Listening to suppliers
At Tesco we work with many suppliers large and small. We take a partnership approach and believe that open and constructive relationships with suppliers are key to a strong sustainable supply chain. Our commercial teams regularly talk to our suppliers, often on a weekly, and sometimes on a daily basis. We visit our suppliers and they visit us. The opening of our new regional buying offices will help us be even more in touch, especially with small, regional suppliers. We work together.
We do more to listen to suppliers regularly through our own annual survey (Viewpoint). This allows suppliers to tell us anonymously how they feel about working with Tesco, and tells us areas that we need to work on to improve. For example, our latest survey told us that the vast majority of respondents thought that we maintain high quality standards, and that we are reliable at paying on time. They also said that “the people they work with at Tesco are good at listening”.
Tesco and three other leading supermarkets have adopted a Supermarkets Code of Conduct to ensure that relationships with suppliers are reasonable and transparent. We fully support the objectives of the code and have taken it further and have appointed a Code Compliance Officer to look into any individual concerns, on a confidential basis if requested.
An example of what we have learned
Suppliers have told us that they would like us to share more information with them to help them run their businesses. We have listened and in response have developed a new system to help us share information. TescoLink will allow suppliers direct access to store level sales data on their products as well as information on wastage, margin and stock availability. We began testing the system with 20 suppliers last October and hope to have all suppliers using the system by the end of this year. We have used electronic data interchange (EDI) for many years, but this will be the first Tesco platform designed for use by all suppliers, no matter how small.
The system will include information about Tesco people – store managers for example, with their contact details and store opening hours so that suppliers can explore any issues relating to their lines in a particular store directly.
We believe this new system will help both Tesco and our suppliers to be more efficient and more responsive. We expect TescoLink to allow much better collaborative planning for new lines and promotions, and also improve in store availability which will greatly benefit customers.
- More in Listening
- Listening to communities
- Listening to suppliers
- Listening to our people
Key facts at a glance
Listening to customers
12,000 customers attend our Customer Question Time sessions each year.
Tesco Clubcard
We have over 13 million active Clubcard holders.
