is supplying construction materials. In that case, you’re likely to attract companies looking to acquire materials for their renovation projects or the construction of their headquarters. If you know what your customers want, you will have no difficulty understanding how to reach and impress them.
If you want to keep your business running on all cylinders, you must ensure you are constantly engaged and updated with your audience. It’s self-service to keep your audience engaged and updated with the themes of your brand. This mostly means to make sure you are always on top of how people are responding to your work, like posts, listings, and other social media engagements. If it’s possible, it is helpful to get professional help from a designer who knows how to gauge consumer reception.
In order to ensure your audience is involved in the next phase of your work, you must continually be involving them in your plans. Whether directly or through market research like surveys and polls or indirectly through community building and networking. Understanding what your audience wants is critical. It will save you time, effort, and a lot of money by directing your creative and business decisions toward what they want and, more importantly – that they will pay for.
- Think about the planet and how your business will help make it better.
If you still haven’t started thinking about how your business will play its part in battling climate change, now is the time to do it! And if you’ve been putting it off, the facts presented to you by local and international news stations should speak for themselves. There is no need to wait for tomorrow or some specific date – start today! Even as a business owner, you would know that each of the materials we acquire comes from our world’s natural resources.
Our resources are scarce, and we must do what we can as individuals and entrepreneurs to protect, preserve, and propagate our natural resources. Some businesses have been forming a feasible solution to combating the climate crisis. Instead of putting up shops and cutting more trees to build factories, there are a couple of solutions that help in reducing these practices. Other businesses like eCommerce platforms have chained to their core values – the commitment and action plan on planting more trees. One example would be the search engine called Ecosia – a company that is dedicated to promoting reforestation around the globe.
From a business standpoint, usually, when it comes to the environment, companies say one thing but do another. Sadly, this is true for most brands out there. There are a few companies, however, who have chosen to take sustainability seriously in their business model and how they conduct their everyday operations. They are allowing the planet to rely less on toxic chemical products and processes. One reputable startup company is Shoppable. The company is the Philippines’ first digital procurement platform – helping in reducing carbon emissions by providing a single channel of source for companies and private individuals alike to manage their procurement better.
Here’s why you should join Shoppable…
- It’s FREE – It’s free to start selling on the Shoppable platform. As long as you’re a legally registered business, you’ll be able to list products for free on Shoppable. You only pay a commission if an item sells on the platform, and you get paid.
- Expand your Customer base – Through Shoppable, you’ll reach thousands of new customers for free. Think of Shoppable as your marketing arm that you only pay when you have a sale.
- Get your eCommerce Store – Increase sales by digitizing your product catalog and reaching customers worldwide. Print catalogs are dying, costly, and not environment friendly – digital is the future. Sellers can get their eCommerce store on Shoppable Business that can be given to any client.
- Procurement Technology – Enable your customers to pay you online through Bank Transfers, Credit Cards, Over-the-Counter Payments, Recurring Payments, and more. Easily track and manage orders, payments, and shipping through the Shoppable platform.
- Shipping Technology – Shoppable has integrated directly with multiple shipping couriers, enabling you to provide same-day to next-day delivery to your customers.
- Compliance – Sales invoices and 2307’s required? Don’t worry. Shoppable has got you covered! The platform keeps sellers fully compliant, never worrying about missing documents.
- 3PL & Fulfillment Services – Need additional manpower? Shoppable can provide you with warehousing and fulfillment solutions so you can expand your brand to different locations enabling you to get products delivered faster to your customers.
- Real Sellers, Real Buyers, and Real Products only – We vet and interview sellers that join the platform, so you will be assured that all of the products and transactions are authentic and legitimate.
- Plan for economics.
You need to have a very clear picture of what you are looking for in a logistics and supply chain partner as well as evaluating the service providers you come across. The last thing you want to do is settle for less than what you need. If you follow the basic rules mentioned from the moment this article began, then there’s a strong chance that your logistics and supply chain will be an effective one.
Various aspects of supply chain management and logistics should be carefully thought out and planned for, as these processes can bring in a lot of revenue to a business or will only further decrease the profit margins. A successful supply chain management is vital in any business and it is also an effective tool for increasing profit by decreasing costs.
By creating a strong network and making good use of technology, like joining the digital procurement platform – Shoppable, companies can have an all-around and holistic view of their supply chain processes. It will help all the associated members of the network to do things better and more efficiently, thus improving the overall performance of the company.
What is Logistics?
Logistics is a complicated process that has been fine-tuned by companies to become more efficient and cost-effective over the years. Careful consideration will be needed to place business endeavors in good standing with their logistics strategies. Logistics is a set of activities that provinces route and the flow of materials at a given time. It helps to segregate available capacities and the optimum use to maximize performance by having enhanced data from shipments and routes.
Logistics are core components in strategies that make it possible for businesses to reach their goals through cost reduction, quality improvement, and innovation. Logistics is a process that requires close attention to monitoring as it is closely associated with the supply chain. Thus, logistics managers are vital to the success of any business, whether small or large. The complexity involved in planning, coordinating, and managing these systems can be intimidating for first-time logistics personnel; however, efforts in making a company’s logistics better reflected in their overall performance.
On a global scale…
Logistics on a global scale has already evolved into a critical part of supply chain management and consumer demand. During the past two decades, logistics management has forged partnerships with product development, increasing efficiency and meeting consumer demands. Companies have also lowered costs significantly since the beginning of the 21st Century when logistics and the digitization of the supply chain have been improved.
When companies started forming partnerships with suppliers, couriers, and warehouse companies, their costs decreased by a significant amount. A new innovation in the Philippine eCommerce industry was launched, covering access to consumers, suppliers, courier services, warehousing, and complete digital transactions. This platform is what we mentioned earlier – Shoppable. Simplifying the stream of communication from one end to another continues to shape how efficiently businesses grow and how much faster they are able to create quality work.
In present time, social media and the internet have raised the caliber of customer expectations and product standards. The overall performance of a company is seen not only through their finished product alone but also through the service they provide from order fulfillment, delivery, and post-delivery course. Creating a doable and high-quality strategy for supply chain management and logistics can be troublesome when you work alone. Hence, joining a platform like Shoppable would be much easier and beneficial for your business because you can reach a global market.
Takeaway
Within supply chain management, warehousing, inventory management, and logistics are necessary demands for designing a blueprint to achieve improved business processes and increase customer satisfaction. Incorporating logistics into a supply chain can help you improve your business’ customer service, vendor relationships, and inventory management.
The future of logistics and supply chain management for companies is promising. It is being fueled by recent technological advances, which help improve the accounts and transactions from each end to form better services. As companies continue to make software and digital tools a priority, they can expect their entire supply chain organization to have better communication and workflows, which will ultimately help them provide the best customer satisfaction possible.
The use of web-based technological platforms like Shoppable helps companies like yours become more aware of their internal and external processes. These logistics and supply chain principles should be a key component for companies who are not only looking to maximize efficiency but also to gain a competitive advantage when it comes to meeting the expectations of customers. Get ready to be part of the largest digital procurement platform in the Philippines! Contact [email protected] to begin!
