Business Partner - Supplier

In Valuemation Supplier management, suppliers are represented by objects of the 'Business Partner' object type with the 'Partner Type' attribute set to 'Supplier'.

Important Attributes and Relations

• Partner Type

  Attribute 'Partner Type' further specifies the business partner. Examples of partner types include 'Vendor', 'Supplier' or 'Service provider'. Business partners registered for Supplier Management use partner type 'Supplier'.

• Status

  Throughout its life cycle, a business partner goes through a succession of defined statuses set by corresponding status actions. See 'Status Diagram - Business Partner'.

  A new supplier (registered e.g. on the basis of an information email processed via Valuemation Mail-In functionality) automatically receives status 'Potential'.

  Note: For migration purposes (i.e. if an already registered "non-supplier" business partner is used as 'Supplier' in a new Valuemation version), the supplier receives status 'Active'. If necessary, the status can then be manually changed.

• Customer ID, Employee ID

  Free fields for recording of customer-specific identification information.

• Type of Company

  Free field for customer-specific company description/categorization.

• Acceptance of 'Code-of-conduct'

  The person responsible for supplier registration uses this check box to register the supplier's consent to the company 'Code of Conduct' (or similar) document.

  Note that acceptance of 'Code-of-Conduct' is mandatory. A supplier who does not accept it cannot become an 'Active' supplier. (This means that the supplier remains in status 'Potential' until 'Code-of-Conduct' has been accepted.)

• Is Manufacturer

  The person responsible for supplier registration uses this check box to distinguish suppliers who are manufacturers.

• Graduation

  Drop-down field for assignment of Business Partner Graduation, a classification of supplier importance.

  Depending on individual customer needs, graduation may be used to express e.g. 'the amount of business done with the given supplier', a 'strategic supplier', etc.

Supplier management-specific reference catalogs:

• Business Partner Category (tab 'Categories / Service Businesses')

  Objects of the 'Business Partner Category' object type enable categorization of business partners. This is done on the 'Categories / Service Businesses' tab of the 'Business Partner' editor.

  A 'Supplier' can be assigned one or more 'Business Partner Categories'. Categories supplied in standard Valuemation are: 'Infrastructure Services', 'Facilities Engineering', 'IT Technical Services' and 'Business Services'. More categories can be added as necessary by creating new 'Business Partner Category' objects.

• Contact Person (tab 'Contact Persons')

  One or more Valuemation 'Person' objects can be assigned to a 'Supplier' as its contact persons. Each such assignment is categorized by a 'Process Role'. This way one person can play different roles in different business partner assignments.

  Additionally, 'Process Relevance Groups' are used to group process roles according to their position in supplier relationships.

  Contact persons on both the supplier and the contractor side can be registered here, using 'Process Roles, 'Process Relevance Groups' and possibly other attributes to distinguish between the two sides.

• Evaluated Competencies

  Reference catalog listing already evaluated competencies for the supplier. Competency values are calculated to incorporate evaluations by all evaluators.

• Evaluations History

  Reference catalog listing all evaluations already performed for the supplier.

• Evaluation Inputs History

  Reference catalog listing all evaluation inputs already performed for the supplier.

  The 'History' tabs can prove instrumental in analyzing the overall tendency in the given supplier relationship/performance.

Supplier management-specific editor tabs:

Norms

Tab collecting information about which norms the supplier is certified for.

Disclosure Information

Tab collecting general information about the supplier.

• Homepage - the company's homepage
• Principal Owner - an owner who has authority to legally bind the company
• Company Foundation (Date) - the date when the supplier company was founded
• Last Annual Sales - standard fiscal information
• Description of Service Offer - the (main) line of business for which the supplier is considered/used

  This information complements the 'Categories / Service Businesses' reference catalog which lists all services provided by the supplier.

• Notice of non-liability - Information about areas of supplier non-liability, i.e. possible part of the supplier relationship for which the supplier explicitly renounces liability.

Possible relevant documents can be attached to the supplier record in the 'Attachments' reference catalog.

Recent Evaluation

Tab providing information on the most recently performed evaluation of the supplier.