“Treat your suppliers as an extension of your organization and not the enemy”

“Supplier Relationship Management is a systematic methodical approach for integrating two parties in order to provide greater value for customers’ investments and enhance margin for the key supplier(s), and assist in achieving strategic objectives of both”

The above statements say it loud and clear and once again re-emphasize the paramount importance and significance of Supplier Relationship for any Organization.

At the same time, it’s a huge burden on the part of organizations maintaining their Supplier data, especially in the case of large number of suppliers and their huge volumes of data.

PeopleSoft lends a helping hand in the case of above mentioned woes!

PeopleSoft 9.2 unleashes a beautiful innovative module namely “eSupplier Connection” which is the perfect answer for maintaining large volumes of critical supplier data effectively.

PeopleSoft eSupplier Connection is a self-service web application that features employee-facing (internal) and supplier-facing (external) transactions that enable your suppliers to view and modify their own business information at their convenience. PeopleSofteSupplier Connection is closely integrated with PeopleSoft Purchasing.

Suppliers can add and update their own supplier addresses, email, and phone information in the system. They can also review, edit, and add contact information.

As soon as suppliers save their changes, your PeopleSoft database is updated.

Prospective suppliers can register online by invitation or by using a public URL, depending on the registration setup. Existing suppliers can use the supplier portal to add new supplier users. You can manage invitations and approvals through the Supplier Administration Center.

Apart from Registering and maintaining Supplier information, PeopleSoft eSupplier enables you to:

• Maintain RFQ responses
• Acknowledge purchase orders online
• Create advanced shipping notices
• Review supplier activities
• Review supplier performance

Now, let us have a glimpse of some of the popular features provided by PeopleSoft 9.2 eSupplier Connection:

• Supplier onboarding and collaboration
• PO acknowledgements
• Advance shipping notices

Supplier Onboarding and Collaboration

This new step-by-step registration process for new suppliers and bidders can be configured to be accessible on your organization’s public website for unsolicited requests so that any supplier or bidder can request to do business with you. Or it can be configured for access by invitation only, whereby you can send selected contacts an email with a URL and registration code for accessing the registration pages.

The registration information and pages that you expose to the selected audience are configurable with the ability to route the new Supplier or new Bidder requests through an approval process.

Sample online registration page that your company sets up for prospective suppliers or bidders to self-register:

PO Acknowledgements

Supplier can create and manage PO acknowledgements

This is to acknowledge that the Suppliers have received the PO dispatched from Buyer side.

Advance Shipping Notices

In PeopleSoft eSupplier Connection, ASN refers to Advance Shipment Notification. A Supplier sends an ASN that helps your internal users in the receiving process. The Supplier enters ASN directly into the PeopleSoft system.

Though it’s a small module, eSupplier Connection is indeed a beautiful module whose power lies not in it’s weight or bulky features but in it’s widespread usage and application that it finds across the globe.