Looking to automate supplier qualification and on-boarding? Here’s a quick guide.

Key Highlights:
A 6-step approach for robust supplier qualification and onboarding process includes the following:

Step 1: Clearly define your success criteria (and identify supplier-related risks)

Step 2: Convert ‘success criteria’ into a set of formal requirements and develop the qualifying steps

Step 3: Research and Compile Candidates (Shortlist)

Step 4: Vendor Assessments

Step 5: Supplier Selection and Onboarding

Step 6: Supplier Agreements, Periodic re-qualifications, and continuous improvement

• According to a recent study, over 80% of the product value of a car comes from external suppliers
• In a CPG company, over 70% of the product value comes from suppliers
• In pharmaceuticals, 40 to 50% of raw materials comes from suppliers

In today’s competitive and dynamic marketplace, it is imperative to build strategic relationships with your suppliers, ideally for the long-term. The first step to a long-lasting relationship is ensuring your organization has a robust supplier qualification and onboarding process and a continuous improvement (CI) process. Periodic audits, seamless collaboration, and communication are essential for forging a strategic supplier partnership, especially true for the top three risk categories – critical, high risk, and medium risk.

How can one automate the first-step of supplier management: supplier qualification & on-boarding

For a large organization with several suppliers from around the world, the qualification and onboarding process becomes a tedious task. However, with the evolution of technology, there is now a solution — automate the entire process, ensuring your suppliers’ ecosystem meets your “clearly defined” expectations. As a result, supply chain leaders embrace the latest digital transformation technologies to adopt Quality 4.0 and other best practices. The key is to drive a transformation that is continuously evolving and ever-improving.
AI and Data-Enabled Supplier Qualification Process
Having the right software to automate the entire supplier management process is vital to the evolving supply chain. With that in mind, companies must look for a supplier qualification software with embedded AI that can automatically categorize suppliers by risk level right at the onboarding phase. The most important aspect of a next-generation supplier management system is that it must enable easy collaboration. This includes collaboration amongst internal stakeholders as well as engagement with leaders on the supply side.
Legacy EQMS and supplier management systems serve as a system of record wherein all data is captured. But these are not designed for collaboration. Be it supplier interviews and audits or change management or taking corrective action — collaboration helps deliver operational excellence.
In the white paper Reimagining Supplier Qualification and Onboarding, we share details on the following topics:

• The three fundamentals of a sound onboarding process – continuous assessment, monitoring, and improvement
• Understanding how timely identification of problems in a supply chain can be cost-effective

The paper also suggests a 6-step approach that will help quality and supply chain leaders – design and implement a robust supplier qualification and onboarding process.
The steps are –

• Step 1: Define your success criteria (and identify supplier-related risks)
• Step 2: Convert ‘success criteria’ into a set of formal requirements and develop the qualifying steps
• Step 3: Research and Compile Candidates (Shortlist)
• Step 4: Vendor Assessments
• Step 5: Supplier Selection and Onboarding
• Step 6: Supplier Agreements, Periodic re-qualifications, and continuous improvement

Automate and Digitally Transform your Supplier Management Workflow with ComplianceQuest
A next-generation EQMS with a well-designed supplier management system can make life easier for quality and supply chain leaders.
But, what do we mean by next-generation?
The most important aspect of a next-generation system is that it must enable easy collaboration. This includes collaboration amongst internal stakeholders, as well as engagement with leaders on the supply side. Legacy EQMS and supplier management systems serve as a system of record, wherein all data is captured. But these are not designed for collaboration. Be it supplier interviews and audits or change management or taking corrective action – collaboration helps deliver operational excellence.
We believe the following are critical features of next generation EQMS, from a supplier management perspective:

1. The supplier management solution must not only be a system of record but also a system that enables collaboration and communication
2. The solution must take advantage of AI and data analytics for automatic prioritization of issues and risk management
3. It must seamlessly integrate with your ERP, CRP and rest of your EQMS process
4. It should be scalable and customizable, so you can tweak the product as the business scales
5. It must come with dashboards and quality analytics features, that’ll make it easy to drive continuous improvement (CI)
   The ComplianceQuest Solution satisfies each of the factors mentioned above.

To download the detailed whitepaper, click here – https://www.compliancequest.com/wp-content/uploads/whitepaper/reimagining-supplier-qualification-onboarding.pdf