Supplier Profiling

Certainly, it is not enough just to search via Google via “alibaba” or “asiansources” for suppliers in Asia and then ask for their prices. Anyone, who has done so, knows that only in exceptional cases will this approach bring useful results.

Of course, the preferred way to select suppliers is to visit them in order to check their performance and reliability. How can you, already in the preparation phase, separate the wheat from the chaff?

Supplier Profiling Method

Profiling, when investigating criminal cases, is either done with the objective of finding someone who meets the existing profile, or in reverse, to analyze a given profile to find possible weak spots therein. In a modified way, this approach can be used for Global Sourcing as well, whereby profiling has a positive background and focuses only on the really essential issues.

Supplier profiling requires not only a certain template or the evaluation of certain lists, but also a procedural approach which can only be taught through in-house training. Often it resembles the search for clues and discoveries in criminal investigations. Especially, missing points and what is “read between the lines” can give valuable hints in the decision making process.

Supplier questionaire

A few countries like to use questionaires for suppliers in order to collect as much information as possible about the supplier. In the economic area of Asia, these are very often neither read nor understood and accordingly mostly not fillled out.

In this case, our supplier profiling brings you one step further.