Highlights
Small suppliers for big impact: optimising your supply chain in a turbulent economy.
In our third consecutive quarter of negative growth, it’s becoming all too clear that South Africa is well and truly facing some tough economic times ahead, and businesses are already beginning to suffer.
According to Statistics South Africa, weak manufacturing and trade sectors led the recession, with falls of 3.7% and 5.9% respectively in the period of Q4 2016 and Q1 2017. More worrying is that over the last quarter, the tertiary sector (comprising government, trade, transport, personal services and finance) recorded its first quarter of decline since 2009.
Times are tough and money is tight. And while it can be tempting to put your big plans on hold until the worst has passed, you might be missing a golden opportunity to recession-proof your business by shaking things up in your supply chain and adding more SME suppliers to your database, says Stuart Townshend, Edge Growth Director, in this month’s SmartProcurement.
By offering SMEs a valuable spot in its supply chain, an organisation is not only making an investment in the South African business landscape and offering entrepreneurs a helping hand – they are investing in their own competitiveness and continued relevance in tough economic times.
Here’s how:
Agility
What’s the best way to get ahead of your competitors when there’s less and less business to go around? One way may be to evolve your business’s processes and digital capabilities. Another might be to develop new products or services, or improve customer service.
A smaller and more flexible SME supplier can help you do all this and more – quickly, more affordably and often with a greater level of bespoke customisation than their larger counterparts would be willing to offer.
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