Simplified Supply Chain Collaboration: Part II
Work Smart, Not Hard
Welcome to our second blog regarding Simplified Supply Chain Collaboration, and namely NTT DATA Business Solutions’ software solution it.vendor portal. In part one of the blog, I spoke about the pressures on the procurement arm of the business – to begin strategically integrating more with their supply chain partners to secure supply, increase quality, provide future insight, and decrease supply chain errors. I also addressed the various options that are available to the SAP Customer community to collaborate effectively with your supplier base. See Part I if you missed the content.
Software technology capability and speed of adoption are beginning to impact all facets of business. Businesses have two goals:
- Reduce costs of goods sold to positively impact product margins
- Increase sales by differentiation – production know-how, increased quality, increased reliability, strategic supplier alliances, delivery speed, etc..
We at NTT DATA Business Solutions have listened to our SME customers and recognized these trends, especially in the global sourcing arena. The current tools to support SAP customers are bulky, lengthy to implement, difficult to adopt, and ultimately have higher costs – negating any perceived cost savings or gains originally intended.
Noticing this gap in the market, we decided to take action – an affordable, dynamic software package is needed for all SAP customers in the mid-market that is SIMPLE for everyone to use.
Our it.vendor portal requirements for the supplier are that they have the ability to access the Internet from a PC, Tablet, or Phone. It doesn’t get much simpler than that! Once suppliers log into the it.vendor portal, they are presented with a variety of important information from their customer:
- Supplier Planning – Short-term and long-terms forecasts, with the ability to download to Excel for manipulation or upload into their ERP.
- Supplier Cockpits – Life-cycle history of purchase orders and scheduling agreements. Proactive notifications of orders to be confirmed, delayed, received, and returned. Other features such as electronic order confirmation, order downloads, and RFQ Management.
- Supplier Dispatch – Accelerate batch creation and complete the advance shipping notification (ASN) process over the web. Ability to respond to delivery defects via CAPA request inbox. And, for overseas vendors, the capability to perform pre-inspection reports prior to export.
- Supplier Finance – Provide the capability to post and park invoices electronically and review AP due date analysis.
- Buyer Portal – Not all benefits are for the supplier. Provide a holistic view of the buyer’s supplier base, along with the ability to reject confirmations and ASNs due to inappropriate quantity, delivery date, or price changes.
Ultimately, our solution designers have delivered on our initial it.vendor portal design concepts formed by customer feedback. It ensures an affordable platform, requires no infrastructure from the supplier, keeps the UI SIMPLE for adoption, and delivers core procurement functionality to reduce manual expediting, email clarifications, and phone call escalations due to miscommunication.
We’d love the opportunity to share our it.vendor portal with you in a live demo and discuss how some of our customers are adopting the standard solution. Our customers are also bringing new, fresh requirements into our core solution stack via a co-development strategy that helps address the solution gaps and further evolves our solution capability. Our it.vendor portal solution is available to be deployed in the Cloud via SAP HCP or on-premise.
For more information on other NTT DATA Business Solutions solutions and software, please visit the NTT DATA Business Solutions Addstore.