When it comes to managing your suppliers, efficiency and process unity are key.  If your supplier management process relies on disparate documents, spread sheets and emails to access key data, contract information, certificates of insurance and performance data, it just may not cut it.  A disorganised process like this leads to missed deadlines, failed compliance, insufficient payments, agreement breaches and poor supplier selection.  You can eliminate manual, time-consuming processes by successfully keeping track of what’s essential with supplier management software.  Track these two critical aspects of supplier management.

Supplier Q&A, rating and scoring

During a bid process, leveraging supplier management software gives your suppliers the opportunity to ask questions. You can configure your system so that notifications are sent to users when a supplier submits a response or when due dates are looming.  There are also options for your response to potential suppliers.  You can address responses one-by-one, or provide them on a spreadsheet or document which you can make public for suppliers.

The ability to control the weight of specific supplier criteria, supplier response ratings and supplier scoring can help you keep track of important rating information to identify – in an easily comparable format – the supplier that best meets your needs.

Certificate of insurance and other supplier data

Supplier management software can improve the management of certificates of insurance and general document management by allowing you to import, store, manage data expiry and run reports on COI and other supplier documents.

You can set up data fields and alerts for supplier and contract records, including alerts for critical metadata for COI documents such as certificate expiry date, insurance limits, certificate types etc.  So you can easily track, manage and edit key data in one central location.  Third-party integration may be available for the import of supplier data if changes are made in an ERP or another system.  For a timely process, rules-based notifications and alerts can be set so appropriate users can be made aware of key dates.

If you use leading contract management software with integrated supplier management, you can import virtually unlimited electronic documents, including electronic COI documents sent by counterparties.  Intelligent reporting and analytics on extracted contract data means you can create valuable reports so that crucial contract information can be shared with the right people at the right time.  Standard ad-hoc reports such as key dates, contract amounts, expiring contracts, milestones etc streamline data aggregation and encourage sharing and collaboration while reducing the need for IT support.

Upgrade your supplier management process

Stop wasting money, time and opportunities with an antiquated supplier management process.  It’s time to strategically manage your suppliers with Contract Insight, Four’s highly recommended, robust and user-friendly contract management software with built-in supplier management.  

Contract Insight has helped thousands of supplier management, purchasing, sourcing, procurement and risk management professionals from leading organisations and agencies.  

It offers complete supplier lifecycle management with self-serve supplier registration, advanced supplier selection tools, game-changing supplier data tracking and reporting, terms and negotiations tracking, practical supplier performance management and streamlined online collaboration.

Contract Insight from Four

Contract Insight is a cloud-hosted (SaaS) or deployed (on-premise) contract management solution.  The acclaimed platform is trusted by thousands of professionals for their contract management, legal document management, procurement and sourcing needs.  Used by many Fortune 500 companies, Contract Insight gives you real time visibility into your contracts. It doesn’t just shore up your security; it will help you meet contract compliance regulations, centralise your contract management and improve your overall contract administration process.

For more information, contact John O’Brien, CEO at Four Business Solutions, global business consultants and software integrators providing business processes improvements in Finance, Supply Chain and Operations, across a broad range of industries.