Back Office Word of the Week – 9/16/19
Vendor Management (sometimes called Supplier Management) is the process by which a buyer formalizes a relationship with their vendors and suppliers and manages that relationship through its lifecycle.
The first step in a Vendor Management is typically procurement, where a buyer sources and negotiates a contract with a Vendor to provide goods or services. Once the contract has been signed, there is a document and data collection phase where the buyer obtains necessary information such as Certificates of Insurance, payment details, tax and license information as well as other pertinent information to ensure compliance with law and corporate policy. This process is know as vendor onboarding, or supplier onboarding. Once a vendor has been successfully onboarded with the approval of all the relevant stakeholders, ongoing maintenance of critical expirations and other changes to Vendor data is necessary to mitigate risk.
ICG’s robust Vendor On-boarding Solution is a highly configurable, automated, cloud hosted application designed to promote vendor self-service. This approach alleviates the headaches and resources involved in collecting required documentation and data when setting up new vendors. The On-boarding solution tracks and sends notifications to both the buyer and vendor when critical expirations are approaching to avoid any lapse in compliance whether that is insurance coverage, licenses and permits or perhaps diversity status renewals.
Once vendors are onboarded managing the relationship with them from both an administrative and transactional perspective is necessary. ICG offers such tools as Vendor Maintenance, Vendor Portals, AP Automation, Supplier Portals, Payment Inquiry, On-line Invoice Submit, Dispute Submission & Tracking, and much more to help our clients automate and promote self-service in their vendor management operations.
Contact us today to learn more about how ICG’s solutions could help your organization’s Vendor Management process!
