When it comes to Supply Chain and Logistics, a huge number of areas need to be catered with the expertise to boost the business. This is where Supply Chain consultants come in. Supply chain consulting offer the management of multiple vendors, freight costs for shipments and help in price negotiation too. An efficient supply chain consultancy firm analyses its client’s every detail. This requires high industry experience and dealing with on-field tasks. They can be members of recognized organisations and have a range of qualifications in the field.
Client analysis involves getting to know the firm better and getting familiar with its day-to-day activities; right from every service provided to every transaction made. This helps in analyzing every aspect of the firm and find it’s positive and negative aspects and create a plan to boost its efficiency. In the case of supply chain and logistics, it includes offering:
a) Integrated Planning
Consultants, with their experience, can provide valuable insights to the company for every facet of their supply chain by planned cash flow, sales & operations, and maintaining supply and demand. They advise the company on how to make processes and networks adaptive and responsive to the latest market demands.
b) Customer Driven Supply
With the evolving technology and changing ecosystem, the customer demand keeps developing accordingly. Consultants keep a close check on these developments and provide the companies valuable insights on how to make changes in the supply chain according to customer demand. They assist in designing a supply chain, which instead of being a cost-based money sinkhole, is customer-driven and can even help gain customers.
c) Minimizing Risks
The risk of missing supplies, delay in supply or price hike due to an increase in demand can result in losses. A consultant can help you minimize this risk by the detailed analysis of the market’s demand, supply routes, etc., modeling behavior in different times and conditions and the use of forecasting tools.
d) Global Network Management
When dealing with global shipments, a lot of factors play an important role in this process. Local imports/export laws, location, facilities, weather conditions, labor laws, traffic routes are some of these factors which need to be considered and an efficient Supply Chain Consulting can help a firm manage these processes with a lot more efficiency.
e) Supermodelling
It is the term given to the complex simulation of processes to create a complicated environment for the Supply Chain to test its efficiency. Consultants play a pivotal role in this process as they provide information from external sources to create better simulations that cannot be provided by the company itself. This helps in making a new supply chain more reliable, efficient, and more useful.
Supply Chain Consulting provides a “bigger picture” to the company which will help in its growth. While many owners and managers are hesitant in spending money on hiring professional consultancy firms, they fail at understanding that these firms can multiply their profits exponentially.
