Why is intelligent supplier management so important?

Especially with a large supplier base, many different purchased parts and complex production processes, it is extremely important to maintain an overview. Intelligent supplier management mapped directly in the ERP can help to monitor all order processes and associated invoicing and significantly reduce the workload of the specialist departments.

For these reasons, the importance of a intelligent supplier managementthat answers these questions can provide answers quickly and accurately. The importance of IT has also increased in equal measure: Linking data between customers and suppliers has become just as important as internal analysis.

And this is not just a "gut feeling": in 2019, the BME (Electronic Procurement Barometer) conducted a survey to find out that the digitalization of traditional procurement processes is becoming increasingly prevalent in all companies. The aim of the survey was to current status of digitization and future developments in selected areas of purchasing and supply chain management. Particularly interesting in the

Results: Clearly at the top of the list for investment are supplier management tools, with 92.4% of respondents across all industries seeing the use of intelligent solutions for supplier management.

Evaluating suppliers, identifying duplicate data records and networking your own product groups are sometimes difficult tasks. significant advantagesthat intelligent supplier management entails.

Once you have gained experience with a number of suppliers, you can draw conclusions about the quality of the supplier relationship based on internal expectations. These can be easily mapped using ratings that rank the supplier within the system. These intelligent evaluation mechanisms are not only important for classifying the supplier, but also for creating transparency.

The evaluation options are self-definable: the app allows evaluations to be carried out quickly and easily using questionnaire-based processes. This is quick and easy to implement and makes the supplier transparent across departments. Weightings within the evaluation criteria are also possible so that the results can be compared with each other at a higher level.

For example, CLC has implemented an app-based supplier evaluation in SAP ERP for a large municipal energy supplier. Project manager Cedric Schonard is convinced that the app provides a reliable overview of the supplier evaluations. In preparation for the implementation phase

 

 

 

the client was able to define the criteria that were important to them in advance. These included the following questions:

• How was the project overall?
• How was the coordination with the supplier?
• How was the quality of the delivery?
• Were deliveries reliable and statements kept?

 

As the number of orders processed increases, it can happen that suppliers are unintentionally created twice in the system. Sometimes there is a lack of time when an order needs to be created quickly or the unintentional duplication occurs for another reason. As part of intelligent supplier management, it is possible to identify duplicate supplier master data and either delete or clean it up. If duplicates are identified during an ongoing project, these findings can also be collected and cleaned up later in total.

Duplicate master records not only cause significant additional work in the work processes - good data quality also supports smooth, digitalized and therefore cost-saving invoicing and compliance. This means that "clean" master data is also extremely important for financial accounting.

In the course of a customer project at a well-known automotive supplier, CLC was able to identify the duplicates via a multi-stage approval process and clean up the master data. "Such an approval process involves all departments that work with the supplier in the system. A detailed check is carried out to determine whether the duplicate may be deleted. If this is the case, the data records are removed in a controlled manner, thereby significantly improving the data quality in the ERP," says Schonard.

The fact that strategic supplier management also enables allocation via product groups makes the purchasing process even easier. This not only affects the search for a suitable replacement supplier if the usual supplier is unable to deliver the goods, but also significantly supports the search for suppliers for new products and product groups.

The existence of existing and current contracts can also be checked here, as optimization potential is often wasted here. If the conditions of the previous supplier are significantly more expensive than those of a comparable supplier, potential savings can be quickly identified here.

The importance of the networked product groups became apparent in practice while supporting the large municipal energy supplier. "When planning a road construction project, the supplier network was so busy at a certain point that it was no longer possible to work with the regular suppliers," explains Schonard. Thanks to the digital supplier file, however, the company was able to quickly switch to an alternative supplier without jeopardizing the planned start of construction.