Actual demand for our product is greater (or less) than forecast-ed?
My facilities have different quality standards for the same product?
I need to select a “green,” “low-cost country” or “diversity” supplier?
My preferred suppliers have capacity or lead-time issues?
I have only 10 days to decide the best award for five locations from 10 suppliers, 20 line items and hundreds of bids?
A successful sourcing project does not end with an auction; it ends when the awarded supplier delivers the correct product at the right time, place and cost. Implementation delivers the savings. Yet, at many companies, the “what-ifs” get in the way of realizing significant savings and product quality improvements. While an average sourcing project may take six to eight weeks to prepare and execute, the award decision can often take an additional six to eight weeks, not including new supplier verification. The additional time invested in award analysis can critically affect a company, especially if the company can obtain cost savings in two weeks rather than two months. In one example we know of, a company estimated that it cost them $1.6 million per month for an unimplemented sourcing project.
So why is it so difficult to award contracts when the savings potential is so obvious? Another company ran a $24 million auction for printed circuit boards. The sourcing team ecstatically presented $9.6 million in identified savings (an overall savings of 40 percent, with 70 percent in one lot alone). However, after six months, the actual savings delivered was $0. Why? Too many what-ifs got in the way. The joint sourcing and stakeholder team could not agree on the correct award scenarios, therefore, no decision was made.
Price factors are the easiest to analyze and compare. A sourcing analyst can calculate totals and summarize and rank suppliers for easy comparisons. But it is the other factors that prolong the decision-making process and often override the price factors. The key to a speedy award decision and implementation is managing the “what-if” factors.
The Six “What-if” Factors
There are six basic “what-if” factors, or risks, that affect award decisions and implementations. Some sourcing projects are infused with all factors, others just a few. Regardless, if not effectively managed, they can dramatically lengthen (or stall) the entire award decision and implementation process.
Price issues: These issues are typically the most obvious and easy to manage since they are quantitative. They include any cost associated with the total product value such as product, freight, packaging costs, rebates, discounts and payment terms.
Quality issues: Risks associated with quality are a bit more difficult to manage because some of them are assumed and not clearly articulated. Where it becomes tricky is when different stakeholder groups have different quality assumptions for the same item, such as with the printed circuit board bid.
Capacity and lead-time issues: It is critical that companies have capacity assurance so they can meet the demand of their customers. Juggling supplier capacity issues can be very time consuming, especially when product forecasts can swing dramatically up or down.
Regulatory issues: There are regulations such as accounting (Sarbanes Oxley), distribution and product ingredient quality (lead paint, melamine), and product sources that can affect decision making and must be managed.
Political issues: Though global politics have some impact, it is the internal corporate politics that carry the most weight in all sourcing decisions. Examples of these issues are sensitivities to preferred vendors (due to partnerships), diversity and green vendors, in-sourcing and internal competition between business units.
Supplier strategy issues: In addition to choosing a low-cost supplier, there are other supplier strategies that may need to be evaluated along with cost. These strategies include multi-source versus single-source, low-cost country, supplier consolidation and relative market strength of the supplier (monopoly).
Our second post in this two part series will focus managing the “What if’s.”
This is the first in a series of posts discussing the history of, business case for and strategy behind supplier performance management.
Before we can get to the end goal of creating an SPM strategy, we must understand the factors in our supply chains that have caused SPM to become an enormously important part of our processes. Over the past decade, economic globalization has allowed companies to reach suppliers in previously untapped parts of the world. With the ability to purchase goods and services at lower costs around the world, we now rely more on outsourced suppliers for these goods and services, which has increased our supply chain risk, the complexity of our supply chains and the globalization of our businesses. These shifts in focus have changed a company’s view of its suppliers as a cost to a revenue source to hold down the bottom line.
The combination of these factors across a globalized supply chain means that companies must maintain strong, viable supply chains in order to maintain strong, consistent business performance to protect their bottom lines. Effective, smart supplier performance management allows us to achieve these goals.
So does this mean a company needs a perfect supplier scorecard that makes its metrics look good? NO. Supplier scorecards are one small, though important, piece in the intricate puzzle that makes up supplier performance management. SPM involves aligning the organization, enabling strong business processes, developing meaningful supplier scorecards, and building actionable supplier improvement plans.
But at the end of the day, SPM is mainly about finding ways to improve your suppliers’ performance to reduce costs and risks, while increasing supplier value. Supplier performance improvement could take the form of making more on-time deliveries instead of shipping a few days early, which increases your inventory costs. Or suppliers could decrease lead time for delivery, which lowers your production time. A strong SPM program allows a procurement team to have visibility into performance issues like these so it can correct them with the supplier, while continually building a strong, mutually beneficial business relationship.
For more information on Supplier Performance Management click here to download our white paper.
Winning bidders in auctions often experience buyer’s remorse, a gnawing sense that they have paid too much for something that they don’t need and perhaps no longer want. Something similar can happen in reverse when a client selects the cheapest service provider in a competitive tender for outsourced services. For example, in today’s tough conditions, many clients are anxious to strike deals that shift fixed components of their cost base onto the provider. But this can exert colossal pressures on the provider’s operating model if the services are not fairly priced and consumption falls.
Buyers typically – and often with justification – worry that the deal will come to strongly favour the provider. Here are the TPI Top 5 reasons why the opposite might be the case:
1. The service provider doesn’t understand the requirement. Buyer’s remorse is often accompanied by a feeling of embarrassment where the buyer thinks, “the other bidders must know something I don’t.” Likewise, a suspiciously low bid might indicate the provider misunderstood the scope of services or the level to which they were to be performed. Service levels can be a culprit here, as small changes in requirements can result in step-changes in cost.
2. The provider underestimates the transition and transformation effort. This is a subset of the first category, but worth mentioning separately because it is so common. Many service providers understand their own cost bases well, yet believe their products, systems and processes to be broadly standardized when, in fact, significant effort is required to adapt them to client processes and systems.
3. The provider is “buying the business.” A service provider might offer an attractive price in order to acquire a capability and client base in an attractive business area. This is rarely to both parties’ advantage and often ends badly if the provider’s expansion plans don’t result in the expected revenues. Similarly, changes in the provider’s management or business direction (or both) will lead to suboptimal behaviours that are typically focused on the provider’s profit and loss rather than service to the client.
4. The provider relies on leveraging the transferred assets. Perhaps the provider wants to subsidize the cost of, say, a data centre in anticipation of winning additional business that can be serviced from the same location. As above, this can benefit both parties, particularly if both recognise it as a fundamental part of the solution. The risk in this approach, however, can be costly if the new business doesn’t materialise or is delayed, or it if can only be won if the pricing assumes yet more growth.
5. Corporate activity. A client was able to extract a low bid from a service provider who had already announced to the market a strategy dependent on winning the business. As with any price reduction that is unrelated to a corresponding reduction in cost, clients should be wary of such an approach, as the provider’s rationale will soon be forgotten once the margins are being reported.
The lowest bid can easily turn out to be the most expensive. At best, the relationship will be strained and the service provider will try to recover costs through a self-serving reading of the contractual obligations; at worst the client might find itself depending on a bankrupt provider.
OGCs everywhere are finding that their budgets are not immune to the economic downtown. Concurrently, the evaporation of hundreds of millions of dollars in “deal” fees on Wall Street has many of the law firms scrambling for new business in other practice areas. It’s a great time to be sourcing legal. However, you have to be careful in the way you approach this category and the players involved.
The relationships and confidence your General Counsel has with all of the firms they work with has a higher value to them than simply saving a few bucks. In order to be successful in this category, you have to earn the confidence and trust of your OGC.
By that, I mean the Office of General Counsel (OGC) needs to have a high level of confidence that the insertion of Strategic Sourcing will not, in any way, materially impact the relationships that office has with outside counsel – particularly their “A-Team” of law firms.
So what is the best method to approach this category?
The most successful strategy is to spend 75% of your time on building relationships with the OGC and his team to understand their needs and firm relationships. From that, you will have a better understanding of what they value and will not change. A General Counsel’s level of comfort that you “get it” is directly correlated to how deep into the spend you will get. So, after thorough relationship building, you are left with 25% of the project or areas of spend that you can begin to do tactical sourcing projects. Take a look at litigation support service as a good starting category to source and begin building that bridge to strengthen the confidence and relationship with your OGC.
Many companies negotiate small package programs to cover the documents in small packages, but how much consideration is given to those shipments with weights between 200 and 300 pounds.
Normally a shipper will tender those shipments directly to an LTL carrier along with other shipments. These shipments are known as minimums in the LTL industry and are either tendered loose or stacked on a pallet and shrink-wrapped.
These shipments can create problems in handling simply because they command an allotted spot with other LTL shipments. They are normally stripped from the pallet and placed in holes between shipments and essentially scattered about the trailer until they are handled again.
Most small package courier companies in the US offer other services such as multi-weight and hundredweight programs geared to the shipments over 200 pounds that are handled within the small package system.
It makes total sense for an organization to look at these additional services provided by US small package couriers since most LTL carriers are shying away and pricing accordingly these type of shipments since they demand a higher degree of handling.
A complete review of your order picking practices must be done in order to reveal if it is cost effective enough and not too labor intensive to move LTL minimum shipments over to multi-weight and hundredweight programs that are offered by US small package couriers.
While the cost to deliver a unit of computing resource continues to fall, there is a “traitor” to the cause of lower costs – Software. Software, eight years ago, was typically in the 40% range of the total cost to deliver a MIPS. Now, we see software taking over more than half the spend in mainframe computing; in many cases greater than 60% of the spend. While other major cost drivers have fallen through the years, software costs as a percent of the total spend continue to rise. Why? The other two largest cost drivers – labor and hardware – have continued to fall year over year:
• Labor – As support for systems has moved offshore to a more economical labor force, labor costs have fallen through the years. Increased productivity from more effective tools and established standard support processes have also increased the efficiency of the support organization.
• Hardware – Faster and cheaper has been the path for hardware; this is expected to continue as the mainframe becomes a worthy competitor to midrange servers as the platform for hosting Linux applications.
In the meantime, software costs are rising. How did software become such a large expense? Here are some things to consider as you begin optimizing your software expense.
• Shiny Object Syndrome – It’s in all of us. We like the latest, fastest, neatest tool on the market today. However, over time the functionality of tools begin to overlap and you end up with multiple applications providing similar functionality. Rationalize applications to those that provide greatest functionality and look to eliminate redundant applications.
• Value Meal – It was free and probably more than you should eat. Upon implementing new systems, software publishers will offer other, complimentary products. The hope is that the customer will begin utilizing and paying for them after some promotional period. After the promotional period of time has passed, the software is charged to the customer whether it is used or not. It’s worth the effort to take a look to make sure that every module and package being paid for is actually being utilized.
• Enterprise License – Software publishers make entering into an “enterprise-wide” agreement very attractive from a unit cost perspective. However, while unit costs are low, if a volume of license far exceeds an organization’s needs, the organization can be over spending for software.
Outsourced? Consider engaging in a dialog with your Service Provider to discuss the software expenses for your systems. Facilitate a discussion that seeks to understand how software is managed, who is looking after the spend, and rationalizing its expense. If software costs are embedded in resource unit rates, consider having your Service Provider separate them so that greater visibility into software costs is provided. Set these cost up with a mechanism that – to the extent you are able to lower costs – allows you to lower these costs dollar for dollar.
The devastating events in Haiti last week have organizations around the world scrambling to help. Standing behind many of those organizations is a unique supply chain software and services organization, Aidmatrix. A non-profit that supports non-profits and relief agencies with the technology and supply chain services needed to get the right aid to where it’s in the most demand.
Aidmatrix is currently working overtime to support the relief efforts in Haiti. AMR Research recently spoke with former Wisconsin Governor Scott McCallum, who is now the company’s CEO and president, about the organization and its work. We offer this case study of Aidmatrix’s work with a call for help. If you’d like to give to the relief efforts in Haiti, Aidmatrix has set up a donation site where organizations are listing specifically what they need (http://www.aidmatrix.org/haiti.htm). You can help fill those needs, whether it’s through cash or if your company has the needed supplies
Trying times like these demonstrate why AMR Research is glad we’re in a position to showcase and share the supply chain best practices that get help where it’s needed.
3 commentsOctober 12th, 2009Charles Dominick, SPSM - Next Level Purchasing
In the last post, I described how price adjustment clauses are commonly misunderstood and end up causing pricing problems between buyers and suppliers.
So, what can you do to ensure that price adjustment provisions are adhered to when math isn’t everyone’s strongest skill (especially suppliers)?
Here are some tips:
Write out the price adjustment method in words in your RFP and contract
Include a formula in your RFP and contract
Demonstrate the calculation of a new price at a pre-bid meeting
Have a specific date for the adjustment
Sometimes index values are revised. So be sure to state that the price is adjusted on your specified date and will not be revised, even if the index is revised later.
One more tip…YOU tell the supplier what the price is, not the other way around.
Yes, we often lean on our suppliers to do certain things that we could do. After all, they are getting paid, right?
Well, some things you should do yourself. Calculating new prices is one of them.
Look, you’re going to have to do the calculation anyway to verify that the supplier got it right. And we’ve established that many professionals – even those with high levels of intellectual horsepower – suck at math.
So, don’t leave your pricing to chance. You tell your supplier what your new pricing is.
Well, that wraps it up for this series. I hope that you’ve learned some techniques for ensuring better communication with your suppliers for better supplier performance.
I know that if you apply everything I’ve covered, you will have fewer supplier problems and will minimize your chance of getting your industry’s equivalent of dog food delivered to you.
When a buyer is in a position to apply some leverage in negotiations with software vendors, there are three critical provisions that can be used, but may require a significant push:
Maintenance fees as a percentage of the discounted license fee, not the list license fee.
Language that locks the software vendor into providing a defined set of services throughout the term. Many software vendors offer several types of support, but will redefine the terms over time requiring buyers to purchase a more expensive level of support.
A fixed percentage of the license fees over a period – usually no more than five years.
On the other hand, here are two provisions, related to your software license, that would be great to have, but are very difficult to obtain because vendors don’t have much flexibility:
Paying for and receiving maintenance only when it is most convenient. Ideally one would like to begin paying maintenance only when licenses go into production and value has been gained, instead of immediately upon licensing.
Negotiating the price of maintenance down between 17% and 20%. Wall Street has adopted this percentage as a predictor of gross margins. Even though the ongoing maintenance revenue coming into a public company like Oracle depends greatly on other factors like the original discount and whether licensees simply drop maintenance, Wall Street can calculate this percentage and ask about it. If a public software company began allowing this percentage to erode, Wall Street would hammer it.
In summary, I suggest that buyers negotiate where the vendor has the ability to be flexible. Remembering these two steps will save companies a lot more money:
Get the greatest possible discount at the beginning and make sure that the annual maintenance percentage is tied to it.
Find out what discount the government and similar sized companies receive.
Don’t overbuy.
Purchase fewer licenses than project people may need. This won’t be easy because technical people naturally want to have enough licenses and budget managers don’t want to ask for more funds. Push back, because the penalty for not buying enough licenses is buying more, while the penalty for buying too many is annual maintenance on extra “shelfware”. Most software vendors won’t sell maintenance on just 75 if 100 are licensed.
Add commentSeptember 28th, 2009Charles Dominick, SPSM - Next Level Purchasing
In this penultimate post of this eight-part series, I’m going to help you understand the subtleties of using escalation clauses.
Wait. There’s a problem already.
Do you know what it is?
Well, think about the term “escalation clause.” What does that imply?
That there is only one way for a price to go: up.
And, as we saw in late 2008, prices for many commodities can go down. Way down.
The last thing you’d want is for your supplier to say after you approach them for what you thought was a contractually guaranteed price reduction would be “But the contract has an escalation clause. It’s clear from that terminology that the intent was to only adjust the price upward.”
So some people use the term “escalation/de-escalation clause” or “price adjustment clause” to avoid such situations. Hey, any way that you can prevent a possible dispute is a good thing.
Now, what might a price adjustment clause communicate?
It may communicate that “The price for paper on October 1, 2008 is $40.00/box. The price will be adjusted on October 1, 2009. The price will increase or decrease by the same percentage (rounded to one decimal point, example: 1.1%) that the Producers Price Index for ‘Writing and Printing Papers’ Series ID WPU091301 increased or decreased during the period from July 2008 to July 2009.”
What is the new price?
I always ask my seminar attendees this type of question and give them the applicable Producer’s Price Index table. About 5% of the attendees get it right.
Then, I give them a formula. About 12% of them get it right.
And when it has come time for suppliers to calculate their new price, I’ve seen them get it wrong, too.
This is a problem. When you are accepting bids, it is important for every supplier to base its price on the price adjustment formula and how they expect it to change their price in the future.
Doing so ensures against the possibility that one supplier can come in with a low bid, win your business, arbitrarily adjust its price in a year, and then end up being a worse deal than if you selected another supplier. Using a price adjustment clause while bidding ensures that all suppliers are on a level playing field for your sake and theirs.
In the next post – the last one of this series – I’ll give you some tips for ensuring that your price adjustment clause is understood and adhered to by your suppliers.
Many companies have worked hard to develop a “preferred” LTL carrier network for their domestic and trans-boarder shipments with each supplier adhering to the specifications of shipment tender.
However, many times export and import shipments are left up to the forwarder or transfer agent to make arrangements for the “door to port” or “port to door” also known as “inland freight” therefore adding another layer of charges utilizing specialized carriage.
Specialized carriers in the export and import market utilize a completely different rationale when costing shipments. Many in the export/import market utilize a “pick-up” cost and a “delivery” cost and a “line-haul” cost from point A to point B for the particular shipment.
Allow your “preferred” LTL carrier network to handle these shipments, preserving your contracted rates and discounts and allowing complete control and transparency of your tender to or from the port.
All LTL carriers whether union or non-union are all capable of entering and existing the ports.
In a recent Friday Rant entitled “Reverse Auctions Have Become the Aero-Bars of Sourcing”, SpendMatters’ Jason Busch describes the all too frequent abuse of Reverse Auctions. He quotes David Clevenger, formerly of FreeMarkets, who notes that “the problem with reverse auctions may be the same as with any powerful weapon in the wrong hands”. A knife can be used for murder or for life-saving surgery.
I believe there are at least two factors that contribute to abuse. I recall Stephen Covey’s leadership example which describes the importance of both skill and integrity. A skilled surgeon lacking integrity might perform an unnecessary operation. (Think Michael Jackson’s repeated cosmetic surgeries.) An unskilled surgeon with integrity would botch the job. You need both skill and integrity!
Clevenger describes abuses such as pre and post bid negotiations and the inclusion of unqualified competitors to drive market behavior. I would add to the list Phantom Bids (i.e. no intention of moving business but merely driving the incumbent’s pricing down via a competitive exercise). Note that none of these tactics rely on Reverse Auctions. They can all be wielded with equal abuse using a paper sealed bid. These are issues of integrity that soil Sourcing’s reputation regardless of the medium. In this instance, Reverse Auctions merely automate an unethical practice.
Skill is a different issue. As a former eSourcing trainer, I was often frustrated at companies’ unwillingness to provide adequate training. There are a number of important differences with the eSourcing process and tactics. Our company always recommended both training and mentoring as buyers geared up. I must respectfully disagree with Jason regarding software vendor responsibility. We didn’t tell unskilled buyers to “go tear it up”! Conversely, we often argued strongly in favor of a thorough implementation process. Unfortunately there were far too many shortcuts with the ultimate outcome being, among other things, unintended supplier abuses.
Anyone employing Reverse Auctions must have both skill and integrity or there will be abuse. However, we shouldn’t blame the tool. Neither we nor suppliers should generalize that reverse auctions are bad. It is correct that Reverse Auctions in the hands of buyers who are unskilled or who lack integrity are bad.
However, not all sourcing professionals lack skill and/or integrity. I am not denying abuse. But I’m concerned that suppliers’ claims become another excuse to resist a legitimate tool that, when used properly, helps buyers achieve best value. Let’s not abandon a fair and effective tool because of the abuse of some.
We put a large piece of business out for bid telling suppliers we plan to award a five year contract with indexed pricing. Suppliers bid accordingly and we make the award. The lawyers are unable to reach agreement on the final contract terms but the supplier behaves as if the contract was signed. Three and a half years into the award period we decide to go out for bid telling the incumbent we have no obligation since the contract was never signed. What are we training suppliers to do?
The supplier provides highly competitive pricing based on Net 30 payment terms. After the fact we tell them we need Net 60. They are happy to provide those terms but need to increase the price since Net 60 will require them to obtain a Letter of Credit. We say “no thanks” but pay Net 60 anyway. What are we training suppliers to do?
In the face of uncertainty, suppliers pad their pricing. From the supplier’s perspective, the above behavior was not anticipated, at least the first time. What happens the next time we ask this supplier for rock bottom pricing? Role modeling is the most powerful form of teaching. What are we role modeling to our suppliers? We should pay close attention to that. What goes around, comes around!
One of the nice things about getting out to conferences, is gaging the pulse of what people are looking for, at this time. Not only are you hearing practitioners discuss what their companies are seeking, but you get the same conversation 10-15 times per hour. This year, its score carding / SPM and spend analysis. If a vendor showed up and wanted to build momentum on reverse auctions, the response will be much cooler. Although most of the attendees are very familiar with auctions, and many use or intend to use them, they do not want to talk about them a lot. It seems that they are expected and not worth long discussion. In other words, they have been commoditized.
This is fine, of course. Iasta made the commitment into the full sourcing lifecycle years ago and those decisions are paying off now, as we continue our strategy of innovation in some areas and fast followers, in others.
I think the exhibit hall on Sunday was fairly light on traffic, especially when compared to Las Vegas. However, out of the people I talked to, we generated 6 product demos, to be scheduled, in one session. I can see many of the attendees looking for very specific things with intentions of learning and acting. I will take quality over quantity any day.
This has definitely been a good start to the conference. St Louis has been a good venue, with everything tightly packed. That is, everything but restaurants, which are 9 blocks away. I have never been able to figure out the lay out of down town St Louis. Its a big city, but it is nearly impossible to find where the people are and where things are happening, outside of the one block Laclede landing area. I think there must be hidden spots that the locals do not want outsiders to know about. I bet there are beer pixies there, that keep every ones glasses full with Budweiser.
It’s hard to come up with a good definition for supplier enablement. Depending on who you ask, it is either supplier networks, catalog management and / or ((c)XML-based) punchouts, e-Document Management, a Supplier Portal that enables e-Procurement and / or e-Sourcing, or some (often proprietary) combination thereof. The common thread between most of the definitions that one encounters is a greater utilization of technology solutions to streamline procurement and / or sourcing processes by seamlessly connecting the buyer to its suppliers through a common application or platform.
However, none of these definitions really get to what supplier enablement should be. Supplier enablement should be about providing a buyer’s supplier with the solutions that the supplier needs to more efficiently and productively do business with the buyer in such a way that the buyer is also able to conduct business with the supplier more efficiently and productively. It is true that such a solution will need to be based on one or more technology solutions, but the focus needs to be on the business processes required and the capabilities of the supplier, not on the capabilities of the technology supplier. The best technology in the world is useless if the supplier doesn’t have the technical capabilities in-house to make use of it.
Supplier Enablement is relevant as it can significantly increase performance metrics such as spend under management and enterprises that leverage supplier enablement solutions enable their suppliers faster, better, and more efficiently than those that do not. Well executed supplier enablement reduces administrative errors, increases inventory turns, eliminates parallel processes, reduces cycle times, maximizes value, and improves compliance.
To this end, it’s important to understand the four core capabilities that will be required in any end-to-end supplier enablement solution.
Catalog Management
If the goods and services the intended users of the e-Procurement system need to order on a regular basis are not in the system, this will just result in the system being by-passed and proliferation of the maverick spending that the organization hoped to avoid through the acquisition of the e-Procurement system. Thus, catalog management is quite important.
Supplier Network
A supplier network, which is becoming a staple offering of many of the larger e-Procurement providers, is a single point of integration that provides a many-to-many connection between buyers and suppliers, allowing them to transact in real time. The major selling points of these networks is pre-enabled suppliers and the ability to find new suppliers almost instantaneously if you are a buyer and the ability to support multiple buyers through the same technology platform and win new opportunities for business if you are a supplier.
e-Document Management
The most critical, and most often overlooked, component of enablement, regardless if the trading entity is acting in a buyer or a supplier capacity, is that of information and document management. These days, each trading party needs to maintain a host of information on each party it trades with, including incorporation information and status, owners, home country, operating countries, financials, products, services, contacts, CSR status, regulatory compliance, and current contracts as well as a slew of documents including RFx’s, purchase orders, shipping receipts, goods receipts, invoices, payment receipts, product information sheets, and trade documents.
Supplier Portal
A supplier portal is a web-based interface designed to allow a supplier to easily conduct business with a buyer by providing them with a one-stop-shop access point for receiving and replying to RFX requests, participating in auctions, receiving and returning contracts, providing catalogs, receiving purchasing orders, replying with shipment receipts and invoices, and receiving goods receipts and payments. It also allows the supplier to maintain and update all of their information as required by the buyer and to check order and payment status at any time.
For more insights on #, check out the Supplier Enablement: The Secret to Sourcing Success wiki-paper over on the e-Sourcing Wiki which includes more detail on the core capabilities, an overview of buyer-side and supplier-side challenges that will need to be addressed, and some best practices to help ensure a successful project.
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