Supply Chain Strategies

In many industries, understanding your customers is more difficult when there is not regular interaction with them. This is the case in supply chains, where your company may be working with channel partners or distributors who interact regularly with customers. In these situations, there’s a variety of relationships that provide an added layer of complexity in understanding your customers. Walker has developed an intricate system for understanding how these relationships can be managed. Our systems are set up to provide the right information to arm the right people with the customer information they need to develop strategies and make decisions.

• Assessing supplier relationships – If you have channel partners or distributors, you know what it means to sell to and through your suppliers. Your suppliers must have a strong relationship to effectively represent your organization. Understanding this relationship and how your suppliers feel about you is critical to your business success. Walker has set up programs for companies to gather important feedback from suppliers to help you understand the best ways to manage these relationships.
  
  
• Serving indirect customers – Understanding supplier relationships is only one piece of the puzzle. You also want to understand the end users of your products and services. You want to understand how they feel about your company and the solutions you provide and you want to understand the relationship they have with your suppliers. Walker has developed programs to understand channel relationships and distribute critical customer information in effective ways so decisions are timely and accurate.
  
  
• Tools for partners – Since partners and distributors are the key point of contact for customers, they need critical feedback to effectively manage relationships. Walker has established effective networks to make sure critical customer feedback gets into the right hands.

Managing indirect customer relationships is challenging and complex. However, Walker excels at understanding the structure and developing a system that ensures a win-win-win scenario for the company, the partner/distributor, and the customer.

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