SA HEALTH
Healthy Supplier Relationships for a Healthy Supply Chain Upon stepping into the role , Andrea was keen to improve supplier relationship management , something her team embraced . “ It ’ s important to realise you must talk to suppliers and build up those important relationships . Otherwise , you can ’ t look at things like innovation . You must have those relationships in place , and it ’ s important to be clear about what the guidelines are . We should have good working practices that allow us to have those conversations .”
“ We run an annual supplier conference . When we had our first one , people questioned why we would run a supplier conference in the public sector . But it ’ s important to pull everyone in , which allows everyone to hear the same information at the same time . We can share with them our vision and our business planning and strategy and where we ' re heading , which then makes it easier for all of us when we ’ re looking for support for goods or services , or whatever it may be .”
“ The supplier conference has been growing year-over-year . Last year , we moved it to a virtual conference , and that still worked well . We incorporated one-onone meetings as well , either with myself , Directors of Procurement , our the Head of SRM or other members of my team . We make sure that suppliers have as much access to us as we can . Everyone is really busy , but we deliberately set that time . And the suppliers know that we do those round tables throughout the year , so that is certainly improving how we work together and the innovation that comes from that .” “ It ’ s important to remember that it ’ s those relationships with suppliers that we relied on when Covid hit . Maintaining those relationships meant we could pick up the
134 June 2021