Centralized management unlocks big-picture power
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face unique supply chain challenges. While they comprise 90% of businesses globally and form the backbone of many economies, SMBs often struggle with fragmented supply chain management systems that hurt their productivity and profitability.
The past five years have made these vulnerabilities impossible to ignore. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how quickly disruptions can cascade through unprepared supply chains. Today's extreme weather events and geopolitical tensions continue to create new risks. For SMBs operating with manual processes or disconnected systems, these disruptions can be devastating.
The cost of inaction is steep. MIT research shows that SMBs produce two-thirds less output than larger businesses, primarily due to underinvestment in technology. But here's the opportunity: even modest technology investments can deliver significant returns. Predictive analytics alone can reduce overproduction by 35%.
The solution isn't about changing global supply chain dynamics—no single SMB has that power. Instead, it's about gaining better visibility and control over your own operations through centralized supply chain management. When SMBs can see inventory levels, track shipments, and anticipate disruptions from a single platform, they transform from reactive to proactive businesses.
Download our Checklist: 5 Steps to Supply Chain Resilience
Why Centralized Supply Chain Management Matters
Centralizing supply chain management brings together various functions, relationships, and processes under a single, unified platform or system. This can have transformative effects for food manufacturers.
Better visibility = better control
A centralized supply chain management system gives SMBs a unified view of their operations—from sourcing ingredients to distributing finished goods—rather than forcing them to undergo the cumbersome process of trying to piece together data from disparate sources and suppliers.
This increased visibility is important. It allows SMBs to track inventory levels, supplier performance, and demand patterns in real time, which makes it easier to anticipate disruptions, reduce waste, and respond to changing conditions with agility. This allows leaders to make informed decisions and create consistency, contributing to a stronger overall supply chain.
Proactive risk management
Intelligent technology that enables centralized management at SMBs empowers them to reduce risks through timely data (and the aforementioned visibility into it). We’ve already seen the impact of supply shortages and unpredictable demand during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing disruption to sourcing and logistics due to extreme weather events and political instability.
The beauty of centralized supply chain management for SMBs is that it can help them forecast disruptions, identify alternate suppliers, and adjust production plans before issues escalate. This approach to management minimizes downtime and financial losses while allowing SMBs—which comprise the majority of the supply chain—to continually deliver products. This makes for a market better able to withstand external shocks.
Download our Checklist: 5 Steps to Supply Chain Resilience
Enhanced collaboration
A single source of truth transforms operations from siloed in spreadsheets to accessible and up-to-date. When team members across various business functions can access the same information, communication is clearer and decision-making is faster. This isn’t just true internally; improved collaboration extends to external partners, from suppliers to distributors.
By reducing miscommunication and even points of friction like language barriers, the supply chain operates more efficiently.
How to Get Started
The process of getting started with centralized supply chain management is manageable when broken down into clear, practical steps. By starting small, SMBs build a foundation for gradually extending capabilities. Here are the small steps that lead to big changes.
✔️ Map the current state of management
Document the key flows of your business: suppliers, SKUs, production batches, ordering processes, and data sources. Identify pain points or areas of frequent failure—those are the highest-impact areas to focus on first.
✔️ Assign a point-person
Giving ownership of the transformation to someone is crucial to create accountability. While this individual should gain insight from individuals across business functions, they are in charge of selecting technology, gathering data and feedback, making changes as necessary, and ensuring success.
✔️ Clean and standardize data
A centralized site for all supply chain management requires a standardized system for SKUs, units of measurement, supplier name conventions, and batch identifiers. Digitizing records and creating this standardization can seem daunting upfront, but the ROI it creates is worth it.
✔️ Select practical, purpose-built technology
Seek solutions that are purpose-built for your industry, ensuring they will be able to be applied practically in your business. These should support traceability, offer supplier portals, and intuitive dashboards updated in real-time. Solutions like Bruce AI are designed specifically for SMB food manufacturers to manage the complexity of supply chains without adding complexity to operations.
✔️ Measure success and iterate
Focus on continuous improvement by measuring the success of systems and strategies integrated to create centralized management. As issues or inefficiencies are identified, leverage the wisdom of the cross-functional team to address them.
Download our Checklist: 5 Steps to Supply Chain Resilience
Resilience Starts Here
SMB manufacturers may be smaller in size, but their influence on the health of the entire supply chain is immense. By embracing centralized supply chain management, these businesses gain the visibility, control, and collaborative strength needed to navigate anything the world throws at them. The ripple effect created at the SMB-level is significant, creating benefits for everyone from suppliers to consumers.
Global challenges continue to test the strength of supply chains, but SMBs have the opportunity to turn vulnerability into resilience by investing in intelligent systems and processes. By starting small, staying committed, and prioritizing collaboration, SMBs can not only weather the next disruption, but become more competitive.
The time to act is now. Take the first step by learning more about Bruce AI, the purpose-built, comprehensive supply chain management for SMB food manufacturers. Connect with us here.
