Supplier Onboarding

Overview of Supplier Onboarding / Supplier Registration

Supplier onboarding, the process of initiating a new business relationship with an external partner, is a very complex process to implement across a corporation. The reason for this is that the supplier onboarding process is primarily a local process, which has to address local requirements, as well as divisional and corporate requirements. The traditional system roll-out approach, of defining and harmonizing a process for everyone, will not work in this business scenario.

ESM delivers a new approach and system/workflow architecture to meet these complex requirements, whilst maintaining the principle of simplicity to the users. Supplier onboarding requirements can be defined at the various levels of the organization, ensuring you have corporate requirements met (e.g. CSR and code of conduct), provide divisional independence to your various business units and also local flexibility to meet local requirements (e.g. Diversity, Tax-Forms, Business Licenses). This innovative approach allows you to begin rollouts and usage of the system immediately, without lengthy alignment and planning phases of what to collect when you onboard a new supplier. You can easily tackle the various requirements during system rollout, having confidence in a system that was built to tackle this complexity, in a simple and robust manner.

Typical Supplier Onboarding Process

The supplier onboarding can have a multitude of variations and requirements, depending on the nature of the relationship and what will be sourced, however at a high level you can get started with our best practice process from day one, and enhance it as you rollout to additional countries/businesses. It's easy to add the variations as you go along, without the need for timely up-front process harmonization phases.

How does it work?

The ESM Supplier Onboarding module enables you to have both consistency and flexibility at the same time. In the background this is achieved by using a matrix style workflow engine, rather than traditional workflows of either sequential or parallel processing which require the actors of the workflow to be part of the same local entity or purchasing organization. ESM is designed for Enterprise processes and not just local processes.

• Define: supplier onboarding / supplier registration requirements can be defined at a Corporate, Divisional and local level (the levels can be adapted to your organization), and the system will ensure that all suppliers which are onboarded will comply with everyone's requirements.
• Invite: anyone can now onboard freely, from the CEO to the purchasing assistant in your most remote location, in a consistent way because the system has the intelligence to know what is required by all the stakeholders, from a given supplier, depending on which one of your affiliates is onboarding the supplier, and if the suppliers is already in use by someone else.
• Assess/Review: information collected, for each different requirement, can automatically be disseminated to Corporate/Global functions in addition to the local ones, allowing each to be responsible for their own area
• Approve: approval can be done at a local level but also from a Global Category Management or Corporate Compliance function level to help drive volumes to strategic partners and adhere to key corporate initiatives.
• Manage: if at any point in time a new requirement comes up for suppliers, the system will automatically alert existing suppliers to quickly bring them into compliance with the new needs. In addition if a suppliers situation changes, they can update their information through the portal and the system will automatically re-trigger the needed workflows to review/approve the changes

The Difference / Benefits

This is like no other solution out there. Typically you will be required to define a single process to work with all existing solutions. Let's share an example:

Your global process has by default 2 approvals, Sourcing then Finance, however you will encounter other countries / businesses / commodities, with situations which may want more or less, or have Finance before Sourcing approval, or vice versa. Which will absolutely make sense to the local business, however you will force them to take over the a corporate process, otherwise the system implementation will get to costly and difficult to maintain. This has the effect of slow moving and costly projects, as change / stakeholder management becomes the most complex part to execute.

This can now be avoided because a solution has arrived which works the way your business does, delivering value at all levels of the organization, global, divisional, local, etc....

Key Benefits

• process definition and harmonization happens as an evolution
• value delivered at all levels of the organization Global -> Local
• organizational change management is easy, because you are not forcing people to change what makes sense for them
• system adoption is easy, because you deliver value and the requirements which everyone has
• higher ROI quicker, because project costs are lower, and timelines are shorter