How to Ensure a Business Supplier Can Meet the Needs of Multiple Locations
As franchisees expand their businesses to multiple locations, it can be quite difficult to manage a complex network of suppliers or vendors. Can all these vendors service every location you have opened? Will deliveries arrive on time? Do they have the capacity to support you? If you choose a business supplier who can’t handle the needs of your multiple locations, your business will suffer. Review the pointers below to learn how best to set up a personalized vendor channel for all your franchise locations, understanding that this network must be scalable and reliable.
Work With a Vendor Association or Network
Working with a supplier network is often the best way to ensure that all your locations can be serviced. Delivering supplies and even sending technicians to each location requires support from a manager at the corporate level in order to avoid confusion. This new manager, however, is at the mercy of the vendor or supplier network in your area.
At the same time, it is best to work with a company that can put you in touch with suppliers who service your area without the need for endless research. You can easily get a guarantee that they will reach each location, but you can also ask how broad their reach can be. Plan for the future, choose the supplier with the most expansive routes, and avoid supply backups that often flummox franchises across America.
Calculating Your Maximum Needs
When you work with suppliers, you must have reassurances that they can meet your maximum needs. During your busiest time of the year, can this supplier get to your locations with everything you need in a timely manner?
Yes, you may have found the vendor with the widest network of trucks and routes, but they may not have the inventory required to serve your business when you need it most. Balancing these two realities is a large part of forming a partnership.
Do not sign a contract until you have a written deal that explains exactly how much product you can be provided at any one time, which may include dates and quantities.
Customer Care
You have found an incredible supplier who is willing to meet all your needs, but do they offer incredible customer care? You have taken the time to hire a manager who will look after every shipment, but can they reach the supplier? If your new partner cannot be reached or offers dismissive, discourteous, and/or inaccurate customer care, you will be frustrated every single day.
This frustration will creep into your operation because a lack of supplies or a preponderance of late deliveries affects everyone involved, from the fry cook to the general manager and everyone in between.
Coordination With Your Suppliers is Key to Your Success
Utilizing the tips above will help you find the best suppliers, coordinate with their dispatchers or trucks, and keep your locations humming. Optimal management of each location depends heavily on decisions you make behind the scenes, and a careful review of all the possibilities prior to signing a contract will save money, time, and headaches during the working day
