In a recent article published on i-fm.net, Michael Hardware spoke to FM service providers about how they manage their supply chains.
Some of the answers reinforce the importance of maintaining accurate and up-to-date information about suppliers and maintaining good communications with them.
For example, the Government encourages such companies to work with local SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) on its contracts, as well has having national contracts with larger companies.
While often improving service levels this also clearly creates a more diverse supply chain with vast volumes of information to manage.
Causeway MyRegister uses a database of over 350,000 vendors, helping companies to compile and maintain accurate and comprehensive information on sub-contractors and suppliers. It makes it quick and easy to gather key information from suppliers using online forms and the information can be updated regularly with equal ease. In this way the risk of dealing with inappropriate or unqualified suppliers is greatly reduced.
Two of the companies interviewed for the article, Interserve and Norland Managed Services, are in the process of rolling out Causeway Tradex across their supply chains to enable electronic invoicing. Using this service, suppliers submit invoices electronically, via the Tradex hub, to the buyer’s back office systems. This cuts out the many hours that more traditional trading methods consume in managing paper documents to deliver time and financial savings as well as reducing environmental impact.
Making use of services such as Tradex and MyRegister has been proven to minimise the time spent on everyday administration, thus cutting overheads and giving a boost to profitability.
Subscribers to i-fm.net can read the full article.
