On the most recent First Things First live show (which you can catch up on here), Mercado CEO Rob Garrison shared his ‘Five step program to help businesses reign in costs’ which we wanted to share for all importing businesses to leverage. It covers a number of broad areas based on Rob’s decades of supply chain experience and is chock full of great advice and tips.

In essence, a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is a method of connecting your sales forecast with your operating plan, enabling you to project what sales are going to be in the near term, mid term and long term, and then build an operating plan around that data.

This may sound obvious, but it’s not as common or as easy and you might think. Most importing businesses today remain tied to outdated tools, often using email and spreadsheets to manage hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of products across the entire first mile of their supply chain. By creating valued relationships with suppliers and partners, brands can dramatically improve their collaboration across the end-to-end process, creating improved efficiency and cost savings while minimizing disruption from unforeseen costs.

Today’s global supply chain is highly analog, which leads to massive wastes in terms of time, as well as potential for data to be input incorrectly, leading to delays and shortages. Through digitizing the way data is captured, stored, and shared, businesses can leverage information in real-time, helping to shape strategic insights and make proactive decisions as well as react to shocks and disruptions in a timely manner.

Often, different departments in a business are running different types of analytics, leading to one set of metrics sub-optimizing the next link in the chain. Having a standardized, consistent set of company-wide analytics solves this problem, and makes sure that everyone is working from the same data.

While a typical C-Suite provides an excellent structure from which to run a business, chances are they don’t have the in-depth knowledge or expertise around the intricacies of the global supply chain. By providing proactive, real-time metrics on a regular basis, importers can aid senior executives to make strategic decisions and appropriately allocate funds and resources as needed most.