A company’s products and services are closely related to the quality of its suppliers. The ISO 9001:2015 standard, “Quality Management Systems”, acknowledges this concept in Section 8.4.1, which is dedicated to managing external suppliers.

But what does this mean in practical terms? How can a process be structured to effectively select, qualify, and monitor suppliers in accordance with ISO requirements without wasting time on manual activities? Let’s take a look.

According to the ISO 9001:2015 standard (clause 8.4.1), organizations must perform four key activities:

1) evaluate and select suppliers before starting collaboration

2) implement a structured qualification process

3) monitor performance regularly

4) document each stage of the process

It sounds simple on paper, but many companies struggle to implement these requirements.

Imagine having to check the expiration dates of 50 suppliers’ certifications or urgently retrieve a supplier’s documentation during an audit. Would you immediately know where to find the information?

Simplify supplier management with Online Procurement’s Supplier Management solution -> .

While it does not immediately show up in company financial statements, scattered supplier management erodes margins and performance in the long term.

In concrete terms, this translates to:

• Increased administrative workload, with employees engaged in repetitive, low-value activities
• Decisions based on incomplete or outdated data increase the risk of errors.
• Hours spent manually monitoring activities that could be automated
• Difficulty detecting problems and supplier noncompliance in advance
• Complications during certification audits due to disorganized or missing documentation

To ensure compliance with the international ISO 9001 standard and optimize processes, a structured system must be adopted. We suggest the following four steps to get you started:

Do you recognize yourself in the following situations: supplier documents stored in emails and Excel spreadsheets, forgotten deadlines, and decisions based more on intuition than real data?

Our Online Procurement platform helps you manage your company’s purchases more efficiently. It’s more than software; it’s an ally that simplifies your existing processes without disrupting them.

• Automated qualification: Maintain your selection criteria, and let the system collect information and remind you of deadlines.
• Centralized Repository: Find any document in seconds, even those from years ago.
• Intuitive vendor rating: Evaluate suppliers using your own set of parameters with the help of automation.

Don’t just take our word for it.

Many procurement professionals like you have already integrated Online Procurement into their existing processes and seen immediate results.

and we’ll show you how to tailor the system to your needs.

• Cybersecurity and data protection (82%)
• Human capital, diversity, and talent management (50%)
• Macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty (46%)
• Changing laws and regulations (44%)
• Digital disruption, new technologies, and artificial intelligence (38%)
• Climate change and environmental sustainability (37%)
• Business continuity, crisis management, and disaster response (36%)
• Supply chain, outsourcing and sub-supplier risk (34%)
• Financial, liquidity, and insolvency risks (28%)
• Corporate governance and reporting (25%)

Source: Risk in Focus 2023

Optimal management of procurement risk begins with supplier management. CPOs and Purchasing Directors should work on both awareness, i.e., knowing the risk factors, their priority, and their estimated impact on business assets, involving the C-Suite, and readiness, i.e., playing in advance with an action plan that responds to different risks using classic risk management methodologies (eliminate, reduce, transfer and retain, depending on the type and urgency for the business).

The only way to do this is to start with data: a data-driven approach is the foundation of any risk management technique you choose.

Choose Online Procurement, the effective risk management tool for your procurement department

Assigning a sustainability rating to a supplier can take place in two stages:

• At the screening stage, requesting information and documentation as part of the qualification process
• At the contract execution stage, as a reward requirement, through the calculation of dedicated KPIs.

In each of these two stages, it is the supplier himself who enters the required data through questionnaires and checklists, which, once completed, feed into the defined KPIs.

An advanced scoring system also allows requirements to be weighted differently, calculation methods to be fine-tuned, and requirements and required certifications to be diversified by commodity category.

Simplify Vendor Rating with Online Procurement >>

Generating value is the primary goal of every company. To achieve this goal, what matters is not only the profit that comes from the success of one’s offerings in the market but also the optimal management of business processes, such as purchasing and expense tracking.

Precisely to help companies improve the management of purchasing and invoice and payment authorization processes, we have implemented the functionality of Online Procurement software, which in version 10.0 allows for greater control over expenses and, in general, over corporate accounting.

Invoice Management allows you to digitize the invoice authorization process, providing control and visibility over the entire order-invoice-payment cycle.

From a single dashboard, it is possible to monitor the passive invoicing cycle in real time and have an overview of the status of invoices, payments, and associated contracts, with immediate visibility of any discrepancies or anomalies.

Information is shared with all departments involved in the purchasing process, from contract manager to accounting, improving internal collaboration and communication. By centralizing data in a single shared environment, external tools, such as emails or spreadsheets, will no longer be needed, which lengthens management time and cause countless inefficiencies.

Equipping Procure to Pay management software such as Online Procurement means having access to a digital system for managing and controlling the entire purchasing cycle.

Here are the main benefits:

1. Simplification of administrative processes, given by the elimination of paper documentation and manual activities with low strategic value
2. Cost saving and containment of maverick expenses due to increased control of expenses and each stage of the passive cycle
3. Increased collaboration between departments, thanks to an efficient information-sharing system
4. Automatic organization of all documents related to your purchases within a digital repository
5. SaaS-based: the procurement and supplier invoice management software is a SaaS solution (Software as a Service) and therefore requires no installation
6. Always available and accessible from any device via a browser.
7. Certified security all data is protected by the highest ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified security protocols.

Learn more about the complete enterprise procurement solution.

The more companies grow, the more the number of contracts to manage multiplies: it is easy to end up with hundreds of different suppliers and thousands of contracts each year, whose documentation, clauses, renewals, and established service levels need to be tracked.

Therefore, effective management of the entire contract lifecycle requires a high level of collaboration between departments: on the one hand, the purchasing department, which deals directly with suppliers, and on the other hand, the administrative department and compliance officers, who are in charge of ensuring supply compliance.

To remain competitive and efficient in a market that is increasingly variable and shaken by unpredictable events, it is necessary to digitize the entire Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) process as the company acquires new suppliers and increases its turnover.

Therefore, it becomes strategic to invest in software like Online Procurement that integrates contract and supplier management into one platform to ensure that signed purchasing conditions are always fulfilled.

According to a survey conducted this year by Conflavoro PMI (Italian SMEs Association), more than 80 percent of Italian companies have already implemented measures to combat inflation, especially regarding rising energy and raw material prices: in addition to increasing costs for the end consumer by between 15 percent and 60 percent, with noticeable effects on purchasing power, 65 percent of companies have already taken steps to reduce their costs, while 20 percent have had to resort to staff cuts.

When inflation comes to threaten a company’s financial health, and access to credit lines is reduced, it is crucial to have a clear and comprehensive view of spending to better plan for available cash and make informed decisions based on objective data.

No two companies are the same, but all of them can proactively address rising costs by optimizing the management of their liability cycle, where digitization and automation play a major role. So, let’s take a look at how best to manage supplier-related accounting, and what the benefits are for companies.

With Invoice Management, the Online Procurement suite enables the management of purchasing processes from scheduling to the final stage, i.e., invoice receipt, reconciliation with the order, and payment management. With intelligent, digital workflows and automation, all passive accounting becomes touchless, resulting in immediate cost and error reductions.

With Online Procurement, the entire invoice lifecycle is transparent, broken down into stages that are always visible and tracked by the system, during which all figures involved will have immediate access to up-to-date documentation and data.

To support the steps just described, the software integrates a central dashboard with an overview of invoices and credit notes, showing at a glance their status, amount, due date, and associated supplier, which is essential for monitoring and reporting.

Additionally, Online Procurement integrates with popular ERP and billing management software to channel information already present in the company to the procurement function

The integration of supplier passive invoice management and spend management, with simple and intuitive tools for data analysis and monitoring, makes Online Procurement the ideal solution for having total control over corporate cash flow. Digitizing all procure-to-pay processes relieves the purchasing department of low-impact manual tasks and increases the strategic value of procurement within the relevant business.

By automating the payable cycle with Invoice Management, procurement managers can optimize important metrics, such as reducing average payment times and the number of disputes, the level of compliance and the level of risk related to suppliers and contracts, keeping tabs on corporate liquidity, and use data for short- and long-term predictive analytics

According to a Gartner survey of 275 global supply chain executives, improving supplier performance is one of the top priorities that procurement executives want to invest in to ensure supply continuity and create value.

For procurement professionals, dealing with suppliers is their bread and butter, but transforming that relationship into a true partnership that goes beyond simple negotiation requires commitment, transparency, and trust on both sides, as well as a solid core strategy.

In fact, supplier management is a set of coordinated and complex activities that includes sourcing new companies and professionals, the qualification process, the management of negotiations and orders, the segmentation and evaluation of their performance, the execution of contracts and payments, and risk mitigation.

Only a digital, centralized solution such as Online Procurement can truly help buyers simplify supplier tracking throughout the collaboration and maximize benefits.

1. Define business objectives: Aligning the short- and long-term objectives of the procurement department with those of the company and its key stakeholders is key to making procurement processes contribute to the business strategy and simplifying the analysis of the results achieved.
2. Establish qualification criteria: Identifying the requirements for each commodity category is not only functional for the qualification process but also helps streamline and homogenize the way they are handled.
3. Centralize information: A comprehensive view of each supplier’s data, documents, risk profile, rating, and order history supports decision-making and significantly reduces the time spent on manual audits.
4. Segment suppliers: The theory behind supplier relationship management recommends ranking suppliers according to their strategic importance to the business, performance, and risk factors, and creating specific goals and metrics for each segment.
5. Select KPIs: Working together on common and objective metrics allows both parties to monitor progress and difficulties with greater transparency.
6. Access up-to-date products and pricing: Direct access to products and price lists updated in real-time by the suppliers themselves speeds up purchasing processes, standardizes procedures, and reduces costs through economies of scale.
7. Keep track of communications and documents: How often do important negotiation details get lost in email exchanges? Centralizing communications and documents in a digital repository makes it easier to find information and keep everything up to date.
8. Monitor performance: A system for evaluating performance from an operational perspective – indicators such as delivery time, contract compliance, etc. – but also from a collaborative standpoint, based on qualitative parameters, makes it possible to identify the most reliable suppliers and optimize purchasing costs.
9. Risk prevention and mitigation: to ensure continuity of supply, it is essential to know which suppliers could cause bottlenecks or disruptions, and to proactively monitor the risk profile: financial, geographic, ESG.

We devote a separate section to supplier qualification and onboarding processes because they are the foundation for any procurement team to optimize costs, reduce supply-related risks, and improve internal efficiencies.

The Online Procurement suite provides flexible tools to better organize and interact with your supplier network, making request validation and documentation control activities faster and more accurate.

Digital Supplier List Management

Online Procurement provides extensive capabilities to customize the classification of suppliers into different lists and/or product categories, with ad hoc qualification requirements for each type of supplier. Once the requirements are set, the suppliers themselves complete the master list.

Qualification Request Management

On the platform, buyers can easily and intuitively qualify suppliers with a single-screen view of the data and documents entered by the supplier in the request form.

Single Digital Archive and Document Review

Documents, communications, and supplier-specific performance and risk KPIs are collected in convenient digital files, with an integrated system of automatic due date reminders to reduce the workload of the purchasing department.nze.

It is estimated that in manufacturing companies, purchasing accounts for about 50-60% of the turnover: identifying the best suppliers in the market and in the relevant category is, therefore, a key lever for a cost reduction strategy and, in particular, for reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO), one of the most important procurement metrics.

Among the useful methodologies for reducing costs, not in the sense of simply “cutting” but of optimizing from a development perspective, we highlight 3.

The success of a corporate procurement strategy is not only determined by reducing procurement costs but is primarily influenced by the quality of the relationship with the company’s supplier network and by its size. From global corporations with thousands of suppliers to SMEs with a smaller supplier base, every company needs to optimally manage its buyer-supplier partnership to best meet the expectations of its customers.

As early as 1983, Peter Kraljic, a consultant to the multinational McKinsey corporation who is credited with coining the concept of “supplier relationship management” (SRM), stated in a famous article published in the Harvard Business Review that the purchasing department should focus on strategic supply management, rather than repetitive operational tasks. A seemingly simple message that almost four decades later sounds remarkably relevant today.

US research by IDC Custom Solutions in 2020 estimates that up to 50 percent of a company’s value may depend on its supply chain’s strength and relationships with those who populate it. In a historical context characterized by high uncertainty about economic trends, rising inflation, and an increase in unforeseen – and potentially disruptive – external events on the supply chain such as the current one, this percentage may already be estimated downward.

So, let’s take a look at the three basic steps with which to build and manage a supplier network that is reliable, collaborative, and aligned with one’s business goals.

The first step in efficient supplier management by the procurement department is to analyze the current supplier base and actively scout for new suppliers with the desired profile. Analysis and scouting, in combination with expenditure planning and strategic sourcing, also form an excellent basis for a sound procurement strategy.

Online Procurement is the software solution with which SMEs and large companies can better manage their suppliers and establish successful partnerships.

Digital transformation of procurement processes is essential, the stakes are high: loss of customers, reputational damage, higher costs, reduced customer service levels, lack of compliance, delays in projects, or the execution of business strategies are among the riskiest consequences of supply chain problems or disruptions.

Secure your supply chain with more agile, competitive, and transparent supplier management

With no obligation, we will talk together about your procurement processes and how we can help you optimize them most effectively.

Using a platform capable of digitally transforming procurement management in its entirety, from the inception of the need (Purchase Requisition) to the selection of suppliers, through to contract management and performance monitoring, may seem like an innovation beyond the reach of small and medium-sized companies.

Managing the entire end-to-end procurement cycle in a fully computerized way is a substantial change in the way of working, and even before that in mentality, which could even be seen as too radical a choice. The dematerialization of just a few processes, such as sending electronic documents by email and the use of management software for electronic invoices, is already sufficient for some. But is it really?

At a time of crisis such as this, rethinking the way procurement processes are managed in SMEs and investing in the long-term growth of your business can be the way out, with the goal of a stronger business equipped to meet the challenges of today, and tomorrow

Until recently, companies in search for supplies adopted a transactional approach to purchases based only on the economic variable and on cost-cutting, fallacious due to its intrinsic limits and unable to generate real value.

Today, the centrality of the contribution of suppliers leads to overcoming this approach and Buyers manage the relationship with suppliers in a collaborative and increasingly strategic way.

The main elements affecting the centrality of the supplier are:

• The need for flexible and high-quality supplies.
• Product innovation.
• Involvement in the value chain of the producer.
• Involvement in product R&D.

Finally, the need to increase the number of supply sources and find suppliers geographically close to the buyer and able to guarantee immediate delivery becomes increasingly pressing.

Focusing on strategic partnerships is key to increase the value of production and maximize profits: these partnerships can be horizontal, vertical, or mixed, but mainly need to be capable of fully integrating with the processes and business demand

To improve the level of service and strengthen procurement processes, a new, more inclusive, and proactive paradigm is needed. This new approach looks beyond purchasing and aims to establish long-term relationships focusing on innovation, complete automation and digitization of processes, and the improvement of the quality of products or services.

Active collaboration with suppliers develops, in an essential way, through its digital efficiency, or, elaborating it, through the use of advanced Procurement software capable of optimizing not only supplies but also the process of selecting suppliers and the communications that accompany all processes, from onboarding to post-purchasing.

The challenge, therefore, becomes to find a complete software, capable of automating processes as much as possible and integrating the management of all suppliers gaining multiple benefits:

• More effective and efficient identification of supplies capable of generating value.
• Long-term collaboration between all players involved in the entire supply chain.

The benefits of collaboration in the supply chain are many, however, before establishing profitable partnerships through an effective Supplier Management software, you need to identify the objectives to pursue. This is key to be able to measure the results obtained through the implementation of the new management tools for corporate governance.

The adoption of new tools is preceded by a profound change in the corporate organizational culture that must be shared by all the players in the system.

The starting point is to adopt appropriate software to automate collaboration and improve the management life cycle both from a strategic and operational point of view.

A complete application focused on enhancing Supplier Collaboration allows you to radically change the main procurement processes:

• Supplier Onboarding: an efficient procurement software offers, first of all, solid support during the supplier onboarding phase, reducing the initial effort to find quality supplies. At this stage, starting with the segmentation of suppliers is the best option as it will allow faster searches based either on specific attributes of the product or service, or also on customizable supplier tags. Starting from a custom consultation on Category Management, the platform is configured to offer a supplier registration portal built around the needs of the Buyer, with significant time savings for both the supplier and the buyer.
• Supplier and Contract Management: thanks to the integration of different software modules you can offer incentives to Supplier Collaboration. How? Simplifying requests for quotation, as well as negotiation and ordering processes, which can be managed with the e-Sourcing functionalities or with electronic catalogs. The results: faster processes managed through easy-to-use software, which automatically leads from the Sourcing event to Contract Management, with significant benefits in terms of compliance and standardization of procedures.

Having digital access to a large pool of pre-qualified suppliers and, at the same time, nurturing stable relationships with key suppliers by making them real partners is key to build a solid network that guarantees flexibility and greater operational efficiency. Companies must be ready to innovate quickly and switch suppliers in the event of unexpected market shocks.

Furthermore, taking care of these relationships, not just those with customers, brings benefits in terms of profits and reputation to all the players in the system.

Software such as Online Procurement equipped with the useful functionalities described allows you to promote a culture based on proactive communication, transparency, consistency, and knowledge sharing. A proven path to truly retain partners in the long term by creating a Supplier Collaboration that generates real value.

Sales Manager – DigitalPA