Supplier Information

Globalization has forced organizations to move beyond their local boundaries and

reach out to the emerging demand from different regions across the globe. Today buyers are interacting with suppliers all over the globe in order to meet the emerging demand from new markets. This article focuses how supplier information is one of the key to supplier management.

Supplier information is often distributed in different parts of the organization and finds importance in other departments apart from procurement. However a gap is seen as far as the interconnection of this data among the various departments. This gives rise to management issues at various levels be it operational, functional or at the strategic level.

Supplier Information Management allows an enterprise to aggregate, collect and maintain the

information from all distributed systems within the organization, thus enabling a consolidated view of supplier data, process status and relationships.

Efficient and effective supplier information management is central to understanding the supply chain risk, consolidating sources of supply, and thereby maximizing the return on a supply base which can in turn create tangible business benefits.

Supplier Information can be used in a variety of ways in the organization. Let us consider some of them:

"Information like company name, contacts, products and services can be used to communicate and collaborate with the suppliers.

"Information of the nature of manufacturing methods employed, machinery and capacity available, certification, insurance documentation etc. help in the assessment of suppliers in terms of their capabilities to meet existing and future demands

"Information about supplier performance in terms of delivery, service levels etc. coupled with external intelligence in terms of financial scores, balance of trade, news & events help in determining the risk from a particular supplier.

One of the key to supplier management is timely payments to the suppliers. Accounts payable is characterized by processes which are transaction intensive in nature and are more often than not carried out in a manual manner, leading to inefficient tracking and errors related to accounts payable processing. This invariably leads to loss of productive time, increase in the operational costs and also strains relationship with the suppliers.

Centralized supplier information with information available to all the stakeholders transcribes into

"Accurate, timely and unduplicated payments to suppliers as per contract terms

"Speedier processing of invoices possible because of a centralized supplier information system

A centralized repository of supplier master data thus helps procurement and accounts payable team to better coordinate and process invoices speedily to not only realize benefits from early payments but also build sustainable supplier relationships.

by: Rahul Awtaney

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