Building the glass pipeline: how transparency can give your business a competitive edge

In the age of the conscious consumer, consumers want more information about where goods come from and how they are produced – and businesses are responding by making their operations more transparent. Improving transparency involves enhancing communications to consumers. It is crucial that sourcing, in particular, is transparent. As companies strive to create a supply chain that resembles a glass pipeline, a clear view of where materials and services come from can give your business a competitive advantage.

Consumer-driven transparency
The trend towards transparency in business has been largely consumer-driven. Consumers and customers can access an increasing amount of information thanks to both traditional and social media, and are becoming more sophisticated in how they select the companies they do business with. For some, transparency becomes synonymous with other issues such as social responsibility, ethical practices and eco-friendliness. A 2014 Nielsen survey found that 54% of consumers worldwide would pay more for products and services from companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact. Transparent sourcing and a glass pipeline supply chain can arm you with the information to assuage consumer fears.

Supplier transparency
You know who your suppliers are…but who are your suppliers’ suppliers? What about further down the line? Any goods or services that you use to bring your final product to market can be a potential source of disruption or even scandal if you don’t have a full picture of what’s happening in your supplier network. On the other side of the equation, suppliers also need transparency from you – on schedules, payments, expectations, inspections, compliance and other key issues. Without the right information and support, costly and time-consuming mistakes are much more likely on the supplier side. These mistakes impact you too.

How transparency makes your business more competitive
A 2015 article in the Guardian (UK) identifies a trend towards hyper-transparency in business, and imagines what the total absence of transparency would look like: “How can you address problems with your goods if you don’t know who is supplying you? How can you prioritize your activities if you aren’t collecting data on how you interact with your customers and suppliers? How can you mitigate risk if you don’t understand what your risks actually are? And how can you encourage trust and transparency within your own supply chain if it transpires that your own processes don’t support your suppliers?”

Transparent sourcing operations streamline processes, allow information sharing so that teams can make more effective decisions, improve trust and co-operation between you and your suppliers, and also increase consumer confidence in your brand – all of which contribute to a better competitive edge.

PLM and transparency
As companies search for ways to improve transparency throughout the supply chain, modern Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) comes to the forefront as a crucial part of the solution. In the words of Apparel Magazine, “With the ability to support a product portfolio and deep, detailed product definition information (including material, costing, testing and vendor management), a solid PLM system can become the backbone of a company’s supply chain transparency initiatives.”

Want to learn more? Register to our upcoming webinar in Chicago, May 10, with Peter Dehio, former VP of Sourcing at United Stationers, Orvis, Eddie Bauer and The Walt Disney Company.

This seminar is sponsored by Centric Software, the leading PLM solution for fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor and consumer goods companies. We have approximately 150 PLM projects with leading companies such as Asics, Bass Pro Shops, Build a Bear Workshops, Mizuno, Skull Candy, Under Armour.

¹Nielsen Global Survey on Corporate Social Responsibility, 2014.
²Robertson, Mark. 2015: The year of hyper-transparency in global business. The Guardian (UK), 2 Feb 2015.
³McCann Ramsey, Laura. Designing the Future with Supply Chain Transparency. Apparel Magazine, 3 Feb 2014.