Many SRM systems focus on execution: purchase-order collaboration, delivery collaboration, reconciliation, and invoice collaboration. These are useful, but they often start too late.
In many companies we visited, poor planning collaboration between buyers and suppliers directly leads to low efficiency, too many urgent orders, low material readiness, and high inventory. Suppliers work hard to keep up, while the buyer still suffers from shortages and excess stock.
Where improvement starts
The answer is not only to push suppliers harder. A more sustainable direction is to improve internal planning and connect suppliers earlier. This means combining necessary SAP-side changes with SRM collaboration, instead of treating SRM as a document portal only.
Typical planning collaboration
- Call-off or JIT plans that tell suppliers what to deliver according to the production rhythm.
- Three-level planning: guide supplier stocking, guide supplier production, and guide supplier delivery.
- Group-level planning collaboration across many plants and centralized purchasing scenarios.
- Execution collaboration remains: order, delivery, reconciliation, invoice, and packaging-related delivery processes.