Benchmark Your Supply Chain Maturity

The supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In this QAD Precision Report, we look at how to assess supply chain maturity within your enterprise to ensure success in 2022 and beyond.

If we know anything about 2022, it’s that this year is going to be full of uncertainties. Labor and material scarcities will continue to plague manufacturers, distributors, and customers alike. 

Customer expectations have exploded due to the Amazon Effect. Customers, regardless of supplier, expect quick delivery methods with real-time transit visibility of products. However, that doesn’t mean global enterprises can’t have the tools to remain agile and meet consumer and industry demands as they happen. 

B2B, B2C and D2C e-commerce sales are booming. While the skyrocketing growth experienced at the start of the pandemic has slowed, e-commerce continues to perform strongly. 

Furthermore, an increasing number of people are willing to make cross-border purchases. This presents an opportunity and a threat. Your customers can be anywhere — and so can your competition. 

Maturing Your Operations

 Leading global enterprises have mature supply chain operations, and in order to be competitive, yours must be, too. The most “mature” enterprises possess clearly defined and repeatable processes supported by automation and digitization. 

A less mature company may optimize individual practices within departments. However, a mature organization streamlines processes across the entire enterprise in a customer-centric model. 

The aim is end-to-end visibility across the global supply chain. This allows for an ecosystem of partners sharing real-time information for better visibility and timely, data driven decision-making. As a result, all partners in the value chain benefit to increase market share and growth opportunities.

It’s with these well-defined best practices that global enterprises are able to optimize business processes and operations. Through risk mitigation, they are able to ensure customer satisfaction and increased return on investment. After all, your supply chain is only as strong as your weakest link.

How Can Enterprises Benchmark Their Operations?

Supply chain management is more than just the timely movement of raw materials and final products. It is increasingly a critical business strategy. Mature supply chain processes allow enterprises to cut costs and gain a competitive advantage.

That’s why we want to help you benchmark your operations. It is also why we offer a no-obligation comprehensive benchmark survey on our website. Areas covered include global trade management, compliance and global transportation. Questions include:

• Do you have sufficient head count for your import compliance functions?

• Are you manually generating export documents?

• Are the customs filings being done manually from a separate system?

• Do you have online access to trade-related content (e.g. tariffs, HTS classifications)?

• Are there multiple departments that can be affected by a screening hold?

• Are you currently experiencing shipment delays due to incorrect documents?

• Are you shopping for the best carrier and service on a shipment by shipment basis?

• Are 95% or more of your international shipments delivered "perfect orders"?

By answering these questions on supply chain activities, we are able to compare your supply chain with other industry leaders through customized analysis by QAD Precision experts. The aim is to provide you and your organization with targeted areas of improvement. After completing the survey, you will receive your company's score compared to other industry leaders.

We will also supply a detailed report on your operations that covers the following evaluation areas:

• Global trade management: efficiency is key in global trade and customs often interferes, impacting reputation and customer relationships. We provide management assistance from import and export management to licensing and communications.

• Trade compliance: compliance is crucial in global trade as non-compliance can set you back financially. From pallets to parcels to shipping container freight, trade content is evaluated by us, including denied party screening and compliance audit trails. 

• Transportation operations: timely and cost-effective shipments are crucial to any shipping success. These operations are evaluated to display how improved operations result in lower costs and increased efficiencies for you. 

• Freight bill auditing: more and more companies are processing a high number of freight bills without auditing. They are likely to be overpaying significantly and we make reconciling your shipping operations easy and efficient. 

• Customs auditing: these audits have significant financial and reputational impacts on businesses. We help in compliance with customs legislations that can be confusing and ever changing. 

• Free trade agreements (FTAs): utilizing FTAs is one of the smartest moves global shippers can make. We help by ridding/reducing import tariffs that have a huge financial impact on any global business, especially those in manufacturing. 

• Record keeping: regulation and compliance work is essential in the global trade game. We assess whether your record-keeping operations can be improved upon. 

• E-commerce fulfillment strategy: happy customers always return. With more carrier, delivery, and service options, we help increase control and customer satisfaction. 

What’s next?

Need more guidance? After you complete the survey, we will send you an email benchmarking your operations against supply chain leaders. 

As well as your overall benchmark score,  we will create a detailed report explaining your company’s individual module scores and how each of these areas impacts your organization. 

This report covers areas where your current operations are working well, as well as highlighting problem areas that your company may need to address. As a result, your company can easily identify processes that are: 

• Best-in-class or near best-in-class

• Sufficient but offer scope for improvement

• Gaps and inefficiencies that could make your company vulnerable to a regulatory audit and penalties and/or higher than necessary transportation costs

This detailed report will help your organization hone in on the areas where you could most benefit by digitizing and automating your processes in order to increase efficiency, manage costs and mitigate risk.

Should you wish to discuss the findings with an expert, please get in touch with us here.

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Further Reading

KEY CHANGES IN THE HARMONIZED SYSTEM 2022 

4 STEPS TO STREAMLINE GLOBAL SHIPPING

THE BENEFITS OF INTEGRATING TRADE COMPLIANCE AND SHIPPING