Becoming a supplier diversity professional was supposed to be how you changed the world or at least improved a corner of it. You got into supplier diversity to strengthen the supply chain, bring innovative solutions to your organization, and positively impact both your company’s bottom line and the diverse suppliers you cultivate relationships with. Instead, you spend hours collecting and entering supplier data into spreadsheets, calling to verify your data is correct, and wondering where it all went wrong.
Manually collecting supplier data is time-consuming, costly, and tedious. Your talents are better used identifying potential new suppliers who can provide the next great solution or nurturing current suppliers to help them scale and grow. Make managing diverse suppliers easier by implementing a supplier registration portal. Customizable, scalable, and adaptable, it is the Swiss army knife in your supplier management toolbox. Let’s look at how a supplier registration portal can make your job easier and strengthen your supplier diversity program.
1. Pre-Qualify and Expand Your Diverse Supply Base
Do you want to expand your diverse supply base without adding to your workload? Through a customized questionnaire, you can pre-qualify suppliers and route their information to the appropriate purchasing manager in your organization.
2. Streamline Processes to Save Time and Money
When you automate mundane tasks like onboarding new diverse suppliers, you free up your supplier diversity personnel to spend time on tasks that cannot be automated, such as relationship building, supplier development, and finding opportunities for diverse suppliers. A supplier portal also serves as a single access point for current vendors to update their information and verifies against a constantly updated database. When updates are needed, the supplier enters the information once, and it’s pushed out to all companies connected to the database.
3. Improve Supplier Communication
Are you contacting suppliers individually for company-wide updates? With a supplier registration portal, you can eliminate administrative workload with automated notifications, such as certification expirations, certificate of insurance, and code of conduct and small business affidavit collections. You can also configure the registration profile to track the type of commodity a supplier specializes in, then automatically route to your internal buyers for review and approval. Not only does this eliminate additional administrative workload, but it also further integrates procurement and category managers into the supplier diversity program by familiarizing them with potential diverse suppliers directly.
4. Ensure Data Integrity
Our supplier diversity programs rise and fall on the quality of our data. CVM’s Master Database reflects over millions of small and diverse supplier records, with aggregated data from hundreds of third-party certification sources. Reduce supplier risk and maintain the integrity of your diverse spend by actively monitoring merger and acquisition activity, ownership changes, and updates to certification or classification status.
5. One Login, Multiple Opportunities
When you choose a supplier registration portal like ASCEND powered by CVM Solutions, an all-inclusive, one-stop shop for your company’s supplier diversity program, suppliers register with the CVM Master Database by creating just one account; this makes it easier for suppliers to register simultaneously with numerous companies and increase opportunities to grow their business. Additionally, if a supplier is requested to update its diversity certificate, the update will reach all companies that use the supplier, instead of just the one organization that made the request.
A supplier registration portal is one of the most versatile, valuable tools your supplier diversity program should be using. It saves time and money by reducing administrative workload so you can focus on growing and strengthening your diverse supply base. A customized supplier registration portal promotes buy-in from your purchasing team with automated connections to potential diverse suppliers, streamlines communication, and makes it easier for suppliers to maintain updated information.