Its not what you do in supply chain terms its how you do it!  Collaboration is often cited as the differentiating factor.  However, it is an important but only part of managing the portfolio of relationships with customers, partners and suppliers.

Strategic Relationships

Integrated Supply Chain

Having a clear picture of the supply chain and relationships with customers, partners and suppliers provides the basis to understand the flows of information and products from end to end as well as a template to identify different risks and opportunities.

Supply Chain Mapping
We have developed supply chain maps for individual organisations, local clusters and at a national level for specific sectors.  This powerful approach illustrates the architecture and relationships between organisations and supply chain tiers and can be used to identify opportunities for collaboration, cross fertilisation and consolidation or reduction as appropriate.

Portfolio Analysis
Managing risk and value is the basis of determining your portfolio of relationships with customers, partners and suppliers which in turn determines appropriate relationship strategies and how the relationship or procurement lifecycle can be managed.

Relationship Positioning
Relationship Positioning is a key tool for relationship and performance improvement.  This approach considers both the customer and supplier roles in terms of strategy, requirements, attitudes, systems and people contribute from both perspectives to overall supply chain performance.

Value Add Profile
Creating value add profiles (cost versus time) across the supply chain spanning multiple organisations can clearly illustrate where bottlenecks exist in the supply chain and where improvement opportunities exist.  These predominantly exist at the boundaries between organisations and need a collaborative approach to improve the overall performance of the supply chain.