April 3rd, 2008 · by Drew Hofler · No Comments · best practices, supply management, supply risk

News of the credit crunch has been unavoidable in recent months. Hopefully your business (and home mortgage) have been spared and you’re in a position to weather the storm. But what about your suppliers? If they’re having any credit/cash flow problems, that’s a huge risk to your supply chain. And buyers’ companies may be unwittingly contributing to the problem and injecting unnecessary risk into their own supply chain.

You see, suppliers - especially relatively small ones - are being hit hard by the credit crunch. In fact over half of small businesses in a recent online poll claimed the credit crunch had already impacted their business. Sure some of them simply had poor business plans, products or rainy day funds. But others are struggling with liquidity problems caused by late payments from their buyers, some of which are deliberate (and sometimes savvy) attempts to gain extra cash by floating the payment for an extra week or two."

Repeating an earlier question: Why is the credit crunch a 'crisis' now? Why all the Greek-tragedy hype about 'small business' now? And again, btw, why aren't the Small Business committees in House and Senate included in the 'appropriate committees' to notify about any big deal by Treasury, under the bailout proposal?