Overview

Historically neglected compared to investors or customers, suppliers are a key stakeholder group for enterprise businesses looking to deliver effectively on their strategic goals against a turbulent business landscape and supply market. 

Engaging effectively with supplier stakeholders helps organisations to build stronger, more transparent, and more valuable relationships with their extended ecosystem. This, in turn, brings advantages to the organisations who can manage this engagement effectively – from the usual cost, quality, and compliance improvements required of procurement through to delivering on strategic goals around decarbonisation and sustainability, achieving growth and transformation through innovation, or managing external risks to the business. 

In this guide to Supplier Engagement tactics, we cover these use cases in more detail, take a brief look at segmenting supplier engagement methods by supplier maturity, and suggest some key supplier engagement tactics for these different maturity levels that your organisation can employ to effectively engage supplier stakeholders.