Feras Alhlou walks through how to audit your suppliers: check if relationships are cooperative, assess their performance and pricing, send surveys to open communication, formalize agreements with contracts that spell out scope and response times, then decide who stays and who goes.
No matter how small or large your business is, your company operates within an ecosystem, an ecosystem of suppliers, vendors, and contractors, and they are key to your success. Without them, you can't deliver your service to your clients reliably. Ask yourself these questions as you plan to get the most out of your relationships with your vendors. Is the relationship combative or cooperative? Are you happy with their performance and price? Have you established an open line of communication? If you're busy, at least send the survey out. If you have informal agreements with suppliers, it's time to put a contract in place and agree on scope, response time, and pricing. And last, which vendors you should keep and nurture and which vendors you want to change.
