How to Impose Data-Sharing Requirements on Your Suppliers—and Still Be Thought of as a Great Customer

You’ve issued your traceability data sharing and labeling Supplier Requirements Letter. It’s a veritable masterpiece of text and technicalities topped off with a compelling call to action.

There’s just one…tiny…little…problem.

Suppliers are under no obligation to respond, acknowledge receipt or even communicate their intentions regarding your amazing letter.

How to ensure success? Think more broadly than just issuing a letter.

Great customers provide more than a deadline and a technical specification. They explain the business and regulatory rationale, distinguish mandatory requirements from preferred practices, offer practical training and establish a reasonable path for testing and implementation. They also create clear channels for questions, exceptions and escalation.

Strong supplier governance requires making expectations understandable, achievable and consistently enforced. Companies that combine firm requirements with transparency, support and reasonable implementation practices are more likely to receive accurate data, strengthen supplier relationships and remain a customer suppliers want to serve.

The following should be in your plan to successfully engage with suppliers and retain that preferred customer status as a buyer.

-         Outreach: Back up that sexy call to action with genuine engagement. Tell the story of how your suppliers benefit from compliance. Host a town hall or webinar and invite all of your suppliers, listen to their concerns and make sure to follow up on questions.

-         Education: Know that you likely have a diversity of capabilities across suppliers. Some are going to need a lot more hand holding than others. So, help them learn and do the things you require through educational materials.

-         Publish: Walk the talk and share success stories and challenges overcome. Suppliers who are meeting expectations can beu sed as case studies to illustrate the “art of the possible” is indeed possible to those more skeptical.

-         Partner: This one is tricky because of more than a century of zero-sum practices on who wins and loses based on price. However, only the foolish suppliers resist efforts to engage on more than just price. Just be sure to develop your partnering program with a clear value proposition and roadmap for your suppliers.

Outcome?

For a moment put yourself in your suppliers’ shoes. How might they perceive your efforts of outreach and engagement that accompany the requirements you’ve stated?

Done right and they should recognize you as a customer who values them as a supplier and wants shared success. They may not literally state it, but they may be feeling it. Especially in contrast to their other customers who simply issue demands with nothing of substance beyond an email attachment.

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