Supplier Management, Supplier Risk and Information Management

What is Supplier Management?

Supplier management is broadly defined as the management of all activities related to suppliers and supplier-related business processes. It typically covers establishing relationships with suppliers, including onboarding, communications and all ongoing interactions. Supplier management is a combination of supplier information management (SIM), supplier lifecycle management (SLM) as well as supplier risk and performance management (SRPM).

The importance of effective supplier management has increased in the recent years, especially for large, global organisations as they expand their supplier base and footprint. Managing both the risk and value generated by suppliers is more vital than ever and is a core requirement for procurement and finance functions and for organisations in general. There is a continuous need for up-to-date supplier business information, risk information as well as a better way to understand how suppliers are performing.

Are you looking to better manage your suppliers, keep up with constantly changing supplier data, and reduce risk in your supply chain?

As supply chains become more complex, they also become vulnerable to third party risks with suppliers from all over the world delivering to locations globally. Having visibility over all your suppliers and the tools to manage them effectively is becoming increasingly more critical.

Basware Supplier Management provides the tools for accurate and up-to-date supplier information management and supplier risk and performance management. It acts as your supplier hub, providing a common platform to access all your master supplier records across multiple ERPs and business systems.

How Basware's Supplier Management Solution Can Help

Knowing who your suppliers are, recognising when change happens, and providing timely notifications to enable early action are all important for a healthy supply chain. The enormous amount of new and frequently changing supplier data makes it tough to keep up and manage these processes manually. Incorrect information can lead to late payments and supplier disputes, while poor supplier management processes can open the door for fraudsters, unauthorised updates, and eventually payment fraud.

Basware Supplier Management helps mitigate supplier risk, while improving supplier collaboration, enabling organisations to more effectively manage their supply base to maximise value and minimise risk.

Centralised Visibility to Supplier Data

Organisations, especially those with decentralised or global operations, often struggle with managing their supplier data. Storing supplier information in disparate systems limits easy access to information and in some cases can result in inaccurate information. Basware enables you to connect to all your suppliers and consolidate all supplier data, for easy access. With Basware Supplier Management you can gain visibility over your entire supply chain and leverage tools to manage all suppliers from a centralised location.

Accurate Supplier Information

Supplier information is constantly changing and is especially challenging to update when managed with manual processes. With Basware, you can automate the supplier management process and free up time spent on maintaining supplier information. Supplier data is validated against and enriched using external sources like Dun and Bradstreet or other 3rd party data risk companies and can be used to receive insights into possible duplicates, missing supplier data, and supplier risk and compliance scores. You can use this data to take corrective actions, minimize risk and reduce fraud.

Visibility to Supplier Performance

Monitoring strategic suppliers and supplier performance is critical as organisations grow and expand their operations. By layering supplier data with Basware Analytics, you gain insights into how suppliers are performing against their targets. For example, order fulfilment accuracy or lead times, to negotiate favorable contracts with them. With this visibility at your fingertips, you can also identify your key suppliers and build high-performing supply chains and reduce supply chain risk.

Improve On-Time Payment Performance

With consolidated and up-to-date supplier information, suppliers have better visibility, resulting in minimised supplier disputes and reduced inquiries regarding transaction status. Easy access to data also allows you to accelerate processing cycles and increase on-time payment performance, enabling you to build better and stronger relationships with your supply chain.

Supplier Management Capabilities

Basware delivers a comprehensive and integrated supplier management solution that brings visibility to all your suppliers through a single supplier hub – providing tools for supplier information management and supplier risk and performance management.

The Basware solution builds on an open architecture, enabling organisations to manage suppliers and spend using a core procure to pay (P2P) platform like Basware, while capitalising on the latest in specialist services from our approved partners.

Supplier Information Management

All master data currently stored in disparate systems is consolidated into a single centralised location, providing the visibility and tools to manage all your suppliers more effectively. With accurate and up-to-date supplier information you always know who you are doing business with and what corrective actions are necessary.

With Basware Supplier Management, you can:

Manage consolidated supplier data from multiple ERPs and business systems in one central place.
Cleanse and enrich your supplier data against Dun & Bradstreet: update business data, add missing information, remove duplicates.
Learn more about your supplier: DUNS ID, addresses, decision-makers, industry codes, party IDs, etc.
Apply electronic approval policy to data updates and propagate updated data back to ERPs and business systems.

Supplier Risk Management

Consolidated supplier master data is also validated and enriched against external risk data making it possible to monitor each suppliers’ risk or operating status, take corrective actions if needed. Basware Supplier Risk management builds on an open ecosystem where pluggable, best of breed partner solutions extend Basware’s offering. Using open APIs, we can bring and monitor risk data from multiple 3rd party partners.

Depending on the partner, you can monitor different types of risk – financial risk, reputational risk, compliance risk – and automatically receive a score or indication if the supplier belongs to a sanction list. Updates and corrections are then circulated back to the solution and are also available in other parts of the P2P solution.

By automating this process, you can extend risk monitoring to new categories to improve resiliency – from key suppliers to the long-tail, you can free up time for strategic initiatives.

Supplier Performance Management

Basware provides a holistic view into 100% of your supplier data by taking your supplier lists from different ERPs and business systems and consolidated them into a single, centralised location.

Overlay this data with Basware Analytics to monitor performance of your suppliers. With this data you have better insight of your supply base, empowering you to set realistic goals, develop better sourcing strategies, build high-performing supply chains, and reduce supply chain risk.