Virtual Procurement is Here to Stay. And That's Not a Bad Thing

I spotted this article posted by one of our partners in the US, Thomas Ross.

He went onto to summarize this article in terms of the benefits a business can get by moving it's Procurement and Supply Chain over to being run virtually and by social, which are:-

• YouTube video tours
• Video calls
• Virtual plant tours
• Online spec reviews
• Online vendor selection
• Online shipping and receiving
• Online ordering
• Online engineering
• Online customer support

There are also four additional areas where social is impacting on supply chains.

1.  In the world of Business to Consumer (B2C) or even in certain elements of Business to Business (B2B) you can use Social Media Listening yo understand the sentiment of your market. and you can feed this into your demand plan.

For example, if you make condensed milk and there is a condensed milk challenge on TikTok then you will know that demand will go up.  You could, of course, create that demand by starting your own challenge on TikTok.

Or is eating pizza binge watching box sets on Netflix back in?  If you make raw materials for pizza, this will impact your supply chain.

TikTokInstagram, facebook, Linkedin, or any other social network. 

just being an example, it could be on

2.  Procurement and Supply Chain leaders should have a personal brand on Linkedin and be connecting to people to create a network.

In the current world of uncertainty, you never know when you might need "back up" contacts, it was described to me recently as having "people in your back pocket". 

People who you trust, people who you understand their credibility.  In the current world of Brexit, Covid19 and US Presidential elections, country debt defaults, you never know what is going to happen.

3. Expanding on that point CPOs may need to do due-diligence on a company quickly and having an active network to dip into.  It might not mean you are connected to somebody, but maybe you can see a contact is already using a supplier you want to use and you can get a quick reference or referral.

4. Marketplaces are OK but you still need to do your due diligence, risk assessment and reputation management on a business.  In this current VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world.

Thanks to Helen MacKenzie for us counsel on this.