Suppliers are essential parts of the business module. You must ensure that your business maintains a good and healthy relationship with your suppliers. You must have a well-defined and prominent onboarding system and procedure to establish that.
Unfortunately, onboarding suppliers is a local procedure as suppliers may vary from region to region, especially for global enterprises. The regional nature of suppliers results in an onboarding process that is not well-defined, centralized, or easily managed. Due to this, onboarding processes can take a long time.
However, there are ways where you can streamline your supplier onboarding procedures. Consider using these five methods to improve your onboarding process.
Opt for Self-Service Portals for Suppliers
One of the main steps in the onboarding process is to collect and go through all relevant information about suppliers. This can be a lengthy procedure as information is exchanged back and forth between potential suppliers and the company to collect all the necessary information.
This not only wastes time but can also be an expensive process. However, all these hassles can be avoided by simply making self-service portals for suppliers. The suppliers can upload and submit all the required documents on their own time, which is much faster than traditional means. The company can review them immediately and move on to the next step.
Access and Management of Centralized Data
Information and data are big factors for all kinds of business activities. You would want valid and correct information about your suppliers, which you can access easily. Otherwise, it may cause significant issues in the future.
To avoid that and ensure that all your information is correct and centralized, you can implement services that can apply information validation rules to all the data being collected in your database.
Also, having all your information gathered and organized in a centralized platform will allow convenient access. With the self-service portals, onboarding processes can become simpler and take much less time.
Work on Your Onboarding Qualifications to Reduce Risks
A significant factor in the onboarding process for suppliers is the risk factor. You can never predict the authenticity of a supplier. Therefore, to avoid that, ensure you have a thorough process with specific qualifications. Make sure your supplier is someone who can deliver what you expect.
To reduce the supplier risk factor, ensure proper communication wherein you convey to the suppliers the values, goals, and expectations of your company while understanding their conditions and what they have to offer.
Only when your onboarding qualifications are met should you proceed with the next steps and consider whether you want that supplier to be on board.
Integrate Other Business Systems for Maximum Benefit
As mentioned earlier, data is an essential factor that can help you make or break the process. It can help you sign contracts with trustable suppliers, but there’s more to consider.
Once the onboarding process is complete and you have successfully selected and welcomed the suppliers, you can further use that information to improve upcoming processes.
For instance, you can integrate this collected information with other business systems, such as Product Information Management Systems and ERP, to make better-informed decisions and improve business activities.
Maintain Consistency and Transparency
Lastly, you would want your onboarding processes to be consistent throughout your company in its various locations. While companies have different onboarding processes and separate information bases for different locations, it can get troublesome if you want an overall view of your suppliers.
Therefore, opt for a system or tool that will offer you a centralized platform from where you can conveniently implement a universal onboarding system for your company. This way, you will also have all your supplier information in one place, making it easy for you to have an overall view and transparency of supplier data.
You can further use this collected data to do better negotiations and get into better deals with suppliers.
Conclusion
The onboarding process for suppliers is a crucial process that will help you come in contact with trustworthy suppliers with whom you can expect a long business relationship.
To create a great professional relationship with your suppliers, plan and figure out the onboarding process in detail. As an additional resource, check out these tips on streamlining your onboarding process can help you improve your supplier relationship, as suggested by leading companies in the supply chain.