The best strategy for a business to obtain a greater return on investment (ROI) is to manage its affairs to create workflow efficiencies and economies of scale. Most businesses often fail to realize that their vendors (a.k.a suppliers) play a critical role towards their success in the market and ultimately profit maximization.
Inadequate vendor management practices can hinder your work routines by slowing down productivity and creating inefficiencies. For instance, a business does not possess a uniform record about the types of assets purchased from different vendors. Trying to find a solution to this situation will lead to wastage of resources. Vendor management through manual spreadsheet records does not suffice to business needs of today, as it lacks accessibility and automation. Whereas, in contrast, a cloud based management system offers your business supercharged features to tackle suppliers the right way.
The struggles associated with vendor management
If you do not have a robust vendor management in place for your business, you are most likely to face the following challenges when it comes to dealing with suppliers:
- An absence of vendor’s track record: Lack of information with regards to a vendor’s previous transactions and projects will lead to misinformed future decisions about your choice of vendors.
- Non-transparency between supplier and company: Often times, the company is not able to keep a record of purchase orders and the invoice of assets purchased from a vendor. This can cause serious financial trouble for a business, especially at the time of audits.
- Unreliable data: As a buyer-supplier relationship becomes complicated, the need for accurate data increases. Without authentic data on your suppliers, it becomes difficult to record and evaluate their performance. Data stored through manual documentation is not easily accessible to everyone and is more susceptible to error as compared to data stored on a cloud-based software.
“[ My biggest procurement challenge] is finding credible, granular internal data.” —Supply Chain Manager for the Americas.
- Quality Control: What good are damaged products or assets that do not live up to their expected lifespan to your business? To deal with this situation, it becomes important to note down if the assets provided by your vendors are performing as they are supposed to. You can cut down on a lot of extra maintenance and repair expenses by choosing the right management system in such cases.
Choosing the right software for vendor management
As the scale of vendor relations and service management becomes more and more complex, the risks involved in these practices become more prominent. Successful vendor management should be a key component for every business. With the help of a cloud-based asset tracking software, your business can handle vendors more effectively to mitigate risks and optimize asset performance. A single source of information for all your vendor related queries will lead to a more streamlined business environment and increased productivity!
How can you use asset tracking software for vendor management?
Your business might not be able to fully utilize the benefits of a successful supplier relationship without the right tools. To help you choose a software that caters to your vendor management needs, we will look at some of the features you can avail by using a cloud-based tracking software below:
Administrative efficiency
Having a centralized information hub through a cloud-based software for your assets acquired from suppliers will drive up efficiency in your vendor management system. This will help you reduce costs associated with data duplication, loss of data and human error in asset management. A cloud-based system will not only provide increased security to keep your data safe but will also protect it against unauthorized access.
Read more: 5 Ways to increase asset visibility using IT asset tracking software
Increased transparency
With the use of purchase order module in asset tracking software, you can effectively keep a tab on all your asset receipts. This will help you save time by keeping all purchase orders related to one vendor at a single place and help you in updating asset requirements accordingly. If you are short of an asset, you will automatically get a new purchase order to restock that asset if configured in the system. An automated system of vendor management helps create a more systematic workflow.
Improved asset performance
Features like service history and history tracking help you keep a record of asset performance over the business year. It is quite possible that you have multiple vendors for different assets used by your business. If that is true, then it becomes imperative to analyze and evaluate the assets provided by all your vendors. The option of service history in asset tracking software helps you prepare trends in asset utilization and costs. If you spot a downward trend in the cost benefit analysis for an asset then you can decide whether you want to change your vendor or replace that asset or probably both. This way you will be able to use the metrics to boost vendor performances in your favor.
Read more: Stages of asset lifecycle and role of asset tracking software
Reduced risks
A well-informed business strategy always aims to minimize risks involved in any procedure. Similar is the case with vendor management. Implementing a flawed asset management system can cause your business to suffer from huge financial losses. This can also cause low productivity. Service tickets module integrated to asset tracking software allows you to keep track of maintenance events, costs and service notes about vendors. If your assets require frequent maintenance checks and repairs, this means either the vendor has sent damaged goods or bad quality assets have been dispatched.
It’s not necessary to only have vendors to buy stock, you can have dedicated vendors for equipment repairs and maintenance as well. With the right management tools, you have access to in-depth data which helps you recognize risks before they adversely impact your business.
Cost effectiveness
A cloud-based asset management system helps you get clear insights about the costs associated with different vendors. Transparent mechanisms like automated purchase orders provide you with all expenses related to a specific vendor. When you have a clear access to hidden or low visible costs that are directly related to your vendors, you are then in a better position to save on these costs. Asset tracking software offers you cost effective regimes which boost vendor management and help you increase your profit margins.
Source: InformationWeek
Choose asset tracking software that manages vendors effectively
Increased reliance on automated asset management systems helps to streamline workflows and this ultimately leads to greater economies of scale. If your business wants to deal effectively with its vendors then it should invest in a cloud-based asset tracking software. Such software comes with features to reduce administrative inefficiencies, enhance asset performance and increase profit margins for your business all through successful vendor management strategies. In addition to this, the software offers to protect and analyze your data to increase productivity and streamline supplier-buyer relationships.
Have questions about our asset tracking software?
The best solution is one that decreases operational costs and boosts ROIs across your organization. EZOfficeInventory is the leading asset tracking software used by SMBs and industry leaders to improve vendor management all over the globe.
For more assistance, drop us an email at support@ezo.io.
