You’ve ran your tender, selected your supplier and agreed on a price. Now the onboarding process begins. Time to evaluate the vendor, gather the information you need, and establish a standardised method of communication.
Once the supplier is onboarded, they form a part of your supplier, or vendor-base and therefore a significant part of your supply chain. The integrity of your supply chain is essential to remain compliant with legislation, so it is important that onboarding runs smoothly and adheres to best practice. Otherwise, it is possible that you could miss important information when onboarding suppliers. This can result in unidentified non-compliance further down the line that could impact your brand reputation.
However, it’s common for procurement professionals to face several challenges when onboarding suppliers at this stage.
Challenges when Onboarding Suppliers
No Standardisation
When onboarding suppliers, you should adopt a standardised method of communication with your suppliers. Otherwise, you’re risking the loss of important information, and compromised data integrity.
This is without the consideration that when suppliers send information in a variety of different formats, it gives a member of your team the time-consuming task of centralising and standardising this level of information manually.
Your team’s time is better spent elsewhere.
Difficult Validating Supplier Information
When a supplier adopts unethical practices, then the buying company can’t claim a lack of knowledge about their supplier’s practices. It’s essential for buyers to complete their own supplier evaluations and audits and collect required documentation, to ensure their suppliers are adhering to legislative standards.
However, this is a monumental and high-pressure task for those involved. Each supplier onboarded comes with a vast amount of documentation that needs to be verified and information which needs to be checked, which is a challenging and time-consuming task to complete manually.
Long Response Times
With each supplier onboarded comes a vast quantity of information that needs to be collected on both business practices, and manufacturing sites. This ensures your supplier aligns with your own company values and will provide a quality product under the essential health and safety regulations.
However, it can take time for suppliers to gather the required information, and it’s easy for them to miss vital bits of data, resulting in a lack of transparency between the supplier and the buying company. This can result in hours spent chasing suppliers to complete tasks.
Poor Communication Impacts Supplier Relationships
The most productive relationships are strong relationships, and this applies to supplier management, particularly when supplier collaboration has a role to play in sustainable procurement.
A messy and time-consuming onboarding process can get you and your suppliers off on the wrong foot. Additionally, if supplier communication remains a messy and siloed process, it can prevent your supplier relationships from being collaborative and productive.
No Central Repository of Data.
Without keeping supplier information in a central area, it’s easy for documents to go missing, or for teams to discover they have been collaborating on the wrong version of the document.
Furthermore, this central area must be standardised across teams. Otherwise, all departments involved in supplier management will find that they are losing far too much time that can be better spent elsewhere.
Onboarding Suppliers with ARCUS® Supplier Information Management (SIM)
ARCUS® Supplier Information Management (SIM) is our supplier onboarding software module.
ARCUS® SIM allows procurement teams to easily onboard suppliers through comprehensive, configurable questionnaires, then continually manage and maintain information on suppliers. The system allows teams to easily ensure information is consistently up-to-date and accurate.
ARCUS® SIM has a variety of features which allows users to bypass the most time-consuming and intensive challenges encountered during supplier onboarding.
A Standardised Method of Onboarding
When suppliers are onboarding with ARCUS® SIM, information is collected through a full configurable questionnaire, with tiered question-branching.
Supplier input their information directly in the system. Not does this only place the onus on the supplier to provide the correct information, but it also eliminates risks from rekeying errors.
All information is kept in a consistent, easily searchable format.
Validation and Verification with Smart Technologies
When supplier onboard their information, they can upload their documentation directly into the system.
With ARCUS® Supplier Information Management’s smart technology options, the documentation can be validated with 99% accuracy with Artificial Intelligence, so you can have confidence in the validity of your supplier documentation.
Collecting key information directly from the official data sources also ensures data accuracy and trust. With our API integration options, a live link is established with external data-sources, so information is populated within the ARCUS® system and regularly updated.
Automated Alerts and Reminders to Shorten Response Times.
If you’re spending a lot of your time chasing suppliers for answers, or missing pieces of information, then ARCUS® SIM’s automated reminder system could be beneficial.
If suppliers are approaching the deadline to provide required information, then they are sent reminders instead of a member of procurement needing to follow-up manually.
Additionally, suppliers can only send the questionnaire once they have supplied all the required information, so there are no missing pieces.
A User-friendly Experience for Suppliers
ARCUS® SIM offers the opportunity for a smooth and seamless onboarding experience for suppliers, subsequently providing the opportunity to form better supplier relationships with a centralised and standardised method of communication.
A Centralised Repository of Supplier Information
ARCUS® SIM allows users to collect, manage and maintain supplier information within a centralised database which can be accessed by multiple stakeholders at the same time.
Users can have confidence that they are working from the most up-to-date documentation.
Users of ARCUS® SIM benefit from streamlined supplier information management processes. When used with other ARCUS® modules, you can benefit from a streamlined process across source-to-contract.
If you would like to know more about how ARCUS® SIM can help you onboard suppliers the easy way, then contact us at Trade Interchange to book a consultation with a member of the team.
