Vendor Management From Home Office Roles And Responsibilities

by Jose Jimenez | Feb 23, 2022 | Vendor Management, Accounts Payable

The pandemic changed a lot of things about the way the world operates. While day-to-day operations became difficult, industries around the world came up with new means and methods to keep on functioning. In a situation where people could not leave their houses, digital and technological tools came as a means of salvation. 

What would have happened anyway accelerated in a matter of a few months, making our society advance at a rapid rate. This not only brought a change to how we do things, but it also changed various scopes and gave birth to new opportunities. 

In regards to that, here in this article, we will focus on one such particular change — vendor management from home. We will discuss the major changes that occurred in this field and what new aspects came to light under the new circumstances. Then, let us quickly go about our way. 

How Vendor Management Changed During The Pandemic 

Vendor management is the process of dealing with all activities related to the purchasing decisions of a company. This includes selecting and approving suppliers, entering into contracts with approved vendors, managing them, and ensuring that they live up to the agreed expectations of the company. 

While vendor management has always been around, recently, it has risen to precise prominence, where people started understanding how important vendor management is. The better you manage your vendors, the better the later outcomes will be. 

Vendor management was already getting better tools and aids to increase efficiency and productivity, but due to the pandemic, the upgrade sped up rapidly. As people had to stay back home, Vendor Management Software or VMS rose to prominence. 

VMS is a system or software that allows you to effectively manage your vendors and every other related activity through a single centralized platform. Through this software, vendor managers and procurement teams were able to keep functioning even while they were restricted to the boundaries of their homes. 

The Role Of Vendor Management Software During The Pandemic 

The VMS market started growing rapidly after the start of the pandemic. In 2019, the market was valued closely at 5.21 billion USD and was said to have a steady growth rate ao approximately 13% in the coming few years. This data will give you a brief insight into how rapidly the VMS market is growing, and for good reasons. 

During the pandemic, the VMS rose to prominence where it allowed vendor managers to actively manage the vendors of their companies through a centralized platform. While it was a sudden jump from physical and traditional means to a complete online and digital method, the results were excellent. 

If anything, the AI and automation features of the software made the procedures much more efficient, organized, simple, and high in productivity. Here are a few prominent features of the VMS to help you understand why it had the effect it did:

• Simple procedures for vendor onboarding 
• Easy and effective tracking features to have an overall view of various vendor status 
• Highly collaborative functions such as self-service portals to ease collaboration efforts and increase efficiency and save time 
• Easy access to vendor data, allowing for critical reviews and changes 

As you can see, all these features allowed you full control of your vendor management, even if you were unable to step out of your house. It allowed you to operate in the same manner, with better results even when you could not physically carry out the tasks. 

Along with VMS, other useful tools made it easier for vendor management teams to keep at their work even during lockdowns. Various online conference and video calling tools allowed managers to seamlessly stay in touch with vendors, where all meetings and conferences started being online.

There were also major changes to the numerous procedures as more and more digital tools started making their way into the workflow. Even if no one could go to the office, cloud storage, IoTs, and so on allowed team members to stay in touch with each other to carry out operations and projects. 

Vendor Management From Home — Roles And Responsibilities 

During the pandemic, when offices were closed down, vendor managers, along with other personnel, had to come up with their own rules and regulations to operate systematically. Here are a few roles and responsibilities that vendor managers and other teams members had to abide by to successfully keep working even from home:

• Abiding by common ground rules and regulations set up by the company to ensure the safety of company data 
• To make sure that you have the right equipment and tools to work from home without any hassles 
• Setting up a make-do office space in your house to ensure full concentration and focus on work
• Learn to correctly use the right phone application, software, and other tools 

The pandemic saw a lot of changes in the various industries across the globe. While the vendor management industry requires a lot of on-site actions, thanks to VMS and other tools, companies were able to make great progress in this field. 

Another Vendor Going Out of Business

by Jose Jimenez | Feb 15, 2022 | Vendor Management, Accounts Payable

There are times that you need to put a vendor out of business, which means leaving a vendor to get products from someone else. There can be various reasons why you need to put a vendor out of business, like the vendor not delivering on time, the vendors not following certain rules of your company, or you have evolved out of your vendors.

The following article highlights how you can lay off a vendor easily and the things you need to consider before doing so. Putting certain vendors out of business is very necessary; otherwise, you can suffer losses that can be difficult to pay off.

Get involved before signing contracts

Before you lay off a vendor from their work, it is important to know whether or not you have some other ways of making them aware of their poor performance. You can check to see if they have a website or an online community. This also goes for the vendors you are aiming to keep in the loop after putting your existing vendor out of business. You need to get involved with new suppliers after putting the existing ones out of business so that you have a variety of vendors to choose from.

Gaining real hands-on experience is very necessary to know more about the vendor, the service and the goods they provide, and their feasibility for your business. Before getting new people to contribute to your business, you must get to know them; otherwise, you may experience regret for not choosing well while being misinformed due to third-party opinion. Once you choose a new vendor and lay off the old one, there is no going back for a while.
Think of long term business plans

Some vendors might be performing poorly due to a clash of opinions. What does that mean? It means that they might not be the right choice for you anymore, as you have evolved as a business. If you were initially a small business and have now been acquired by a larger company or have outgrown your initial need for produce and products, you cannot keep on working with the same supplier.

Due to this, you might now need a bigger supplier who is a part of a conglomerate and can provide you with bulk materials. So, you are expected to go with a new supplier, who can fulfill these needs, and fulfill them on time. There can be times when you cannot deal with the supplier’s increasing product costs because they are outgrowing you. In such a case, too, you need to take care of supplier migration.

Check your vendor management chain

You need to inform the top brass about the change. Just because you have made the decision to change the vendor doesn’t mean the decision will always get approved. There are various formalities that need to be done before putting a certain vendor out of business, which can only be taken care of after you have received permission from the higher-ups. For example, you need to inform the head of sales that a certain vendor isn’t delivering on time and needs to be immediately replaced due to the losses they are causing to the business.

There can be times when things go wrong. In such cases, if you have informed the management regarding the decision, you don’t need to worry about the technicalities; your company’s lawyers will take care of the necessary work. Sometimes, vendors understand why they are being replaced, but there can be times when a huge ruckus is caused. To curb this, proper communication in the company is required.

How easily can you migrate

The ease of migration is a major factor that plays a role in the vendor replacement process. You need to know how easily you can switch the places from where you acquire your products, how long the lag time is (lag time refers to the time it takes the product to come to you from the supplier), and what is the drop in the product quality (if any). After making these decisions, you can safely migrate from one vendor to the other.

You also need to note how well these vendors can be incorporated into your company. A certain vendor might be giving you trouble due to their attitude, but would be performing well in the company, so replacing them won’t be as feasible. There are various such factors to consider before migrating to a better vendor.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these are the things you need to consider before replacing a vendor with a new one. Replacing vendors is a drastic measure you take if no other option is working. Hopefully, this article helped to resolve the trouble you are facing in your company regarding vendors, vendor replacement, and any such related issues.

Meetings with Vendors (online or in-office)

by Jose Jimenez | Feb 11, 2022 | Accounts Payable, Vendor Management

Vendors are one of the most essential parts of a business; meetings with them are necessary to plan the future of your venture. However, times are uncertain, which means situations can go either way. You need to be prepared for all cases, considering the pandemic has had various peaks. There are other factors like your vendor’s location from your headquarters and the money invested in the product you are buying from the vendor.

Making preparations for all kinds of situations entails various procedures to take care of; you need to adjust for both online and offline meetings.

Offline meetings (Why it is a good option)

Offline meetings sound like a myth, or to an extent, a thing of the distant past, don’t they? With the signs of a receding pandemic, people are getting a bit more daring to conduct offline meetings (although with proper precautions). There are many ways in which you can prepare for offline meetings, and it is good for your business in a plethora of ways.

In an offline meeting, the chance of a communication gap to occur is absolutely minimal; the conversation includes a great deal of body language and how the other person is responding to your proposals. You can shake on certain deals and get your vendors to sign on these deals on the spot. You can expect your expectations to be met and make sure that these products reach you on time.

Offline meetings also have a certain feel to them that can’t be sated by any other form of communication. Once you communicate something face-to-face, you know that you have said your piece properly and have the right to wait for any kind of doubt or wait for the right product to arrive at your doorstep. 

Things to take care of for offline meetings

With the ongoing pandemic, there are many things to take care of, like how people behave in a heated discussion. The fact that there needs to be a certain amount of social distancing remains true, while also that the vendor and the buyer need to wear masks for the duration of the meeting and en route to the meeting. All this needs to be taken care of while keeping in mind that the embers of the virus still exist, waiting for a chance to create a wildfire.

Proper sanitization of all facilities is also very necessary so that in the off chance that there is any existing, it gets eliminated right then and there. This procedure should be done regardless of whether meetings have to be held in the room or not; if you are using your office facilities, it should be a safe space for all the employees. This way, you can avoid any potential cases in your office.

Online meetings (Why they are good)

Online meetings are very user-friendly; you can have them for however long you want while sitting in the comfort of your house. They are a method to stay away from people while also staying close to them. There are a plethora of ways in which you can hold an online meeting; you can hold it over a conference call or over any application that provides online meeting facilities. There are various ways in these applications, too; you can create breakout rooms, you can separate people for some specific tasks.

They are easy to manage when there are fewer people. You can mute and unmute people and manage the disturbance that might be caused in this meeting. It also automatically takes care of social distancing and maintaining any form of covid protocols. Online meetings are definitely the way to go if things go wrong.

Things to take care of for online meetings

There are various things you need to take care of for an online meeting. The first precaution is the fact that you have a stable and strong Internet connection. If you want to have a meaningful conversation over the Internet, the requirement of a good connection is a necessity, and without it, these applications are meaningless. The fact of the matter is that even if you want to do some deal over a conference call, you need to have a good connection. To implement this, you need to buy a good plan for your home (or your office, wherever you will get your meetings done.)

Another thing to keep in mind is the decorum that has to be maintained during an online meeting. While it is not always the case that there will be chaos, you shouldn’t take any chances with these important meetings.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you should be ready no matter how situations turn out. Online or offline, these things should be taken care of as swiftly as possible. Necessary precautions need to be taken, but take care of how the pandemic turns out.