Supplier Relationship Management: Where are we now? Where are we going?

Supplier relationship management (SRM) continues to be a major focus within the procurement and supply chain community and on the strategic agenda of many C-suite executives. As companies refine their plans for 2014 (and beyond), many are grappling with whether to expand SRM efforts and investment, and, if so, how. To provide further clarity regarding which specific SRM practices deliver the greatest value and enable organizations to benchmark themselves against peers and cross-industry leaders, this article shares preliminary results from an ongoing global study conducted by Vantage Partners (comprising 669 responses from more than 330 companies to date).

SRM will be critical over the next 3-5 years, and many companies have significant room for improvement While 78% of respondents indicate that their company has some form of SRM pro-gram, fewer than 10% of these individuals rate their company’s approach to SRM as “mature and highly effective.” At the same time, the survey results highlight an overwhelming belief that SRM will be important or very important to a company’s success over the next 3-5 years, suggesting that many companies should make considerable investments in SRM in the near future (figure 1). When asked to estimate the percentage of the potential value of supplier relationships that is actually realized today, respondents indicate that, on average, they are only realizing 44% of the potential available value, which means they could be realizing 1.5 times more value from their supplier relationships.