5 CRM Supply Chain & Distribution Channel Strategies

people discussing crm supply chain strategies

The age of digital transformation offers manufacturers many opportunities to create efficiencies and gain a competitive edge in the global B2B marketplace. Customer relationship management (CRM) applications enable supply chain manufacturers to streamline business processes and increase profitability. CRM analytics engines improve visibility into critical insights about your suppliers, distributors, and ultimate consumers. Unfortunately, many executives evaluate CRM platforms only for their “sell-side” functionality. Yet CRM can enable manufacturers to add value and increase engagement up and down the end-to-end supply chain.

Using spreadsheets to capture interactions with suppliers of raw materials and components is just as clumsy and ineffective for procurement professionals as for salespeople. It is crucial for procurement VPs to generate reports on supplier performance metrics like price competitiveness, on-time deliveries, and product quality. It’s as crucial for their sales executive counterparts to forecast sales revenues, track distributor satisfaction, and campaign-driven leads and opportunities.

Below are five CRM supply chain and distribution channel management tactics for manufacturers.

1. Contact and Interaction Management

As a manufacturer, your company needs to capture their employees’ conversations across all your interaction channels including online chat, phone calls, in-person meetings and emails. In addition, manufacturers need to ensure the prospects, distributors, and suppliers who interact with your business across all channels and over time receive consistent information. Get your supplier or channel partner-facing finance, customer service, procurement, and sales teams are all on the same page. You earn credibility and trust by delivering consistent messaging to your suppliers and distributors on matters like pricing, payment terms, and contractual obligations.

Most of us can recall an experience with calls, text chats, or email conversations with different representatives of the same company where each conversation told a different story. Modern CRM and supply chain solutions can ensure conversations across all platforms are captured, enabling each of your representatives with greater visibility into a distributor’s recent and historical interactions with your company. They can help sellers see what wholesalers have purchased historically for their clients. Buyers can identify which suppliers have been flexible and accommodating on rush orders like new product launches.

Late payments are common in the B2B marketplace; high transaction values and sales cycles last long and involve many conversations. CRM supply chain platforms can help buyers and sellers find strategies and approaches that work as well as obstacles that derail experiences for those on either side of the negotiating table.

2. Integration with Document-Centric Business Processes and Workflows

Offering your buyers and sellers permission-based access to essential documents like quotes, contracts, purchase orders, and invoices through CRM creates transparency. Accessing these documents through the contextual filters of account records increases efficiency and eliminates manual searching. Robotic process automation can extract important data from key fields on files like contracts or bills of lading, then automatically (and accurately) populate the information where it belongs in CRM.

Documents like quotes, custom order configurations, RFPs, and proposals often need to go through multi-step approval processes. A CRM supply chain platform can facilitate these workflows by sending messages to approvers for sign-off and then back to the purchasing or sales representative once terms are verified.

Project management, document management, and accounting applications are just a few other points of integration that enable seamless workflows and enrich the strategic value of your CRM deployment.

3. Enabling Supplier and Distributor Self-Service

CRM-integrated online portals empower channel relationship managers and buyers to do business with manufacturers on their own time and their preferred devices. For example, Bombardier Recreational Products offers their 4,200 worldwide dealers a wealth of information and support resources on their service portal.

Consider the value of offering your domestic or international suppliers and distributors personalized content and experiences like:

The flexibility to open a support request or take a certification course whenever it’s most convenient.
The freedom to configure, price, and order a large custom product shipment online.
Access to upload or download documents like proposals, contracts, technical diagrams, purchase orders, bills of materials, or marketing materials.

Offering online self-service convenience increases a manufacturer’s reputation as straightforward for both buying and selling. News of this reputation travels fast and can help to retain clients and accelerate deals through the pipeline.

4. Data Quality and Analytics

Enabling suppliers to enter their own data and extract critical information from documents are two reasons intelligent CRM platforms can increase data quality. It also helps if your CRM fields reflect how you describe your sales and procurement processes in your day-to-day business discussions.

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Executives can use accurate, reliable data to identify trends and patterns which happen in the real world. To make the most of quality data, leverage some of the “out of the box” reports included in many manufacturing-oriented CRM platforms. Then, create some reusable ones of your own, like:

Supplier on-time delivery performance
Supplier raw material or component product quality
Distributor orders and certifications by territory
Marketing campaign performance metrics
Sales or purchasing representative activity KPIs
Distributor sales revenue by region or product line

Any CRM supply chain project is only as good as the data loaded into it. Success depends on choosing an intuitive, flexible CRM platform and an expert consulting team to help you tailor it to how you run your business.

5. Mobile and Remote Access

Your industrial employees likely spend most of their days on your factory floor, yet your sales and purchasing staff are likely working remotely more than ever before. Deploying a mobile-friendly, cloud-based CRM in supply chain management solution can enable your teams to work as effectively as they would have in the office, even when they are not. In many cases, they can be even more productive.

Moving Forward

CRM usually stands for Customer Relationship Management. Yet, it might be time to change that to Company Relationship Management, as many manufacturers and other companies use the platform for suppliers, prospects, partners, and even employees. CRM platforms have evolved to become highly customizable and compatible with analytics platforms, web-facing portals, and mobile devices. For manufacturers looking to manage their relationships and interactions throughout their supply chain from their upstream suppliers to their downstream distributors, retailers, and end-user customers, CRM is a secure, centralized collaboration platform.

Discover how Faye helped Hunter take advantage of the competitive nature of their sales teams, and dramatically improve their CRM adoption by implementing an integrated, modern CRM supply chain platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does CRM software help supply chain teams and customer service representatives deliver better customer service?

CRM software centralizes data and marketing automation tools, enabling customer service representatives to access order histories, stock levels, and real-time inventory management information. This coordination reduces operational costs and enhances customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

What are the benefits of integrating CRM and SCM (Supply Chain Management)?

By integrating CRM with enterprise resource planning and SCM systems, organizations can streamline operations, improve supply chain decisions, and lower cost management challenges. This CRM SCM integration promotes efficient supply chain workflows and increases profit margins through better alignment of sales opportunities and customer demand.

How can CRM and supply chain integration improve customer satisfaction and customer retention?

A unified CRM and supply chain platform offers insights into customer preferences and past orders, enabling tailored service and faster order fulfillment. This level of personalization drives customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and long-term success by managing customer interactions and managing customer relationships more effectively.

In what ways does CRM supply chain support inventory management and inventory control?

A CRM supply chain solution integrates with supply chain processes to provide accurate forecasts of customer demand. This reduces excess stock, optimizes stock levels, and lowers operational costs. Real-time visibility into inventory helps supply chain teams ensure timely delivery timelines and improve order fulfillment.

How does leveraging CRM systems contribute to supply chain success and a competitive advantage?

Advanced CRM systems offer analytics and reporting on supplier relationships, delivery timelines, and financial performance. These insights help you analyze customer preferences, optimize supply chain decisions, and refine marketing strategies, ultimately maximizing profits and delivering a sustainable competitive advantage.

What role does customer feedback play in supply chain CRM and operations management?

Collecting customer feedback via CRM insights allows customer service representatives to identify pain points in supply chain processes. This information drives continuous improvement in operations management, enhances customer satisfaction, and reduces cost management issues across the entire final product delivery lifecycle.

How can CRM in supply chain management help marketing efforts and customer-centric marketing strategies?

By integrating CRM in supply chain management, marketing teams gain real-time visibility into customer needs, purchase behavior, and sales processes. This alignment enables targeted campaigns based on customer preferences, improving marketing automation and delivering higher ROI on marketing efforts.

By Adrian Boerstra, VP Strategic Services

Adrian Boerstra is a passionate entrepreneur and accomplished executive with over 28 years of experience in enterprise technology. Known for blending business strategy, innovative tech, and human connection, he thrives at the intersection where transformation begins.