Communication between buyers and suppliers is critical to ensuring high-functioning and transparent relationships. Effective communication facilitates any sort of partnering or business relationship, as it can:
- Improve collaboration and strengthen day-to-day interactions by facilitating the sharing of ideas and working together toward mutual goals.
- Lead to a clearer understanding of expectations, requirements, and timelines.
- Enable prompt identification and resolution of any issues or challenges that pop up.
- Facilitate flexibility and adaptability when unexpected adjustments or changes are needed.
- Identify cost-saving opportunities and remove wasteful practices.
- Encourage continuous improvement and foster innovation.
- Enable proactive risk identification and earlier measures in risk mitigation.
Focus on clarity
Everything starts with setting clear communication expectations. This includes mutual agreement on communication frequency, preferred channels, and reasonable response times.
Documentation ensures everyone is on the same page. Keeping a record of all critical communications, decisions, and agreements is essential to maintain clarity and provide easy references when there’s a dispute.
Rely on that documentation to deliver clear instructions. In addition to articulating agreed-upon details (such as decisions or agreements), the documentation clearly outlines requirements, specifications, measurements used for evaluation, and corrective action when expectations are unmet.
Don’t hesitate to ask clarifying questions. It never hurts to ask relevant questions to fully comprehend what your suppliers say. Act fast to address any potential misunderstandings.
Assign dedicated points of contact. When you establish a specific individual as the primary point of contact, it helps ensure consistent communication while avoiding confusion that could happen with multiple information sources.
Encourage sharing
Establish mutual goals. By collaborating with your suppliers to establish shared objectives and goals, you can better align your efforts for mutual success.
Share relevant information. Don’t be afraid to share external information that supports your strategic partnership, such as forecasts, market trends, and changes in your business needs.
Join together to celebrate successes. Acknowledge and celebrate shared successes and achieved milestones.
Emphasize mutual benefits. By highlighting the mutual benefits of effective communication, both parties can experience improved productivity, reduced costs, and enhanced product quality.
Embrace feedback
Actively seek feedback. In addition to seeking input on the overall supplier-customer process and relationship, seek specific feedback on how the communication process is working and what could be improved.
Establish and maintain a feedback loop. Create and nurture a mechanism where both parties can provide feedback on the communication process.
Be attentive to timing
Schedule regular check-ins and meetings. Don’t just wait for issues or concerns to prompt communication. Set up regular check-ins and meetings with suppliers to discuss ongoing projects, updates, and potential challenges.
Be responsive and timely. Make efforts to promptly respond to supplier communication and respect agreed-upon response times.
Fine-tune communication methods
Use multiple communication channels. Rather than relying on a single communication channel, use email, phone calls, videoconferencing, and collaborative platforms to provide various ways to communicate effectively and promptly.
Consider cultural and language differences. An additional effort to ensure clarity and avoid misunderstandings is to be especially mindful of cultural and language differences. Misunderstandings can happen just through a lack of awareness of cultural norms.
Adopt the spirit of improvement
Address issues or concerns proactively. Promptly addressing any areas where there are issues contributes to working collaboratively with suppliers to find solutions.
Encourage continuous improvement. There’s always room for improvement in communication, starting with regular assessment and refinement of your communication processes and strategies.
Improving supplier performance is a collaborative process
Thurman Co. is uniquely positioned to assist organizations in various aspects of Supplier Management, including identifying opportunities to improve communication and foster collaboration for mutual success.
We help businesses manage projects to significantly impact their success and growth. When you’re ready to put your project in the hands of a trusted professional organization, contact us to learn more about working together.