Whether they’re customers, vendors or suppliers, you need other businesses in order to grow your own business.

That’s a reminder from Tiffanie Stanard, founder and chief executive officer of Stimulus, a relationship intelligence platform delivered under the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. That may sound obvious, but it should lead to a focus on relationships, Stanard says.

“Whether those relationships are with customers you’re trying to bring in, the employees that you’re trying to hire, and of course your suppliers — they’re part of your external team,” Stanard says. She recommends building and improving relationships by considering who’s in your network and how to expand it. That might mean looking at a customer’s supplier and assessing whether they could become your supplier, too, or even a vendor. Same goes for colleagues and friends.

“There’s so much complexity in supply chain,” says Stanard, noting that the lack of true understanding of supply chains became truly painful during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We were not understanding … the importance of tier-one, tier-two and tier-three suppliers in terms of who they were working with, who they were buying from.” Those complexities are only going to increase, but the good news is companies can use data technology to help make better decisions. Stanard says there’s a lot of talk about digital transformation, and it’s time to take it seriously.

“I don’t care if you’re a large company or a small company, if you’re buying from another business,” she says. “You should have tools that you can grow into and use over time, depending on how big you want to grow as a company.”

It’s important, however, to keep track of which suppliers and customers are more beneficial than others, Stanard warns. She advises her clients to always do a big audit on all of their suppliers before putting any of their information on the relationship intelligence platform. “Who’s on your balance sheet and why? They could have been on the balance sheet for the last 10 years and it could just be because you don’t want to change out suppliers. You need to determine if they really help you save time and money.”