Four Steps for Building a Collaborative Digital Supply Chain

The American Fashion & Apparel industry relies heavily on imports. Global suppliers and factories are an integral part of sourcing and supply chain operations. Building strong partner relationships and improving visibility across the supply chain result in higher reliability, flexibility, and agility.

“98% of clothes and shoes purchased in the US are imported.”

Read more: How Collaborative Planning Can Revolutionize Your Retail Supply Chain

To achieve this, focus on these key processes:

• Vendor Onboarding

You need to establish a digital onboarding process to track new vendor requests, vendor profiling, and segmentation, as well as an approval workflow to automate and track vendor onboarding approvals. Critically, establish a self-service portal for vendors, factories, agents, and buying offices to work together during the sourcing process.

• Supply Planning

You can easily share real-time supply forecast updates electronically with supply partners (suppliers, factories, and agents) through the cloud-based self-service portal. This enables factories to preempt fluctuations in demand and plan ahead collaboratively, which can in turn help improve lead times and expedite reorders in special circumstances.

Read White Paper: “Demand Forecasting: How to Slash Inventory Using Machine Learning & Signal Processing“

• Order Issuance

Your order issuance process needs to be completely digitized through the vendor collaboration portal. Issuing orders to factories and suppliers in real time on the self-service portal enables supply partners to respond in real time and reduce order issuance and confirmation delays. That way, you can communicate any adjustments in size breaks or delivery destinations for immediate planning and action. The vendor collaboration portal also improves supply chain agility by providing a tool that lets you push customer-requested changes down to vendors electronically.

• Vendor Production Milestone Tracking

Every production department manages one or more production calendars for seasonal production planning and tracking across multiple brands and production groups. Production calendar indicators need to be tracked in the production system with real-time updates from your suppliers, factories, and agents through the self-service collaboration portal. Built-in reporting can help you preempt delivery delays and identify potential customer orders that may be impacted. Insights gained through milestone tracking can help you address and mitigate delivery risks, improve order fulfillment, and boost customer satisfaction.

You need an easy-to-use sourcing solution that enables you to execute collaborative supply chain processes via self-service portals for partners and vendors. HauteLogic by Visionet is perfect for supply chain integration and collaboration. Contact us today for a live demo to understand how our solution and services can help you achieve your goals.