QSTRAT was founded twenty years ago to help companies get a better understanding of real product and part costs in order to assist those companies with the relentless margin pressure, constantly tightening timelines, and always-on global competition. They do this through a very customizable, and customized, Sourcing and Supplier Management Platform along with a rather unique Distributor Quoting Solution (which we are not covering in detail) to support value-added distributors (VADs) [who go beyond just logistics and fulfillment and might also provide training, technical support, sales demonstrations, and/or bundling with other complementary products for more complete customer solutions in addition to other value-add solutions]. Let it just be said that the Distributor Solution is an extension of the manufacturer solution where the value added distributor can get detailed quotes from the supply base, add its own markups and outbound costs, and provide very detail quotes to a buyer.

The core of their platform is a highly configurable single tenant cloud sourcing and supplier management solution for manufacturers and distributors who need to extend their ERP backbone with solid strategic sourcing capability in a manner that is compatible with their favourite tools — Microsoft Excel, e-Mail, and PDF forms.

Before we go any further we are going to call out one key difference between QSTRAT and most other cloud-based platforms — there is no supplier portal. In certain traditional manufacturing industries populated by old-school manufacturers, they are not very modern technology / SaaS savvy. They don’t want yet another supplier portal to try and figure out, to try and remember the passwords and security configurations for, and to have to log into every day to try and find their orders and communications when for years they ran off of email and spreadsheets and could get all their communications through one source. Also, in defense, it can be very hard to get yet another platform/portal approved, and even if it’s okay for your company, if one of your suppliers is also a defense subcontractor, they may not be able to use your new platform, putting you in a pickle — do you insist on the platform and find a new supplier, or keep the supplier and not get the benefit of the platform you jut bought.

QSTRAT was developed with those customers in mind and ensures all bids, quotes, surveys, and information exchange goes through secure PDF forms (or, should the customer choose, Excel spreadsheets can also be used, especially for simple information requests where there is no need for provably secure audit trails because no award is being made). This is because, with their target market, e-mail, Excel, and PDF forms are already universally accepted by the majority of suppliers. Whenever a quote, survey, request, etc. is issued, a custom secure PDF form is generated by the platform which is sent to the supplier through an email (link) for completion (and button based submission when they are happy with the form, where the state can be saved while it is in process).

The QSTRAT Sourcing and Supplier Management platform has the following key parts:

• part database
• supplier management
• events (RFPs/Qs and Surveys)
• reports
• administration

Part Database

The platform can maintain the organization’s complete part database natively to facilitate rapid (re)sourcing of parts and programs, which can even consist of multiple quote packages that collectively satisfy a bill of materials. Part profiles are extremely extensive and can be configured to track all of the fields you want to track as well as have their own cost breakdown models if desired. They can be associated with risk factors, compliance requirements, insurance requirements, and detailed CAD/CAM drawings / STP files and all of this information will be sucked in by an event that includes the part.

Supplier Management

Supplier management is kicked-off during initial implementation where the cusstomer’s (active) supplier list is loaded from the ERP. Once the suppliers are loaded, additional information can be collected through surveys that can be sent to the suppliers as part of onboarding, data collection, performance reviews, etc. Suppliers can be categorized into organizational hierarchies of choice which can be product based, region based, raw-material based, etc. to allow for easy administration and selection of relevant suppliers for events.

Supplier profiles can be as in-depth as you like and upon system installation QSTRAT will define as many data fields in as many categories (basic profile, financials, contract management, risk factors, Scope 3, scorecard, etc. etc. etc.) as the organization desires. All available data will be imported from the existing supplier master in the ERP, the rest can be collected from surveys or manual entry, and updated data can be pushed back to the ERP on a schedule.

Suppliers can be created and onboarded natively in the QSTRAT application (and then pushed to the ERP when approved), and onboarding can begin with only a supplier name, contact name, and contact e-mail. Onboarding can be multistage and start with a registration questionnaire, continue with specific questionnaires based on the categories you will assign the supplier to (and focussed on its capabilities), and end with a formal evaluation exercise that follows a pre-defined workflow that will end in a supplier approval (or denial). The specific requests can include tooling capabilities, associated capacities, and, if the supplier is an MRO supplier or provides services, it can also include maintenance services and default rate cards.

Events

RFQs, which are the primary events in the system, consist of header information, line information, attachments, suppliers, communications, and returned quotes. The header information is the information that defines the event and goes beyond the simple meta data (id, name, dates, contact) but also defines the RFQ type (and associated workflow), program relationship (is it supporting a program defined by a parent RFQ that has been split into sub-programs to simplify analysis based on similar part types or supply base), prior event history (with the last quotes received, if they exist), and any financial guidance you want to provide (like expected margin % in detailed cost breakdowns, etc).

The attachments consist of global event attachments as well as individual attachments by part. Default attachments will be pulled in according to the RFQ type and the parts included in the RFQ, but additional can be attached at the global or part level before the RFQ is issued. This attachments will typically include NDAs, CAD/CAM drawings, compliance and insurance requirements, etc.

The lines represent the individual parts being quoted, each of which can have their own custom-defined detailed cost breakdown model, notes, and attachments. The quotes, which are filled out through custom PDF forms generated for the suppliers, can be exported in bulk to CSV for users that like to do spreadsheet-based analyses, but can also be compared in the QSTRAT platform in the QuoteMatrix which will show the quotes summarized (and sortable) on two key fields (landed cost, fully burdened cost, country of origin, or any other pre-defined calculation or identifier). The buyer can use this quote matrix to select bids for award, or use the pre-defined auto-select functionality (which, depending on the workflow, will select the lowest cost, the lowest cost that meets a certain requirement, etc.). The quote matrix is not limited to current bids by line, but can include key description fields (unit count, target price) as well as historical quotes for comparison. The matrix has extensive filtering capability so it is really easy to see parts with all or without one or more supplier responses, that are or are not selected for award, and with and without returned attachments. The buyer can also drill in to the cost breakdown matrix by supplier as well to see the relative costs for each component (material, tooling, certification, etc.).

Suppliers can be auto-selected based upon a pre-configured auto-assignment rule (that will select all suppliers that can supply all of the parts or at least one of the parts), assigned en-masse based on associated categories, assigned on a part basis based on manual selection, or selected en-massed based on category and then deselected on a part-by-part basis. Once the supplier is selected, the buyer can select the contacts at the supplier who should receive the RFQ, which, depending on the event flow, will be pre-selected to the first/default contact or all.

Events are single round by default, but can be turned into multi-round events with the re-quote functionality, which can also be used to kick back a quote (with a comment) to the supplier for re-quoting during the event if the buyer believes the supplier made a mistake.

Reporting

Accessible from its own tab or as drill downs off the dashboard, the platform contains a number of built in reports around event activity, customers, suppliers, and parts that breakdown by status, spend, activity, etc. The specific dashboard widgets and reports will depend on the platform configuration on implementation, and if the buyer wants DIY reporting, they can export all of the data to CSV or pull it into an external business intelligence (BI) or spend analysis tool using the Open API.

Administration

The user can do standard organization, user, workflow, and form field administration through the platform, but most of the configuration is done on implementation where the different event workflows are defined for the different event types that the buyer wants the system to support.

The platform supports a large number of event types which include, but are not limited to, supplier registration, supplier information update, supplier evaluation, tooling request, RFI, estimate (only), RFQ, order request, maintenance request, market test, etc. and additional types can be configured on demand. Associated with each event type can be an associated response/quote-flow definition that defines not only the desired header information, attachments, and communication requirements, but also the associated workflow both for event creation and issuance but also review and approval. Note that every field/document submission requirement defined at the header level will cascade down to each individual line, which will also pull in the cost model, fields, and attachment requirements associated with the part/SKU. These templates can also be configured to pull in the cost of an item currently in inventory or the last quote from a supplier (if still valid), to minimize the effort on the part of the supplier to update a quote and respond to an estimate request or RFQ.

Implementation and Integration

Now, with everything customized for each customer, it sounds like it would take a long time to get this system up and running, but the reality is that customers are usually up-and-running on supplier onboarding and core categories within four to six weeks and fully up and running in three to four months. QSTRAT has been delivering their solution in this manner for over 15 years (as the company turns 20 this year) and have a huge library of templates for each event type, each industry, etc. that they can start with for rapid customization to customer needs.

QSTRAT integrates with the major ERPs and has an open API for loading parts/lines/suppliers from your existing systems (ERP, CRM, EDI feeds, etc.), automatically creating events, and pulling information back.

Summary

QSTRAT is very interesting in both its approach to manufacturing and distributor sourcing and the way it implements that approach. Unlike many sourcing platforms,

• it believes in 100% customization to the client and the way they work, maximizing the value-add on top of the ERP/MRP/WIMS the manufacturer/distributor uses to run their business.
• it is single tenant cloud both to ensure maximized customization capability and to meet the security requirements of defense contractors that are subject to rigid security requirements
• it uses secure PDFs for supplier interaction and data capture, forgoing the “yet another portal” approach the majority of vendors take to supplier interaction
• it was built around Open APIs as most buyers want to work with their existing systems and tools they are comfortable with to the extent possible, and just use a sourcing tool for sourcing

So if you happen to be looking for a direct sourcing solution that meets one or more of these requirements, QSTRAT is definitely a solution you shouldn’t overlook when making your shortlist, and one that is currently serving customers across automotive, aerospace, medical devices, industrial, and high tech manufacturing.