Smarter Supplier On-Boarding

Smarter Doesn't Mean More Complicated

Smarter supplier on-boarding doesn't have to mean a complete overhaul of your current process. Often, the best improvements are simple incremental changes. To be effective, you need the co-operation and participation of all of the members of your team. This enhances communication, and gives plenty of time and opportunity for people to adjust to the improvement before the movement continues.

The more successful changes, the more momentum builds.

So what does 'smarter' really mean? For me, it means making sensible use of appropriate technologies to streamline your work, improve accuracy, and generally make life easier. In the context of supplier on-boarding, smarter could mean employing AI to take away some of the grunt work, or using automated workflows to reduce friction in your daily process.

Using Smart Tools in Supplier On-Boarding

When I say 'grunt work', I mean the mindless admin surrounding supplier on-boarding. Elements of the job like updating spreadsheets manually, sometimes re-keying information into different data portals, or reviewing and verifying supplier credentials. It's important work, and an absolutely necessary part of the procurement function, but it is ripe for automation.

I'm sure anybody reading this is already aware of AI on some level. You might be totally against it. Maybe you've tested a few prompts in ChatGPT. You might consider yourself a pro. Stories being told about AI don't match its reality.

The AI that I'm excited about isn't going to completely change every aspect of your working life. It isn't going to replace anybody. It's going to streamline, and it's going to do a small percentage of tasks very, very well, so that you can spend more time doing the things it can't do.

For example, we have instances of ARCUS^® AI working to accurately and securely review documents submitted by suppliers at the point of upload. It will check to make sure the document is the expected type, and extract key details from it (like dates) to populate in the supplier record automatically. Simple; but effective.

Other Examples of Smarter Supplier On-Boarding

• Questionnaire-based on-boarding, which places responsibility for entering correct information squarely on the suppliers' shoulders.
• Automatic data-synchronisation between tendering and supplier on-boarding, to reduce friction and needless re-keying between supplier stages.
• Workflow initiations in direct response to real-time external supplier activity, so you never miss a change in data.