Today, more companies, especially global ones, have grown their supply base exponentially, making the onboarding process more complex than ever. It is becoming common for large companies to have hundreds of thousands of suppliers. However, establishing new supplier relationships and managing these new suppliers’ risk profiles can be a problem.
Despite these constraints, companies are also expected to gain a deeper understanding of supplier activities. The solution to these issues starts with picking the right suppliers to partner with and optimizing the onboarding process.
To effectively manage the process, an organization must master its risk assessment, due diligence, and supplier relationship management (SRM), which can be difficult without proper tools and good business operations. The following four best practices are the answers you need to streamline and improve the process.
- Mitigate Risk and Fraud From The Beginning:
Carefully assessing and prequalifying your potential suppliers is crucial to avoid future risks and reduce fraud. To achieve that, clear communication about your organization’s values and, in turn, whether the supplier’s value aligns with yours is a must. You should also certify and verify all information—categories, insurance, financial information, sub-suppliers, and so on—provided by suppliers.
The SupplierGateway supplier-prequalification app can configure supplier risk questionnaires, standardize workflows, and automatically filter suppliers who don’t meet your minimum criteria. Furthermore, you can utilize our Financial Risk Monitoring app to proactively watch for bankruptcy filings, tax clients, late payments, and collection fillings within your supply base.
- Supplier Self-Service Portal:
As the number of suppliers increases, many organizations are under tremendous pressure to assist and work with suppliers without increasing their staff number. With a self-service portal, your suppliers don’t have to email directly to your team whenever they have a question or need additional information, which has often occurred to organizations managing it manually.
The SupplierGateway self-service portal provides all the necessary tools to ensure consistency in onboarding new suppliers, regardless of the specific category or supplier size. With a simple and efficient supplier-friendly portal, we help you avoid all these troubles and save time and money.
- Access to The Most Current, Relevant, Validated Information:
Collecting all relevant, completed, and validated documents from suppliers is necessary to save your time and effort. Not doing so can potentially interrupt and harm your business. Also, It’s time-consuming without the help of technology. In other words, standardizing the implementation data is your hassle-free solution.
Fortunately, in the SupplierGateway self-service portal, your suppliers can easily update their contact, company, certifications, and product information anytime. This is a win-win for both parties to ensure everything is up-to-date.
- Automate, Automate and Automate:
Innovations such as AI and automation are evolving, particularly in business, where many organizations have been utilizing technology to streamline their operations. Automation brings considerable benefits to your onboarding process, including greater efficiencies, configuring resources and users, fewer errors, and tighter control over your SRM platform. Using automation is part of supplier onboarding best practices.
With suppliers’ problems increasing, the need for automation is expected to be higher than ever. That’s why SupplierGateway supplier management solutions are offered. They enhance your process to be more transparent, robust risk management, and make better decisions.
Wrapping it up…
No matter what products or services you offer, building a good and strong business relationship with suppliers through supplier onboarding best practices is essential. By doing so, you will positively impact your business’ success in the long run by increasing opportunities for smart and strategic sourcing. And we’re here to help you speed up building that stronger relationship. Schedule your demo today!
