Increase Agility and Reduce Risk with Accurate Supplier Data Management

Introduction

Imagine you are the head of procurement for a midsize company. You are tasked with reducing the company’s risk and creating faster, more agile systems. One way to achieve both of these goals is by improving the accuracy of your supplier data.

Accurate supplier data is the elephant in the room no one really wants to talk about, but if you’re going to reduce risk and become more agile in your procurement, you have to deal with it. By leveraging the power of a supplier data management platform like SupplierGateway’s Enterprise Supplier Data Management Platform, you can quickly improve supplier data accuracy while reducing risk and creating a more agile, resilient supply chain.

 In this article, you’ll learn accurate supplier data can help you manage risk and enhance agility.

The Importance of Accurate Supplier Data

The quality of your supplier data is critical to the success of your procurement organization. Data quality affects your ability to make risk-aware decisions, identify new suppliers, and track supplier performance. With accurate supplier data, identifying and mitigating risk becomes second nature, and slowdowns in procurement workflows are reduced significantly.

But what is accurate supplier data? It’s up-to-date, complete, and consistent. The more accurate your data is, the more reliable your decisions will be. Your procurement team must have access to the most current supplier data in order to make fast, accurate, and reliable decisions.

Learn more about how you can ensure your data is accurate and up to date.

How Can Accurate Supplier Data Help Reduce Risk?

Supplier data is the key to reducing risk in your procurement process. Accurate data can help you identify and assess risk factors early on and make better decisions about which suppliers to work with.

Risk can come from a number of sources, such as financial instability, supplier capability issues, or compliance and regulatory risks. By monitoring supplier data closely, you can reduce the chances of any negative impact on your business, including reputational and legal risk.

Data-driven risk assessment is one of the most effective ways to manage risk in procurement. With accurate supplier data at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions that protect your company and ensure its continued success.

How Can Accurate Supplier Data Enable Agile Procurement?

SupplierGateway’s Supplier Risk Management tools help your company reduce risk and enhance agility before placing your first PO.

Accurate data starts with accurate data collection during the supplier onboarding process. With a self-service onboarding portal that potential and current suppliers can access anytime, your company can obtain supplier data from the source instead of chasing down disparate information. Having accurate, up-to-date information before you even engage a supplier speeds up requisitions and approvals. According to Informatica, companies that automate onboarding and other risk management processes experience time savings of up to 80%. This translates into faster time to market. 

When you have accurate supplier data, you’re able to make decisions in real time. You can quickly identify and mitigate risks and change your supply chain as needed. This flexibility enables you to respond quickly to changing market conditions and stay ahead of the competition.

With SupplierGateway, you have a centralized source of truth for all your supplier data. This allows you to quickly and easily access the information you need when you need it. Our intuitive user interface makes finding and using the information you need to make informed decisions easy.

What Challenges Should Procurement Professionals Consider When Managing Suppliers?

Truthfully, managing your suppliers is one of your biggest challenges as a procurement professional. Your company may have hundreds or even thousands of suppliers, and managing all of them accurately may not be feasible. Identifying your most important suppliers is one way to streamline this process. 

Find out how to identify and manage your critical suppliers and increase your agility while reducing risk.

As a procurement professional, you should consider the potential risks associated with your suppliers, such as bankruptcy findings, liens, or other legal, financial, and compliance risks. Data accuracy errors can occur when supplier data is outdated, inaccurate, or not verified by a third party, leading to wasted time and exposure to undue risk for your company. 

Furthermore, inaccurate data can result in incorrect orders being sent to suppliers. All of this can lead to increased costs, missed deadlines, and negative impacts to your bottom line.

Using the right tool is key to avoiding these issues. A great supplier data management platform—like SupplierGateway—can help procurement professionals reduce risk and alleviate manual data-gathering processes by automating the process. The Enterprise Supplier Data Management Platform streamlines your supplier data collection process, eliminates data silos, reduces risk, and saves you time. With this platform in place, you can confidently manage your supplier relationships and ensure accurate data is always readily available.

5 Steps Procurement Professionals Can Take to Ensure Accurate Supplier Data

Having accurate supplier data is essential for efficient and productive procurement operations, but how can you ensure that your supplier data is always up-to-date and reliable?

Here are 5 steps you can take to ensure accurate supplier data:

1. Centralize your supplier data and use a unified supplier data management platform. Use one database as one source of truth for supplier information, and allow access to this database to those who require it. Stop updating multiple databases and eliminate inconsistencies in your supplier data.
2. Enable a self-service supplier onboarding portal. Allowing suppliers to input their own data saves you time and increases data accuracy by getting important information directly from the source. Create custom onboarding workflows based on supplier type to save your suppliers time.
3. Ensure your current supplier data is up-to-date and accurate. You can invite current suppliers to register in your onboarding portal and update their own supplier profiles as needed.
4. Identify your critical suppliers and automate compliance and risk monitoring. Identifying critical suppliers and monitoring them saves your team time and money, particularly when your supplier base contains hundreds or thousands of suppliers.
5. Automate compliance alerts for your suppliers. Ensure your suppliers always know when compliance documents, contracts, and other important certifications are due for renewal. 

Another useful step is to invest in a Supplier Data Management Platform like SupplierGateway’s Enterprise Supplier Data Management Platform. This platform allows you to streamline your supplier data collection process, eliminate silos of supplier data, reduce risk, and save time. And the best part? It’s built with cloud-friendly technologies to access your supplier data anytime, anywhere quickly.

Tips for Using SupplierGateway to Manage Accuracy in Supplier Data

Using SupplierGateway to manage your supplier data is an effective way to reduce risk and enhance agility. Here are a few tips on how to maximize the benefits of the platform:

—Collect data from your suppliers in an organized, centralized, and secure manner with our Supplier Onboarding Portal. This will ensure you have correct, up-to-date information on your suppliers up-front.

—Put processes in place for regularly auditing and validating supplier data to ensure accuracy and identify discrepancies.

—Keep important compliance documents organized and accessible in the Compliance Document Center. Review your supplier agreements periodically to ensure compliance with legal requirements, regulations, and safety standards.

—Reduce your company’s liability and get alerts on critical suppliers for risks like bankruptcy, tax liens, and late payments that could negatively impact your business.

Conclusion

Managing supplier data is essential to reducing risk and remaining agile in today’s marketplace. Accurate data allows businesses to make informed decisions quickly and react swiftly to supplier issues. Additionally, a well-managed supplier database can help businesses save time and money and more accurately identify risk.