When e-commerce companies connect with suppliers, they can often get a lot of good news from suppliers, including guaranteed product quality, timely delivery, reasonable purchase prices, meeting personalized needs and first-class after-sales service. Are all these news true? E-commerce companies should not rush to make conclusions, but carefully choose the most suitable suppliers.
The most important part of procurement work is to conduct on-site inspections of suppliers to verify whether their claims are true. Chen Kang founded an e-commerce company and has online stores on Taobao and JD.com. Since he has many years of procurement experience, he is responsible for procurement tasks. Recently, he and a certain brand discussed a milk powder procurement project. The reason why Chen Kang values this brand of milk powder is mainly because the quality of milk powder is guaranteed and the purchase price is relatively reasonable
The headquarters of this brand in my country is in Nanjing. Chen Kang proposed to the other party to conduct on-site inspections and discuss specific matters face to face. The person in charge of the other party was very enthusiastic and welcomed Chen Kang to conduct on-site inspections. Before leaving, Chen Kang formed a four-person inspection team with employees from the logistics department and the quality inspection department.
Chen Kang’s team arrived in Nanjing that afternoon, but he did not notify the other party immediately, but stayed in a hotel near the headquarters. The four people held a meeting in the room and took out written materials, which were divided into three parts, namely the warehouse site, logistics chain and quality documents. Chen Kang also explained the precautions to the other three people, mainly to examine the strength of the other party.
At 8 o’clock the next morning, Chen Kang called the person in charge and said that he had arrived at the headquarters and was going to visit. The person in charge was very surprised. He didn’t expect Chen Kang to arrive so soon. After meeting, Chen Kang told the other party that he had flown overnight. At the same time, all four people looked very tired.
Sure enough, the person in charge of the other party relaxed his vigilance and took Chen Kang’s team to visit various parts of the factory, and Chen Kang also secretly took notes. When checking the documents in the office, colleagues in the quality inspection department also took photos with the permission of the supplier.
During the inspection, Chen Kang found that the supplier’s milk powder was indeed imported directly from the Netherlands, and the certificates were complete. In addition, the supplier’s manager took Chen Kang to visit the milk powder produced by itself, and said that if Chen Kang was willing to purchase, he could give a preferential price, but the premise was that he had to purchase in large quantities.
At lunch time, the supplier’s manager said that he would take Chen Kang and his friends to a famous hotel for dinner. But Chen Kang said: “I won’t go this time, how about eating in your cafeteria and seeing how the dishes in your cafeteria are? In addition, I am very interested in the milk powder you produce independently, and we can discuss it in detail this afternoon.
Seeing that Chen Kang was interested in a larger order, the person in charge became more enthusiastic and quickly notified the canteen to add more meals. After lunch, Chen Kang “ran into” a driver who was responsible for delivering milk to the supplier and could eat in the canteen at noon. Chen Kang took the opportunity to inquire about the supplier’s credibility, including whether the milk factory was paid on time, how many trucks of milk could be delivered each month, and what his impression of the supplier was.
After the discussion, Chen Kang had a more detailed understanding of the supplier. After returning, he decided to increase the purchase of milk powder produced independently by the supplier, on the grounds that the supplier’s milk powder sales and reputation were good. All this information was obtained by Chen Kang from the driver he “ran into”. Moreover, this brand of milk powder is a blank market in the local area. Once this market is opened, Chen Kang’s e-commerce company’s milk powder sales business will be greatly expanded. The performance will definitely be further improved.
Finally, Chen Kang signed a two-year contract with the supplier to purchase milk powder imported from the Netherlands, and also purchased 150,000 bags of milk powder produced independently by the supplier. During the inspection process, Chen Kang was relatively professional from forming an inspection team to field inspections to understanding the business. He always put the quality of milk powder first and learned about the supplier’s credibility from the side.
Tips
When connecting with suppliers, e-commerce companies should strive to let suppliers speak with facts, rather than over-emphasizing beautiful performance, and pay special attention to the authenticity, reliability and gold content of various certificates. In addition, which members of the inspection team are composed of and which tasks they are responsible for are also very critical issues for the finance department, planning department, and quality inspection department. The inspection team cannot only have employees from the procurement department, but also employees from the production department, door, and logistics department. Of course, the specific members can be determined according to the actual situation.