Vendor Maintenance Made Easy

Not lost in translation, but missed opportunity

On average, a mid-size supermarket chain would have 1000-3000 vendors while onboarding single-digit new vendors every week. What does that translate to? A lot of data that needs constant updates, enrichment and deletion.

As the foundation of any vendor collaboration events, vendor information needs to maintain high level of data integrity, and there is an easy way to do it -- vendors and brokers updating their respective records on a bi-directional platform where retailers have full visibility of all changes.

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Sounds like a no-brainer right? Yet it is not a common practice for 2 main reasons:

• Retailers don't have the right tool

• Retailers don't know how to approach the problem

The first obstacle is self-explanatory: buyers are still heavily relying on pens and paper, since their communication with vendors happens over the phone. When they want to move vendor management online, most software is built primarily for onboarding, not maintenance. After onboarding vendors, buyers and sourcing personnel still have to call their vendors for the most recent updates. The back-and-forth is not only time-consuming, but also highly repetitive.

The second obstacle has more nuance: retailers and wholesalers often ignore data project because of its complexity.

During our most recent webinar with GS1 US and Retail AG, speaker Ed Wong mentioned that as a COO in various retail organizations, he always viewed data integrity improvement as a "continuous investment," claiming obtaining data integrity requires constant maintenance, which is repetitive and time-consuming.

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So what's the solution then?

This is where Simplain can help you. Our Vendor Onboarding & Maintenance module is specifically designed to onboard new vendors and allow vendors to update their records with minimum technical difficulties.

Once existing data is transferred via API, users from both sides will create log in credentials (each with different access and visibility per retailer/wholesaler's request). When expiration dates of certain documents are approaching, vendors will be notified via email and/or SMS.

Once vendors update the renewed documents, the system will validate uploaded files using APIs and AI-powered image decoding technique. If any discrepancies occur, vendors will receive a pop-up notification indicating what the discrepancy is and can only submit the updated information once the discrepancy is corrected.

The risk/compliance users in the retail/wholesale side will be notified via email once the submission is successful. Once they log in with their respective credentials, they will access document summaries powered by AI and validated data that need only enrichment instead of corrections. If additional information is needed, they simply click a button, and the system will notify vendors regarding the status update. They can also attach notes regarding what to change.

What would happen if the vendors forgot about the notification? Upon request, risk/compliance can also receive warnings when the expiration date is approaching. They then can contact vendors and reminder them about the updates.

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Data maintenance isn't glamourous. It's repetitive, tedious and thankless, much like many tasks of our daily routine. By adopting our solution, you might not make the task itself more interesting, but you can save some time for things that bring you joy: another cup of coffee, a heated butter croissant or a walk with your dogs. When life gives you lemons for lemonade, why not buy a juicer?