If you’re a new entrepreneur and you provide a service, chances are you’re focusing on the growth of your business and how you can increase awareness between what you provide and the people or organization that need your service.
An area that you might be neglecting is supply chain, and that’s very understandable. Often times business owners who are great at providing a service aren’t always aware that they even have a supply chain.
I had a business owner reach out and ask what they could do to optimize their supply chain after a disruption caused them to under perform on a service. Long story short, a critical product they regularly used to complete their service ran out and they didn’t have a good second source. Unfortunately, this caused a delay that quite possibly could have been avoided.
The good thing is, the gap was recognized and the business owner is doing what needs to be done to reduce this from happening in the future. Below you’ll find a few tactics and questions you can use now to reduce potential disruptions and help increase your supply chain resiliency.
1: Identifying your supply chain is the first step: What products do you use to perform your service?
Ex. Providing a cleaning service? Where do you get your cleaning products? Is there better quality and cost options out there?
2: What products or services do you need that are critical to your business?
Ex. Editing content for a client? Do you have a strong internet connection and the best tools to get the job done competitively? What if you’re a photographer and you realize you’ve ran out of SD card space and don’t have more memory and guess what, you’re on a hired job? I know that example is more bad planning than Supply Chain, but you get my point.
3: Do you have additional sources for these critical inputs to your business?
Ex. You own a staffing company and the one platform or tool you depend on is down and you can’t meet a clients need.
Let’s be real, as an entrepreneur you won’t always be able to foresee disruptions but there are things you can do to reduce the risk that these disruptions impact the service you provide. The supply chain tactics and questions you identify will largely differ based on your industry and service but you get the big picture. What’s critical, is the cost, quality, and availability what I need and in the event something happens, do I have a contingency plan in place.
Asking yourself these questions, and then incorporating the answers into your business strategy will absolutely increase your competitiveness and allow you to focus on growing your business.
