How to Streamline Vendor Communication

There's one thing that your organization needs is vendors. You need vendors to outsource tasks, and your vendors need you to be able to grow their businesses. So working together can seem pretty harmonious, wouldn't you say? But what should be something simple between two parties can be very difficult when it comes to streamlining communication.

If you are not communicating with your vendors appropriately, then they're not going to be able to communicate with you and therefore nothing gets done in your business. How you communicate with people affects the type of relationship that you'll have with them. And that goes way beyond vendors that you work with in your business too.

There are programs out there such as the NetSuite Vendor Center streamline all of your communication to your vendors in one place. But what else could you be doing to make sure that communicating is an easy process?

1. Be as responsive as possible. Successful communication isn't just on your vendors, but it's a two way street. Once they've completed their questionnaires and their surveys with you, then you then need to inform them of the results. If your vendor has asked you a question or wants to clarify something, you have to be.Free enough to show them what the answers are. You need to have a point of contact with your vendors and they should be responding quickly to any queries.

2. Identify the relevant people. Who is the one in your organization who will be dealing with vendors all the time? Is it you or is it someone else? Once you've identified the right person to deal with vendors that should be communicated so that everybody knows who they're supposed to be speaking to. It's easy enough to streamline communication when people are aware of their point of contact.

3. Use live chat. A good way to keep in contact with your vendors when you can't just sit on the phone to discuss an issue is with live chat. Both of you can get down to business quickly, so it's an effective way to ask and get questions answered. Third party management solutions can help here and you can then facilitate the chat between organization and vendor and ensure that you can audit any of the chats as well.

4. Be clear in what you want. It’s much easier to manage communications when your vendors understand your needs and vice versa. There is no use in having a panel of vendors you don't feel comfortable communicating with, right? So, you need to work on ensuring that you have clarity across all contracts and paperwork. 

5. Make sure that your vendors are involved. Improving your communication with your vendors means involving them in the conversation. Providing them access to review their relationship with you and using platforms to do so will help.

Working closely with vendors brings your business up to scratch. Next time you want to send a message to your vendors, make sure it’s clear and that all parties understand how to reach out.