Top 5 skills needed for successful vendor management
Managing vendors is as important as managing inventory in a business. As a matter of fact, both of these are closely interlinked, considering vendors are the people that help you fill out your inventory. That would be going off on a tangent, though, considering this article is going to talk about the top skills you require to be a cream-of-the-crop vendor manager.
If you are looking for a job in this field, you need to be aware of the skills that people hiring you will be trying to find in you. This article is a guide to tell you which skills you need to polish to shine brightest amongst all other candidates.
Strong verbal and written communication
Communication is the key to success. Be it communicating with the higher-ups in the business about the material that has been sourced, asking them what they need moving forward, or be it communicating with the vendor regarding the required supplies; the vendor manager needs to be adept in all these areas. They need to reprimand the vendors verbally (and in writing if need be) if they fail to comply with the standards set for them or fail to deliver good quality supplies.
The same goes for communicating with your higher-ups. There can be times when the inventory faces losses in supplies due to poor management; you need to cover that with your vendors. This is why a vendor manager needs to be adept at communication, inventory is one of the most fickle elements of a business, one of the most important too, and vendors keep your inventory running.
Negotiation
Negotiating is a part of communication too. In fact, all the other skills except the last one are a niche variation of your communication skills. There can be instances where the vendors are overpricing a material. In such a case, you need to realize that the actual price is way lower and start negotiating. Negotiating is a skill that is not often found in people; it needs certain crookedness (in a good way). It also needs a good understanding of the market and the commercial environment, which is not found in everyone either.
There can also be times when a supplier is providing you with good supplies, but his prices are exceeding your allotted budget. In such a case, you’ll need to negotiate too, either with the vendor to lower the prices a bit or your higher-ups to increase the allotted budget. Both the situations need a lot of convincing that needs to be done. It’s not an easy task by any means. However, the action of convincing brings us to our next point: Marketing skills.
Marketing Skills
Marketing skills require a great deal of convincing. However, you might be wondering how marketing is even remotely related to a job that doesn’t deal with customers. Well, imagine a scenario where you got a job in a company that has just started its production. You need to bring suppliers to your company that has just started making its name in the market; you need to market your company to the suppliers. Such are the skills required for a vendor manager to source the materials for the business.
You also need to convince the higher-ups in the business as to what vendor you need to choose. It’s your decision to make, but it should be concordant with your superior’s choices. (The statement’s contradictory, but you get a chance to explain why a certain vendor is better than the other.)
Assertiveness
You need to be assertive. If you need to convince someone, it’s rarely possible with an easygoing attitude, especially when money or any form of transaction is involved. If you need to negotiate, you need to stay on your price; if you are marketing to a vendor, you need to be sure of the decision, so on. An assertive personality is key to being able to communicate successfully with the vendors without a hitch and getting them to perform as well as they are supposed to (or even better).
Decision-making skills
Making important decisions is core to any post, not just a vendor manager. The question, however, that arises is what are the important decisions you have to make as a vendor manager? To list out a few, here are some of them:
What are the supplies that are required by the business? Is the vendor supplying the right quality of materials?
Is the amount supplied by the vendor sufficient? If not, how do you increase the number of supplies while keeping the rate the same, if not lower?
If the supplier is not responding properly, how do you approach them? Are there certain reasons that make a supplier incompatible with your business?
Such decisions greatly impact the business, so the quality of making them at a moment’s notice with prior knowledge and research is essential.
The new version of WFR ( AP Project 2803) has been released and it contains a slew of new features that will have customers wanting to upgrade. The project still comes with its industry-standard set of pre-trained layouts that allow for automatic extraction of anything from invoices to purchase orders but has gone much further. In an effort to increase the level of security, a large number of INI file configurations have been removed from a plain text file that would sit out on the Windows server and instead have been pushed to the database. In that same vein, all of the passwords related to the AP project can now be encrypted and are no longer visible to anyone with access to the WFR server.
To support the new database INI file configuration, a new Solution Configuration Manager(SCM) has been created. SCM is a web-based application that can be accessed from any browser and makes the process of updating configurations a breeze. In addition, user management is now handled through the SCM tool negating the need to provision server access for a user access management team. All configuration changes made through the SCM tool are saved to the database and can be easily transferred between instances.
New Project Fields
Client IDs – Out of the box, WFR comes pre configured with a single client. Whenever documents pass through the system, they are preassigned a Client ID. Client IDs control the overall workflow of a document including:
Extracted document fields.
Mandatory and optional fields, and their corresponding validation rules.
The data sources that are used for field validation.
How data is exported.
Examples of how this can be utilized:
If the end-user is a BPO, a client can be used to represent a single customer of the BPO or a division of a single customer.
If you have one user working in multiple regions or with multiple divisions with their own requirements, a client can be used to represent each region or division.
If you have one user working with multiple ERP systems, each ERP system can be set up as an individual client for the different ERP-system connections and processing rules.
New Fields in AP Project
VAT Table: You can use the VAT table in place of the single AmountTax field to capture a greater level of tax detail from European VAT invoices.
Delivery Notes: This field is a line item type field where multiple delivery notes are captured and entered.
IBAN: It represents the international bank account number for invoice payment.
BIC: It is an internationally assigned code to identify a unique banking institution.
Your Ref: Use this field to capture a reference number specified on the invoice that relates to the party being billed. It can often consist of a contact name, a reference number, or a combination of both
Alternate Payee/Alternate Payee Address: The alternate payee field is a supplementary field to the Vendor ID and represents the party to whom actual invoice payments should be made
Mexican UUID: The Mexican UUID is an electronic invoice number provided by the Mexican SAT authorities and appears as standard on electronic documents.
Dynamic Form – A new dynamic web form is available for use with all of the default fields. This is viewable from Verifier Design Mode.
New Features
Scripting – Added new field validation user exits UserExitAccountNumberValidate and UserExitEmployeeIDValidate. The user exit UserExitFilterEmployeeSearch is now available for filtering the Employee ASE results. For line pairing, a new user exit UserExitPreLinePairing has also been added.
General Extraction – Added the ability to extract multiple VAT rates and amounts. AP Project can now extract up to three different VAT rates and amounts from VAT related invoices. Ability to handle non-numeric purchase order line item numbers.
Material Line Pairing – A new user exit UserExitRejectPOForLinePairing is added to allow a user to reject a purchase order for line pairing based upon custom criteria. This criteria can include data contained within the purchase order header, such as the vendor ID. Enhanced the line pairing algorithm so that pricing data is brought in to help distinguish between lines with the near-identical descriptions that fail the distance check.
Material Line Pairing – Added a new user exit UserExitRejectPOForLinePairing to allow a user to reject a purchase order for line pairing based upon custom criteria. This criteria can include data contained within the purchase order header, such as the vendor ID.
Enhanced the line pairing algorithm so that pricing data is brought in to help distinguish between lines that fail the distance check with the near identical descriptions.
Extraction/ Configuration/ Validation – Reinforced VAT rate validation is now configurable. VAT rate charged on the invoice can be validated against a country list to ensure that VAT extraction is valid. A database is added for mapping the country code to the VAT table. When the VAT rate is validated, AP Project verifies that the value of VAT and the country relevant to the invoice match with the corresponding database values.
A new export option is added to output an XML file containing the document OCR words, fields, and table data including positional information for use within a third party Verifier application. The field candidate information can also be included on an optional basis. The user exit UserExitOCRXMLOutput is also added to enable custom development.
Enhanced the automatic extraction for the purchase order number field to increase the extraction rate on US & UK documents where the PO is of a less distinct format, such as a numeric string of 4 or 5 characters in length.
Support for Golden Tax solution mandated for domestic transactions that involve VAT in mainland China.
Added a new field MexicanUUID to support automatic extraction of the UUID number that appears on Mexican electronic invoices – a new user exit UserExitMexicanUUIDValidate has also been added to support custom validations for this field.
Extraction Configuration –Multi-tenanted automatic extraction feature is now added for custom fields (Custom1 to Custom5) within the project. This enables a developer to set up analysis, evaluation, and extraction profiles within the AP Project database. These profiles automatically extract bespoke fields on a client-by-client basis. For example, field Custom1 can be configured to extract a store number for customer profile 1, but an order date for customer profile 2. This is not possible if the traditional AP Project engines are used.
Validation / Configuration –Added a new configuration option AlwaysUsePOVendorSiteID to the BRWVND table, which, if activated, forces the usage of the site ID on the purchase order header, rather than using the value returned by the ASE engine.
A new configuration option is added for the invoice number validation. So, if the history check is activated, the extracted candidate is always marked invalid if its weight does not surpass a minimum weighting entered as the value of the InvoiceNumberConfidence parameter in the BRWNUM table. Formatting Added support for formatting of Taiwanese dates (e.g. 104/09/19 will now be formatted to 19/09/2015).
Reporting / Configuration – Invoice line item reporting feature – upon export, the system writes the line item data into the reporting database tables. This can be switched on and off using the INI file setting ActivateLineItemReporting.
Why Upgrade?
While upgrading to the newest version comes with the obvious advantages of bringing all of your software to the current supported versions, there are a few features that are must-haves for any client.
VAT – The VAT enhancements made in Project 2803 make this newer version of WFR a necessity if your company receives any European invoices as the complexity of the taxes on these invoices can now be captured correctly.
User management – The switch to a browser based user management model increases your company’s security by removing the need to provision access to secure servers.
Multi-tenant – The addition of client id provides the required flexibility for large complex organizations that have several projects and would like to simplify their process to flow through one managed server.
Security – The ability to further secure your WFR server by encrypting the DB credentials provides the infrastructure team peace of mind.
Patch Set – Upgrading to 2803 will bring your company up to date and ensure that you are able to continue receiving support from Oracle.
Upgrade Path
When upgrading from 11.1.1.8, there are a few different options that can be utilized when upgrading your WFR server.
Option Number 1:
Clone your existing 2008 R2 Production machine.
On the cloned system, upgrade the WFR 11.1.1.8 installation to 11.1.1.9 by following the 11.1.1.9 WFR Migration Guide and Project Migration Guide document.
Upgrade the cloned system’s OS to Windows 2012 R2.
Upgrade the cloned system’s WFR 11.1.1.9 installation to 12c.
Option Number 2:
Create a new Windows 2008 R2 Server.
Clone the production WFR installation onto the new 2008 R2 system using the steps in Document 2264982.1 – How to Clone a WebCenter Forms Recognition Environment.
On the cloned system, upgrade WFR 11.1.1.8 installation to 11.1.1.9 following the 11.1.1.9 WFR Migration Guide and Project Migration Guide documents.
Upgrade the new system’s OS to Windows 2012 R2.
Upgrade the cloned system’s WFR 11.1.1.9 installation to 12c.
The upgrade from 11.1.1.9 is detailed below:
Migration of the AP Packaged Project 1007G to AP Packaged Project 2803 MUST be performed with the Solution Migration Tool. This is the only supported method to migrate the project to version 2803. Its purpose is to ensure all scripting is correct and located in the proper section of the project.
Once the migration is completed, the core application of WFR can be upgraded. This is described in detail in the Oracle WFR Migration Guide, 12.2.1.4, dated September 2019, (available with the Install Package downloadable for the Oracle CLOUD e Delivery site).
Lessons Learned
There were a number of challenges that oApps faced when implementing the new AP Project 2803 that required a few weeks of additional research and implementation time in order to root out.
User Management – The user management module was completely moved out of the Designer application and into the SCM where users are synced via an RTS job.
Data Export – Oracle dropped some of the seeded export date formats and both SCM as well as IPM had to be modified in order to accommodate the different date formats.
Material Number Formats – With the push of the INI file to the database, there were additional limitations added to the material numbers that required database modifications in order to function properly.
Solution Configuration Manager(SCM) – The new web application came with a number of unique challenges regarding the software needed in order to install the app to the IIS server. After installing the software prerequisites, some of the software had to be further modified in order to include components that did not get installed as a part of the base. In addition, the WFR boxes did not have all of the required drivers to run the SCM application.
INI File Move to DB – The move of the INI file to the database took additional time to re-learn. Any seasoned WFR developer will need additional time to get up to speed on the new way to update INI file values, the new front-end names of these values and how to migrate settings between instances.
Customer Case Study
Client: Electronics Company with $25+ billion in sales that develop technology solutions that improve business and daily life.
Clients Challenge(s): The client needed to be brought on to the most current version of the WFR software as there were features in 2803 that would resolve current issues they were experiencing and Oracle would no longer support their current implementation. In addition, the client had 4 different WFR boxes that were running on different versions of the software that they wanted to standardize on a single version of WFR.
Solution: oApps determined the correct upgrade path for each of the respective WFR versions. Upgrades were performed in place and each project was run through the solution migration tool.
Quote: “oAppsNET did a great job with the upgrade”
Justin Rhoades
Oracle Financial Functional Consultant
Justin Rhoades is an Oracle Solution consultant with over 12+ years of experience in the Oracle Financial space. He specializes in WebCenter integrations and has extensive knowledge in global implementations, Support, and Training. Justin brings a mix of functional and technical experience to deliver optimum solutions to solving complex business requirements.
Justin most recent work included an upgrade of Oracle WebCenter at a large Energy Distribution Company. Justin played a key role in delivering new functionality of the upgraded version, ensuring that any customization continued to function in the release and performed training and documentation on the functionality.
Looking to upgrade? Contact oApps to set up a consultation.
Vendor alignment is one of the most important parts of a business, simplifying a huge part of business management. It increases the efficiency of your work by onboarding them onto a certain software and increases the profitability greatly.
The following article highlights various features of vendor alignment. By the time you reach the end of the article, you will be quite well informed on what vendor alignment is, the benefits of vendor alignment, and the mistakes you should avoid during vendor onboarding. Read on ahead to find out.
What is vendor alignment?
The first question that might come to mind is, what is vendor alignment? Put simply; it is a systematic process that helps a business to easily collect data and documents, to qualify, approve and make contracts with vendors. This also helps in making the process of buying goods from existing vendors much easier, making this process a must-follow in many businesses.
This process is similar to other processes that happen in businesses, like employee onboarding. It is a process where new employees are taught the way of the company, where you tell them the practices followed by the company, what they are expected to do, and what rules they should be following in regards to being a good employee. Vendor onboarding is such a process that lets the vendor into your business and accommodates them into it to make the best of what you can.
Vendors are quite important to your business, as they are the ones providing you with the products you require to process or resell. So, making sure that you are keeping your vendor up-to-date and including them in your business is very important. Vendor alignment (or vendor onboarding) is a process through which you can implement the vendor very efficiently into your business.
Benefits of Vendor alignment
There are various benefits to vendor alignment. These include: It provides greater competitiveness to your business, which means that it lets your business flourish in the market. There have been statistics that show that about 40 percent of the money earned in sales is spent on buying raw materials from vendors. Vendor onboarding lets you incorporate the vendor into your business and lets you make the process of buying products a lot easier. Implemented vendors also provide some discounts and lessen the load of the bought products.
It increases the efficiency and the profitability of the business. When you keep the vendor up-to-date and streamline the entire process, you can cut down on the losses caused by tracking losses, productivity losses, and redundancies. You can reduce the redundancy by automating the vendor onboarding by reducing the paper trail of your invoices.
It mitigates the risk caused due to redundancies and productivity losses. It lets you educate your vendors regarding the processes followed in your business and comply with the government policies. It lets you validate your vendors by modifying your internal policies in compliance with the same. It helps you form stronger relationships with your vendors. Once you bond with your vendors, there is a good chance that you can cut down on the cost of buying the products from the same vendor.
Mistakes to avoid
There are various mistakes you might make while onboarding a vendor. Here are a few mistakes you can make and how you can avoid them:There might be a lack of planning in the vendor onboarding. The best way to avoid this is to not keep a lazy attitude regarding vendor onboarding and plan ahead of time. To plan, you need to know how to use the software that lets you onboard the vendor and to keep the facilities to accommodate the vendor ready. Once you onboard a vendor, there can be a lack of training for the vendor. You need to make sure that the rules that your business follows are crystal clear for the vendor and there is no miscommunication. This training needs to be given both internally and externally to the vendors and the employees who need to accommodate the vendor.
There can be a failure in communication with the vendor. Keeping the vendors up-to-date is a very important factor in making the vendor onboarding process successful. The key to success here is to not make any form of miscommunication with the vendor.
You should be able to be flexible for the vendor. You should be able to modify some rules of the company in such a way that your business doesn’t get hurt, but you can accommodate your vendor properly.
Conclusion
In conclusion, vendor onboarding is an important process that makes your business more efficient and helps you make the entire process more profitable. Onboarding lets you accommodate your vendor into your business and cuts down on the major costs of buying products. Hopefully, this article has enlightened you regarding vendor onboarding, its benefits, and the mistakes you should not make.
Vendors are an important part of any business, and it is important to give them the freedom they deserve. But giving vendors freedom doesn’t mean you allow them to be late to deliver products. Tardy vendors can be a cause of concern for your business; without punctuality, you can face huge losses.
The following article highlights how you can deal with vendor tardiness most efficiently and subtly possible. While you should forgive them for being late once or twice due to an emergency, frequent lateness is a cause of concern.
Work on any communication-gapsTardiness can be a product of miscommunication.
To prevent this from happening, the best way would be to communicate properly (Surprise!) in a respectful manner so that it seems formal but not too imposing. Delays are fine, but there should not be any uninformed delays from the supplier’s end. Other forms of miscommunication include the bad attitude of the supplier or the disorganized behavior of the supplier. You cannot rectify these behavioral traits right away, but you can try to communicate so that this does not cause too many issues.
These issues should be properly addressed in meetings with your vendors. You can be amiable with your suppliers while they are performing properly, but you need to be stern with them if they don’t behave properly. Keep communications open, be polite, and do not step back even if the suppliers are not responding the way you want them to. This way, you can work out a lot of issues you might face with supplier tardiness.
Get promises in writing
Getting things in writing is very important; it means that you have proof that the supplier agreed to the said date on paper. This clears almost all problems that may occur due to miscommunication. It also acts as a reminder for the supplier in the worst-case scenario that he forgets your order. Sometimes, word-of-mouth can be unreliable; people can forget or make mistakes in the order, like bringing 50 pieces of a certain product rather than 60 pieces, or being a week late because they got the wrong message.
It is possible that due to some restraints, some suppliers may not agree to sign a written contract. It is up to you to tell them that these reasons include management and administrative decisions, which cannot be bypassed, making it mandatory to bring the materials on the said date. Such measures need to be taken only if the supplier fails to deliver properly frequently. If the supplier still has issues in delivering on time, there are other ways to deal with them.
Escalate smoothly
You can forgive tardiness once or twice, as mentioned earlier if the supplier is facing any form of an emergency or has relayed the information regarding the delay prior. It is up to you that you don’t let this tardy behavior become the norm and not take your business lightly. There can be various ways in which you can handle a tardy vendor; these range from a verbal warning, a letter sent to them regarding the situation, and keeping meetings with them regarding their poor performance. You need to ensure that the vendor gets your point and takes the necessary steps to correct their behavior.
In case they repeat the same mistakes after multiple warnings, you can escalate your actions. You can take disciplinary action against them if necessary or suspend their services for a while. These actions must be taken in time; if you are too lenient with them, it might cost you a fortune and lead your company to face severe losses.
Evaluate and replace
There can be times when you chose a supplier because you felt they were the right choice for the business at that time. While that may be the case, as your business evolves, the supplier, too, needs to evolve with you. If they are unable to do so, you need to evaluate your choice of supplier. This is not just a way to deal with tardiness, these decisions are to be taken in extreme situations, but these cases tag along with the makings of a successful venture.
Replacing a vendor is a decision that should be taken only if they fail you time and time again. There are many factors you need to take into consideration before you replace a vendor, like what do you expect from the new supplier, what quality of products do you need and do they fit well with your business.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the best way to deal with a tardy vendor is to communicate with them and, if they don’t respond in kind, take the necessary action against them. This article highlighted the major ways in which you can deal with such a situation; hopefully, you found your answer through it.
