CONTINUOUS SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

Procurement has become a key strategic business function for companies, which in turn has made supplier integration a key activity in supply-chain management. Thus, appropriate supplier relationship management is important in ensuring successful supplier integration and in determining the degree of integration. Scholars have developed various supplier relationship frameworks to support managers’ efforts to manage their supplier relationships. However, no framework is suitable for every organization, and there is no guarantee that adopting and integrating a framework will lead to success. Each framework’s benefits and drawbacks should be considered. In this paper, we review the most recent frameworks for supplier relationship management and then develop a new framework that addresses their issues. This proposed three-phase framework allows for greater flexibility and faster adaptation to the changes that occur in the turbulent business environment. The framework also allows for sufficiently detailed development of selected suppliers and enables buyer and suppliers to cocreate value. Additionally, with the help of appropriate IT support, the proposed framework facilitates continuous, stable and real-time data exchange, which in turn speeds up the decisionmaking regarding both operational and tactical procurement activities. This paper’s main limitation is that the proposed framework builds on the analysis of shortcomings of previously developed frameworks and thus requires further validation.