26Point Checklist

The framework · Business Operations

15 Supply Chain & Delivery

11 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time6.9/10Financial8.3/10Automation7.9/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

15.1

Procurement

Time8/10Financial9/10Automation9/10
What this is
How you buy what you need — selection, approval, ordering and price.
Why it matters
Procurement is a direct margin lever that needs no customer involvement. Small businesses routinely pay list price out of habit on spend large enough to negotiate.
You have a problem here if
Nobody has reviewed supplier pricing in over a year.
What to automate
High automation potential: approval workflows, reorder rules, purchase orders raised from demand, and spend analysis by supplier and category. Consolidated spend visibility is usually what unlocks the negotiation.
15.2

Supplier performance

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
Whether suppliers deliver on time, in full, at the agreed quality and price.
Why it matters
Supplier failure becomes your failure in the customer's eyes. Unmeasured supplier performance means the cost lands on you invisibly.
You have a problem here if
You know which supplier is unreliable by reputation but not by number.
What to automate
Automate scorecards from your own receiving data: on-time rate, in-full rate, defect rate, price variance. Review quarterly with the supplier — the conversation is far easier with data.
15.3

Supplier dependency

Time4/10Financial8/10Automation6/10
What this is
How much of your critical supply depends on one supplier with no alternative in place.
Why it matters
Concentration is fine until it is not. A sole supplier for a critical input is a business risk with no warning period.
You have a problem here if
One supplier accounts for a large share of your critical inputs and you have no alternative qualified.
What to automate
Automate the visibility — spend concentration by supplier, flagged against a threshold. Qualifying an alternative is procurement work that cannot be automated, and it is worth doing before you need it.
15.4

Inventory where applicable

Time8/10Financial10/10Automation9/10
What this is
What you hold, what it costs to hold it, and whether it is the right stock.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten financially where it applies. Inventory is cash sitting on a shelf, and inventory errors cause both lost sales and write-offs simultaneously.
You have a problem here if
You have stock that has not moved in a year alongside items you regularly run out of.
What to automate
Very high automation potential: real-time stock levels, reorder points calculated from actual demand, ageing and dead-stock reporting, and demand forecasting. This is a well-solved problem and the payback is usually fast.
15.5

Logistics

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation9/10
What this is
Moving goods or people to where the work happens.
Why it matters
Logistics cost is often accepted as fixed when it is highly optimisable. It also drives delivery reliability, which drives repeat purchase.
You have a problem here if
Routes and schedules are planned the same way they were five years ago.
What to automate
Route optimisation, scheduling, tracking and automatic customer notification. Strong automation fit with measurable savings in both cost and inbound status enquiries.
15.6

Fulfilment

Time9/10Financial9/10Automation10/10
What this is
Getting the order to the customer completely and correctly.
Why it matters
Nine for time, ten for automation. Fulfilment is high-volume repetitive work where small error rates create large customer-service costs.
You have a problem here if
Order errors are discovered by customers rather than before dispatch.
What to automate
Near-fully automatable: order routing, pick and pack verification, labelling, dispatch notification and exception handling. Automate the happy path completely and route only exceptions to a person.
15.7

Lead times

Time9/10Financial8/10Automation9/10
What this is
How long it takes from order to delivery, and how variable that is.
Why it matters
Nine for time. Lead time is a competitive weapon and a cash-flow lever — shorter lead times mean faster invoicing and less working capital tied up.
You have a problem here if
You quote lead times as a range because you cannot predict them.
What to automate
Instrument each stage automatically and report the distribution rather than the average. Variability is usually the real problem, and it hides inside an average that looks fine.
15.8

Delivery reliability

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
Whether you deliver on the date you promised, and how often you do not.
Why it matters
Reliability drives trust more than speed does. Customers plan around your promise, and a missed date costs them more than a longer honest one.
You have a problem here if
Promised dates are optimistic and frequently revised.
What to automate
Track promised versus actual on every job automatically and report the on-time rate. Automate the proactive warning when a job is going to be late — telling the customer first is most of the recovery.
15.9

Quality assurance

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
Checking incoming and outgoing quality against a defined standard.
Why it matters
Defects caught at receipt cost a fraction of defects caught at the customer. This is the cheapest quality intervention available.
You have a problem here if
Supplier defects are found during the job rather than on arrival.
What to automate
Automate the record-keeping, sampling schedule and trend reporting; keep the inspection itself wherever human judgement is needed. Feed the results into supplier scorecards so the cost lands where it belongs.
15.10

Contingency suppliers/options

Time4/10Financial7/10Automation5/10
What this is
Alternative suppliers and routes identified and ready before they are needed.
Why it matters
Contingency is cheap in advance and expensive in the moment. Businesses discover this the week a supplier fails.
You have a problem here if
You have no named alternative for your most critical input.
What to automate
Modest automation value — maintain the register and automate the reminder to review it. The qualification of alternatives is relationship and commercial work.
15.11

Supply resilience

Time5/10Financial8/10Automation6/10
What this is
The overall ability of your supply to withstand disruption.
Why it matters
Resilience determines whether a disruption is an inconvenience or an existential event. It is a design property, not a reaction.
You have a problem here if
A two-week supply interruption has never been thought through.
What to automate
Automate early warning where signals exist — supplier financial alerts, lead-time drift, single-source flags. The resilience decisions themselves, including whether to carry buffer stock, are commercial judgements about risk appetite.

Category totals

Time 76/110 · Financial 91/110 · Automation 87/110. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.