Why is a supplier management system needed?

Why is a supplier management system needed?

How do you manage the data you have about all your business partners? Is it stored across multiple computers, email accounts and Excel spreadsheets? Have you ever considered a better solution for managing your partners? An electronic supplier management system provides an easy and agile way to gather information related to partners and suppliers in one place.

To this day, many organizations still manage their suppliers using Excel as the primary tool. Information is shared, for example, via SharePoint or by email alone. This method creates issues when data becomes outdated and maintaining the information is a work intensive task. Manually maintained Excel spreadsheets are laborious to process and no longer serve the needs of an organization.

Critical information may be spread across the organization, meaning that it is not possible to truly know the current situation with a given partner. In most cases, information is not standardized, which potentially causes confusion in an organization as data is not managed systematically.

“In many organizations, the biggest challenges in supplier management include manual data collection and outdated and incorrect supplier information spreading across different systems. It is not possible for anyone keep on top of the situation if information is only shared over phone, email and random attachments,” says Jaakko Reinikainen, Cloudia Oy’s Strategy Manager.

Manage your partner network effectively to succeed

Maintaining and nurturing supplier relationships is increasingly emphasized in organizations that want to succeed now and in the future. Partner and supplier relationships that are reliable and functional are the strategic pillars of any sustainable organization.

When organizations have many suppliers, it can be challenging to identify strategic partners by category. Based on this segmentation, cooperation can be improved and made more effective with the desired suppliers.

“Now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we see, for example, up-to-date contact information and contract data as playing a key role in risk mitigation and maintaining the Source-to-Contract (S2C) process,” Reinikainen continues.

Develop partner collaboration – Cloudia’s supplier management solution makes it easy

Cloudia Supplier Management provides your organization with a platform for maintaining a supplier relationship management (SRM) framework, and a way to easily manage partner-related information from a single, secure location. Data collection, maintenance and the management of activities take place through the same platform with easy-to-use tools.

Information can also be updated directly by the supplier to ensure efficacy and ease the burden of performing this task in-house. Easy-to-use criteria and automated supplier scoring make it easier and faster to evaluate and segment a supplier within categories. These measures can significantly improve the quality of the partner network and reduce the risk of selecting the wrong partner for a specific project.

Avoid additional data entry and keep information up-to-date with integrations

Cloudia Supplier Management can be easily integrated with other systems in an organization, for example an ERP system. This leverages all existing supplier information and conveniently transfers it to the Cloudia system. Cloudia Supplier Management operates independently, but you can get additional benefits if you integrate the service with Cloudia Contract or Cloudia Sourcing, in which case partner information can also be deployed throughout different services.

If, for example, the customer’s ERP system serves as the main supplier database, the partner information can be automatically updated to Cloudia’s services at desired intervals. Integrations reduce the risk of the S2C process and make it easier to keep the information up-to-date and synchronized between stakeholders.

Benefits of Cloudia Supplier Management:

  1. Ensure the accuracy and quality of partner information
  2. Identify the best suppliers and partners for a given project
  3. Monitor the performance of partners in your network
  4. Identify and manage supplier risks
  5. Develop and maintain effective supplier cooperation
  6. Store and update information in a single secure location
  7. Adapt and integrate to your current environment
  8. Ensure that everyone in your organization accesses the latest partner data

 

Want to know more about how to develop your partner network? Download the brochure

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