Peeling Away TopFruit’s Supply Chain Complexities  with CLM 

We know that medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and any highly regulated goods can have an overly complex supply chain, but even car parts and fruit suppliers can have a tangled supply chain. No industry’s supply chain is immune to complexity.  

So, what are these complexities, and how can they be resolved with a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) platform?  

Diversity in regulations and standards per product 

Regulations are inherently complicated unto themselves, but then add in variations depending upon the product, where it’s being shipped to and from, the stage of production in the supply chain, and the industry standards for which a part or product is being made, and you’ll quickly see how regulations can be difficult to manage. 

These regulations are designed to promote fair and ethical business practices, protect consumers, support sustainability goals and safeguard human rights. While all of these are important objectives, it can be difficult to stay on top of each product’s ever-evolving regulatory requirements, not only the changes but the compliance, too. No human can do this on their own.  

A Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system can help by directly integrating with your Compliance Management System (CMS). CMS solutions help organizations avoid areas of non-compliance, no matter the quantity or type of products or product lines. But what if you didn’t even need to enter any information into your CMS, ever, and the agreed-upon terms and regulations were automatically synced from your signed contract into your CMS without ever needing to enter one piece of data manually? With CLM, this and more is possible. The CMS data could be immediately synced as soon as the e-signature occurs and staying compliant with regulations is now in play. This integration would mean that from contract signature through to changing regulations in the future, you will remain in compliance with both your agreement and regulations at the same time.  

Process complexity 

Regulations are only one concern of the overall supply chain. The supply chain lends itself to complexity; how to move goods from creation to consumption and the number of steps it takes. A lot of technology is thrown at supply chain today to impact its efficiency, enhance visibility, automate processes, enable real-time data analysis, optimize decision-making, and improve collaboration. But not always does it start with the inception of the agreement to produce and provide said goods into the arms of the consumer after the cadre of suppliers it took to create said goods in the first place. It needs to be remembered; all those activities begin and end with a contract.  

At each step of the supply chain, a different contract is most likely in play.  

Consider the complexity: 

• Each manufacturer of each part, the shipping, whether it’s FOB Shipping Point or FOB Destination 

• The vehicles used to stock the inventory (did you buy or lease the vehicles?)  

• The inventory system itself  

• The packing materials (who supplies them?) 

•  The delivery 

You see where this is going. A contract is created for each step, and you are tied to all the players within each step of the supply chain through a contract. Wouldn’t it be great if your contract was integrated into tracking each of these steps so you would be alerted as soon as something fell out of line with the contract? Whether a shipment missed its Service Level Agreement (SLA), inventory dipped below an acceptable level, or the shipping material was not of the agreed-upon grade, your CLM can keep you abreast of any changes.  

Geographic spread 

Geographic spread in a supply chain can result in many types of headaches: Increased transportation costs, longer lead times, logistics management with different time zones (and regulations for each country, county, city, etc.), disruption risks, and the list goes on. If your contracts vary based on their geographic location (which most do), integrating your CLM with a geographic-based information systemcan be highly beneficial. As soon as your contract specifies a geographic location, all relevant stipulations, including regulatory requirements, can be automatically included in the contract and tracked for compliance.  

How TopFruit solved supply chain issues with Agiloft 

Based in South Africa, TopFruit is a global leader in IP management and trademark development for the international fruit industry. When the company first decided to implement Agiloft, they were creating contracts in Word, creating PDFs, and relying on email and spreadsheets to track all their contracts with growers, pack houses, exporters, countries, and importers. It was unsustainable.   

So yes, Agiloft solved their contract flow problems! But TopFruit didn’t stop there. As Rika Beukes, Systems Administrator for TopFruit puts it: “We discovered the flexibility and scalability that Agiloft offers…which opened up endless possibilities for resolving our challenges.”  

TopFruit went on to create a process for applicants to submit their estimated volumes for each season and volume declarations. Having both estimates and volume declarations in one system allowed for the beginning of a big data cleanup. The volume of data that is generated can be overwhelming, so an integration was built to transfer data to a data lake, and they used Power BI to combine the archived data with their data in Agiloft. Now, TopFruit managers “have access to both live and historical data without delays.” With the ease of Agiloft’s no-code platform and the level of training and support available, TopFruit was able to handle much of the development and integration themselves, reducing their dependency on third parties.  

Conclusion 

Most organizations think that their supply chain is complex, and in each of those instances, they’re absolutely correct. Not many industries have a simple supply chain. However, if you start with the base element of the complexity – the contract – and integrate tracking solutions from the contractual commitments made, both buy and sell side, you’ll find yourself creating a data-first solution has everyone referencing the same data from the same system. Just ask TopFruit if it works.  

Watch the webinar featuring TopFruit and how they solved
their supply chain complexity with Agiloft’s CLM.