Register and Grade Suppliers

Register Existing or Prospective Suppliers

Suppliers are registered as objects of the 'Business Partner' object type with the 'Partner Type' attribute set to 'Supplier'.

From the Supplier Manager sidebar, open a catalog of 'Business Partners' or directly a catalog of 'Suppliers'.
Call action 'Create' from the right-click context menu. Editor 'New: Business Partner' opens.
Fill in all relevant information. Make sure to select 'Supplier' in the 'Partner Type' field.
In the 'Contact Persons' reference catalog at the bottom of the editor, link contact persons (if already known) to the supplier. Use action 'Search and assign...' to link a person already registered in Valuemation. Use action 'Add new...' to create a new person record to be linked.
When the contact person is linked, it receives default process role 'Employee'. To change the process role, double-click the person record in the 'Contact Persons' reference catalog to open the assignment for editing. In the editor, use the 'Process Role' drop down box to select the correct role for the person.
If the newly registered business partner is a prospective supplier, click the 'Potential' button at the bottom of the editor. The supplier receives status 'Potential' and actions 'Approve', 'Activate' and 'Decline' for use in the supplier acceptance process are enabled.

A new supplier can also be created automatically on the basis of an incoming email. For this, Valuemation 'Mail In' functionality is used.

Check supplier information correctness

Newly created suppliers can then be seen in catalog 'Supplier (new created)' in the Supplier Manager sidebar. A responsible person should examine new supplier records for correctness / completeness of the information and possible duplicate entries.

Approve and Activate Prospective Suppliers

New supplier records marked as 'Potential' are subject to supplier approval. These suppliers can be found in sidebar catalog 'Supplier (potential)' available to Valuemation users with corresponding permissions.

Person responsible for supplier acceptance (Valuemation user with corresponding permissions) is supposed to follow the company's supplier acceptance guidelines and then use actions 'Approve' or 'Decline' (buttons at the bottom of the business partner editor) to process the supplier correspondingly.

An approved supplier must finally be activated using action 'Activate'. Depending on company processes, this can either be performed as part of the supplier approval routine or in the next step by another responsible person.

An approved and active supplier can be temporarily excluded from offering using action 'Inactivate'. The supplier receives status 'Inactive'. An inactive supplier can be re-activated by action 'Activate' or remove from offering altogether by action 'Retire'. A retired business partner can no longer be modified.

See 'Status Diagram - Business Partner' for an overview of supplier statuses.

Grade and Categorize Suppliers

Categorization groups suppliers by the products and services they provide. In Supplier Manager, categories are used to predefine sets of (internal) contact persons for business partners covering individual areas of service.

To categorize suppliers, use the 'Categories / Service Businesses' tab in the business partner editor. The reference catalog in the tab enables assignment of existing 'Business Partner Category' objects to the supplier.
A basic set of 'Business Partner Category' objects should be created in advance as part of Supplier Manager setup. Categories are administered in the 'Businesspartner Categories' catalog found in the 'Administration' sidebar folder.

Grading (called 'Graduation' in Supplier Manager) classifies suppliers according to the level of their importance within supplier relationships. Graduation of a supplier influences the supplier's evaluation period, i.e. the frequency with which evaluation of the supplier is triggered. In standard Valuemation data, higher supplier importance means more frequent evaluations.

To specify graduation of one business partner, use the 'Graduation' drop down box on the 'Master' editor tab. The drop down box assigns one of existing 'Business Partner Graduation' objects to the supplier.
To set a particular graduation to multiple business partners, locate catalog 'Businesspartner Graduations' and open the graduation object for editing. Use the 'Business Partner' reference catalog at the bottom of the graduation editor to assign business partners to the graduation.

Standard Valuemation comes with three predefined graduations (A - High Impact, B - Medium Impact, C - Low Impact). To create and administer graduations (e.g. to change their evaluation periods), use the 'Businesspartner Graduations' catalog found in the 'Administration' sidebar folder.