WAREHOUSING TRACTION NEEDED FOR TRACTORS…
This was the challenge facing a procurement manager at a leading global industrial and agricultural manufacturer. He needed to find new suppliers of warehousing services in the U.S. to help his organization achieve their strategic goals –and he was running out of time…
ChatGPT and Google? Forget about it. He’d been searching for weeks now and was still getting the same old generic results, including suppliers they’d already used in the past who’d failed to live up to their strategic demands.
The problem was that he was looking for something very specific. As the business is heavily influenced by agricultural cycles, he needed to find suppliers of warehousing services that could provide the flexibility to scale storage capacity up or down based on seasonal demand, helping them manage their peak periods more effectively. The organization also needed additional warehousing space to store their new products and offerings. Partnering with warehousing companies would allow for scalable storage solutions without the need for his company to invest in its own infrastructure.
Finally, diversifying warehousing locations across different regions would help to mitigate the risks associated with supply chain disruptions, such as natural disasters, labor strikes, or transportation issues, ensuring continuity of supply even if one facility was compromised.
On a personal level, as a relatively new hire, he needed a win on this to prove to himself and his team that he was up to the job. Unfortunately, he was running out of ideas. He’d already exhausted all of their internal supplier databases and had come up with nothing. Some of the suppliers could help with one, or even two, of his search criteria but none of them ticked all the boxes.
In his weekly team meeting, his boss announced that the company was trying out a new supplier discovery solution – Scoutbee Discovery. Seemingly, he’d heard good things about it from his contacts in the industry and was going to give it a go at this organization.
The procurement manager really hoped it lived up to the hype.
Back in his office, he opened up Scoutbee Discovery and was happy to see that the search form looked pretty straightforward. Above all, because it was a tool specifically designed for procurement’s needs, he was tentatively hopeful that it would produce results that catered to his requirements, rather than the generic results he got from Google and ChatGPT.
He entered his criteria, along with the websites of the suppliers they’d used in the past so that Discovery could eliminate those from the results. And search!
Discovery informed him that it would return a list of suppliers that matched his exact criteria in a day or two. He supposed he’d just let the AI thingies do whatever it is that AI thingies do - probably search the entire internet which he guessed would take a little bit of time to do right - and shut down his computer for the day.
The next morning, he received a notification that Discovery had found 25 suppliers of warehousing services in the U.S. that matched his requirements. 25! A wave of relief washed over him - Scoutbee Discovery had really delivered! He noticed that the suppliers were ranked according to how well they matched his search criteria, and the profiles were enriched with data on revenue, employees, and certifications.
After reviewing the list with his team, they decided to invite 12 of the suppliers for an RFI. They couldn’t believe that they now had a pool of so many quality suppliers to choose from – and it had all happened in a fraction of the time they would typically need to find new suppliers.
With this significantly expanded supply base, they would not only be able to flexibly scale their storage capacity up or down based on seasonal demand, but they would also be able to save money on investing in additional infrastructure and mitigate risk in the case of supply chain disruptions.
Oh, and the procurement manager got his wish of looking like a superstar to his team…
If you’re looking for a way to mitigate risk in your supply chain, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.
