A fully integrated Steel producer does business with many vendors locally, domestically, and internationally. For each of these vendors with whom they do business, there is a registration process that they must follow. The vendor must have access to a registration system that allows for accurate capture of information. 

Objective:

The purpose of building the Vendor Management System was to allow vendors to register themselves with the client company. The system functionality was to allow for the vendor to provide all pertinent company information, have this information vetted and approved by the purchasing department and ready for input into the SAP System. The client required a robust system to allow for the capture, recording and approvals of each vendor that is to be registered with the company. 

Project Overview:

In the past, the company had a vendor registration portal that required many manual steps, with very high maintenance efforts. The Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre (SSMIC) and Acorn Information Solutions division redeveloped this portal with all new functionalities and automation.

With the help of the client’s extensive subject matter knowledge, SSMIC’s team of experts completed this product development in 4-5 months and worked closely with client teams every step of the way.

This Vendor Management System has been a huge success for the company and includes the following features:

• Capturing of all the mandatory vendor information along with the required documents like ISO certification, etc.
• End to end approval process for the vendor registration
• Communication with vendor at each stage of the process
• Time bound token system for vendors to enter the information
• Secured/encrypted data for the vendor sensitive data like banking information
• Configurations such as vacation replacement for approvals

Benefits:

Key benefits of this project for the clients include:

• Plug and Play: this product is developed in such a way that it can be configured to any industry for the vendor registration process
• The approval process can be configured along with your corporate email system as workflow
• Encryption provides data security and confidentiality
• Software can have extending feature to integrate with third party system to automate the data creation or change
• Responsive design/mobile first
• Very dynamic and configurable in nature
• Inbuilt security module which is useful for proper governance