Category Archives: Supplier Management

PaymentWorks: Vendor Onboarding for Payment Assurance!

Founded over a decade ago in 2013, PaymentWorks is still a relatively unknown player in the Source-to-Pay space and the Supplier Management (and more exactly, Supplier Assurance) space in particular. Founded to solve a particular problem in the financial services industry (namely, ensuring the supplier is who they say they are; is not sanctioned, debarred, uninsured, or non-compliant; and the accounts they give you do belong to them), they have found their niche in the mid-market in any services or indirect industry where supplier assurance is key to supplier selection, onboarding, award, and payment.

In the average mid-sized organization, the average Procurement team spends too much time finding vendors, verifying their validity, verifying they aren’t on a prohibited list, onboarding them, maintaining their information, and constantly answering questions from the employee that wants the vendor onboarded, the vendor, and managers on both sides as to where Procurement is in the process. All of this takes time, a lot of time, and, sometimes, so much time that shortcuts need to be taken to meet deadlines and key information is missed, verifications are not done, and, sometimes, fraudulent invoices and payment instructions slip through.

And this doesn’t even consider the data management issues when supplier-related data is stored in the ERP, the procurement platform, the accounts payable platform, the compliance platform, and nothing is ever synched. The data nightmares compound problems, compound risk, and compound loss. Much of it is preventable, with the right data, processes, and verifications.

PaymentWorks was founded to be the digital supplier platform for organizational vendor master data management in a manner that ensured that supplier data was always complete, accurate, and verified before any supplier selection, award, order, or payment was made. And that’s what they’ve built, for the mid-market. And while there are a number of modern onboarding solutions that solve the data management nightmare, there are few that do critical verifications still, fewer still that do bank verifications, and almost none that do indemnifications against ACH fraud risk. (In fact, among the 100+ Supplier Information Management players, the only real competitive technology capability in this aspect is Apex Analytix, but their focus is entirely on the Large Enterprise [and not the mid-market].) And we haven’t even mentioned the fact that they actually understand the vendor side. But we’ll get to that.

The Buying Organization

The PaymentWorks platform sits in front of the ERP (or another back-office system that serves as the back-office system of record if it’s not the ERP), and works by intercepting all data requests (pulls) and data updates (pushes) and ensuring that the data retrieved is authorized and up to date and the data pushes are always verified. It also handles the synchronizations between the ERP and all of the systems that handle supplier data. And, of course, it has a fully fleshed out portal that enables the administrators, the buyers, and the organizational employees who need to interact with the vendor and/or purchase their products or services.

The platform has five main components:

  • Vendor Master
  • Supplier Portal Management
  • Messaging
  • Reporting
  • Payment Process Management

Vendor Master

The platform collects four main categories of information:

  1. Business and Tax Information: contains business name, tax and registry identifiers, and related information — the baseline is common to all client organizations and clients can add additional configurable fields
  2. Addresses and Contact Information: HQ office and primary contacts, common to all client installations, and additional address and contacts as desired by the client
  3. Banking and Payment Information: bank account information, which can be tokenized for security, preferred payment method, and any additional (security) fields the client wants
  4. Additional Compliance Information: any insurance, compliance, diversity, and related information desired by the client, configured on a client by client basis

When a supplier enters this area of the application, they see a dashboard which displays the status of all vendors (along with a visual progress bar) that can be quick filtered on key fields in the side bar. They can select any visual display to drill into a vendor, or search for a vendor to drill into. They can also upload supplier files from the ERP, and this data is used to alert the buyer if the information on a form conflicts with any data in their ERP. The buyer can then choose to reject the form/supplier (if they determine it is a fraudulent submission), override the information in the ERP (if the ERP info is wrong), amend the information (if the ERP information is partially right), add a parent/child relationship (if the supplier is a child organization), or add a new record (and possibly archive or delete the old one). (They can also configure the invoice file processing rules for invoice status files they will be pushing to the platform from the AP system.)

From here, the client can also access, review, pause (for more information), accept, or reject any and all registrations and updates to all vendor information. (Rejection can be final rejection or temporary, returning the registration to the vendor for updated information.) For each vendor, they can access the organizational status of the vendor (onboarding, approved, banned, etc.) at all times as well as the status of all information. They can also quickly jump to associated invoice and payment information tracked by the system (from P2P / AP pushes).

The key aspect of the vendor profile management is the automatic validation of business and banking information and the automatic search against all relevant sanction/debarment lists. In addition, the platform can collect compliance and diversity certificates, appropriate metadata, and configure rules for notification upon impending expiry. Not only are all of these validations automatic, but the platform will immediately inform you if key information is missing or in an invalid format, and if it’s verified or unverifiable (and likely invalid) if in an incorrect format.

A powerful feature of the platform for US clients is that it can auto-generate W-X forms for vendors required by the client organization, and save the vendor a lot of manual effort.

Supplier Portal Management

This is where the administrator can control the optional information collected during the supplier onboarding (core information common to all vendors is always collected and cannot be changed), and buyers can invite new vendors for onboarding, that get their own custom invite link and custom sub-portal. (Yes, sub-portal — each vendor on the PaymentWorks platform has a single portal where they provide the information common to all buyers they interact with, and sub-portals where they specify the custom information requested by each client and interact with that client — more in the vendor section.)

Messaging

This is where the buying organization can communicate with a vendor securely and all messages are logged, secure, searchable, and auditable as they are unalterable once logged.

Reporting

The platform comes with about two dozen built-in reports that can be selected from the reporting screen. These reports include, among others:

  • Uploaded Suppliers Report (which suppliers uploaded from the ERP were found in the existing network)
  • (Vendor) Invitation Approval Audit Report (all invitations and associated status info)
  • Returned Registrations Report (all vendors who have had their submission returned, for what reason, and how many times)
  • Registration Approval Audit Report (all decisions and by who)
  • Vendor Onboarding Report (all records and status)
  • Custom Field Report (custom information collection)
  • Payer User Role (for all users)
  • Delivered Payment Reports (all data from P[ayment]I[nstruction]F[ile]s sent to the bank)
  • etc.

And all can be fully filtered on every reporting dimension. These reports are in addition to (custom) dashboards that can overview information of interest (for the specific client organization) at a glance.

Payment Process Management

The platform, which accepts invoice status and payment record pushes from ERP systems, tracks all invoice and payment statuses, pushes those to the relevant vendors, and allows a buyer to quickly determine the status of an invoice or payment. Once verified, it will also push PIFs to the bank.

The platform supports virtual cards, ACH, accelerated ACH (early payment discounts), and checks and can verify domestic bank accounts accordingly. In addition, as mentioned before, they can tokenize/mask the bank account information and make it so that all the buyers see are the tokens while the actual bank account information is securely stored only on their systems (and capable of being unmasked only by an authorized administrator) to heighten payment security and help the organization prevent internal / collusion fraud. Finally, if the client uses their system with the appropriate security protocols in place (such as tokenization), they will indemnify the client against domestic ACH fraud as they stand behind their verifications and security.

The Vendor Portal

As mentioned above, a really cool feature about the PaymentWorks platform is they get it right and a supplier only has to register on the platform once, only ever has to remember the login for, and access, one portal, and onboarding for a new client is limited to additional non-common information required by that client. But let’s step back a bit.

The first time a brand new supplier is invited by any client of the PaymentWorks platform, they ware walked through the onboarding process in a guided step-by-step manner that asks them questions about their business type, locations, banking, insurance, and diversity information in a manner that ensures they are only asked to provide the appropriate, relevant, information to their business type. (For example, businesses need different information for corporations and for individual / sole proprietorships.) Mandatory and optional fields are clearly delineated, formats clarified, and key identifying information confirmed.

Once they are onboarded by at least one client, they gain full access to their vendor portal where they can see all of their customers, and click into each to see information specific to that customer or complete a registration process or update. They can also see all of the invoice status information provided to them by their customers, all of the remittances made by the customer along with correlation of those remittances to their individual invoices, any messages from their customers, their core profile business & banking information (which they can submit updates to, which will be verified by PaymentWorks before they will be allowed), and any relevant PaymentsWorks news or updates.

Validations

As indicated above, a key capability of the platform is all of the automatic validations designed to ensure all relevant supplier business, compliance, and payment data is valid at all times. These include, but are not limited to:

  • IRS TinCheck (provided tax id matches provided legal name)
  • StreetySmarts USPS address validation (real address that can accept mail)
  • Early Warning System + Proprietary PaymentWorks banking verifications combined (account is owned by the tax id you intend to pay via EWS); for those bank accounts not covered by EWS, the PaymentWorks platform assesses risk and will verify (or not) based on our data.
  • Choice of more than 800 federal and state sanctions lists to continuously monitor, including OFAC, Sam.gov, debarment, etc.

If you want to know whether a specific list is monitored, or can be integrated, or want more details on the integrated lists and verifications, PaymentWorks will be happy to provide this information to you. Simply reach out directly.

Summary

PaymentWorks is a relatively unique Supplier Management offering in the compliance and payment verification space whose only competitor you would have heard of is Apex Analytix (a heavyweight with the price tag to match), and the only platform of its kind designed with a focus on the vastly underserved mid-market in entity verification, banking verification, and vendor compliance. And while we’ve covered a few good providers as of late for vendor diversity / compliance in general in the mid-market, if your organization’s greatest need is verification and compliance around business legitimacy and payments, then PaymentWorks is a vendor that should definitely be on your shortlist. This also holds true if you are a large enterprise with a good supplier management solution in place as part of your Source-to-Pay suite that doesn’t do these compliance verifications, as it can be easily plugged in (since it sits on top of the ERP and can intercept all the relevant traffic) to allow Finance and Risk to do compliant on-boardings and key profile maintenance, and then all of the day to day supplier performance/[other] compliance/risk/development management can be done in your existing solutions.

MeRLIN Sourcing, A Platform With a Twist …

INTRODUCTION

When their founders were young men
they paced the fact’ry floors
from Vellore down to Chennai
they must have walked ’em all
cause they learned all of the problems
that plagued the Procurement side.
Those listen, look, and learn guys
sure made a lean platform.

The founders of MeRLIN, who started Rheinbrucke Consulting in 2013, started developing a stand-alone application for direct source-to-contract (and, for those who need it, source-to-pay) in 2018 using their decades of experience supporting direct manufacturing clients. MeRLIN was then frst released it to the market in 2022, after ensuring it actually solved the problems they were seeing and met the needs of the companies they were working with.

(While some companies might take it as a badge of honour to get a “minimally viable product” to market in a year, the reality is that when it comes to manufacturing enterprises, nothing you can develop in a year will actually solve more than a fraction of their problems, and unless what you deliver can integrate tightly into their existing enterprise software landscape, it won’t be adopted, or even bought. That’s why there are so many offerings in indirect [many of whom will succumb to the marketplace madness] and so few that offer true direct sourcing solutions, and fewer still that offer fully integrated source-to-contract / source-to-pay suites.)

PLATFORM SUMMARY

MeRLIN, which bills itself as a Source-to-Contract platform for Direct Material (primarily Discrete Manufacturing) Sourcing, is actually a Source-to-Pay platform where the Procure-to-Pay platform capabilities are baseline (and wouldn’t go head-to-head with best-in-class) and designed for the mid-market (and large enterprise) clients that don’t have a Procurement solution in place already (either through the ERP, AP, or a third party system). Since most larger enterprises have some form of decent P2P, MeRLIN decided to focus primarily on the critically underserved strategic sourcing marketplace in discrete manufacturing and direct sourcing and the capabilities all of the companies the founders worked with in manufacturing were universally missing.

MeRLIN was designed as a modular solution where

  • a client could license just the modules they wanted/needed,
  • common modules, and capabilities, were broken out into their own modules so their was no duplication of functionality, and
  • key modules could be augmented with additional value-added functionality not typically found in average products.

MeRLIN has all the standard modules you’d expect in a Source-to-Contract:

  • (Program &) BoM Management (Requirement for any Direct Solution)
  • Requisition Management (Intake)
  • Sourcing (Event) Management (Sourcing)
  • Supplier Management (SXM)
  • Contract Management & Contract Authoring (CLM)
  • Reports & Dashboard (Reporting & Analytics)

As well as basics for Procure-to-Pay:

  • Purchase Order Management
  • Invoice & Payment Management

But also has modules for:

  • Demand Management (Consolidation of Requirements from Requisitions, Manufacturing Programs, and MRPs)
  • Category Management (Part/BoM grouping & management)
  • Supply Chain Compliance (GSCA / LkSG)
  • Supply Management (Document & Shipment Management)

and the standard suite foundational modules of:

  • Master Data Management
  • Business Administration
  • Security Management
  • System Management

And even modules for:

  • Strategic Project Management (Project Management/Orchestration)
  • Finance Management (Budgets, Prices)

We’re not going to discuss all the modules and instead focus in on just the core Source-to-Contract modules, as they are the modules that are critical to direct sourcing and the modules that will allow you to understand the value, and potential, MeRLIN has for you.

Supplier Management

Supplier Management is designed to onboard, evaluate, approve, and manage suppliers, including their contacts, surveys, ratings, and documents. Qualification starts with a simple request based on supplier name, country, email, and unique (DUNS) identifier. Based on the supplier category, the next step will be to send the suppliers the qualification surveys and pull in the external risk information, send it to technical and risk reviewers, and if that passes, it will go off to compliance to ensure the supplier can comply with all necessary regulations the company is subject to and then, if that passes, the supplier will get a registration invite to provide all of the additional information necessary to do business with the company as well as details on additional products and services.

Supplier Management captures all of the core company information, locations, accounts, questionnaires, risk information and scores, compliance reviews, scorecards, and approvals. For each of these there are standard fields, and as many additional fields can be added by the customer organization as needed.

Compliance Management

Collects and manages the organizational policies, supplier policy statements, compliance surveys, audits, risks, scorecards, and complaints. It can accept all documents, support custom surveys, import third party data from financial and environmental (and other) risk providers, provide you with compliance scorecards, and automatically extract and centralize all “risks” from the surveys based on scores and/or responses in a risk management view.

Moreover, in full compliance with the German Supply Chain Act (GSCA, known as the LkSG within Germany), MeRLIN provides the buying organization, each of their suppliers, and their entire employee base, a unique portal where they can register complaints. They have upgraded their platform to fully support the GSCA and can also support other supply chain acts as well (and future releases will encode more out-of-the-box support, even though it can already be custom figured on a client-by-client basis to support the majority of acts out there).

Requisition

Requisitions can be used as traditional requisitions for purchase orders against existing contracts for goods and services normally used by the company or as intake requests for sourcing. When they are used as intake requests, they go to a central management screen where the buyer can group them by material, bill of material, and/or category to identify sourcing event requirements and then create a sourcing event off of a bundle of them.

Sourcing

Sourcing is primarily RFX based, but auctions are supported as well off of base RFQs. A sourcing event can be kicked off from one or more requisitions, a category, a BoM, or an event template, which can consist of one or more RFIs, questionnaires, and line-items with custom price breakdowns in the RFQ. Associated with the RFQ can be the suppliers, addendums, budgets, stakeholders, terms and conditions, contract template, event schedule, and ongoing Q&A.

In addition to being able to review bids by total cost per unit and evaluation score (by the relevant stakeholders), the application also supports automatic award recommendation by criteria which can include target award by supplier, range of suppliers to split the award between, minimum and maximum shares, and preferred supplier status.

Contract “Authoring” & Management

The platform is primarily “signature” and “execution” management, as authoring is simply the packing up of contract templates, terms and conditions, specifications, and associated addendums for agreement by electronic signature. The electronic signature capability is compliant with USA regulations and most European regulations for private enterprise contracts. Once the contract is signed, the platform can manage the project timeline, stakeholders, documents, events, milestones, and obligations. In addition, the user can define alerts against any event, milestone, document, obligation or other entity on status change or due date.

Reporting & Dashboards

Reporting and Analysis in MeRLIN is through widget-based dashboards that summarize any data of interest in the system. Right now there are hundreds to select from in the reporting library, with more being added as needed. For each of the built in reports and dashboards (on suppliers, spend, process, etc.), the user can apply multiple filter options and save the configuration to their liking. There is no Do-It-Yourself (DiY) widget report builder yet, but more DiY analytics enhancement is on the roadmap.

Strategic Project Management

This is MeRLIN‘s built in project management capability where a user can define and instantiate RFX templates, supplier onboarding workflows, contracting processes from award specifications, procurement processes, and even entire Source-to-Procure projects which collect all of the necessary templates and workflows together. In addition, leadership is provided with a high level overview of sourcing projects.

Master Data Management

All of the system master data templates can be altered by the user including, but not limited to, currencies and conversions, items, locations, plants, prices, suppliers, contract metadata and milestones, and other key items. The customer can control it’s master data and master data identifiers.

Business Administration

All of the templates in the system can be managed and customized in the business administration section including, but not limited to supplier onboarding, qualification, evaluation, and audit questionnaires, product and item templates, requisitions, RFQs, purchase orders, contract terms, contracts, statements of work, email, and workflow templates.

Bill of Materials Manager

A key aspect of Direct Sourcing is managing the Bill of Materials. In the Merlin platform, that can be done through the BOM Manager, which unlike basic direct sourcing platforms, can maintain as many versions of a Bill Of Materials as the organization wants to maintain (for correlation with historical sourcing and procurement and cost estimates during new product design and/or product modification).

These versions can be uploaded from the ERP (or your PLM of choice with custom integration) or created in the BOM Manager, and this creation can be from scratch or from a previous BoM version which can be copied and modified as needed.

The best part of MeRLIN‘s BOM manager is its built-in ability to allow for easy should-cost analysis during NPD and BOM (re)design. Once a BOM has been uploaded or created, the user can click a button to “cost” and it will automatically find prices for every component in the BOM for which it has a price from a contract (first), catalog/commitment (second), or quote (third). Then, the user can push the remaining items to the Demand Management module for quick quote (or import into the internal catalog from a connected source) or simply create a place holder item (with an estimated cost). They can then return to the BOM Manager and re”cost” the BOM to get a complete cost estimate, which can be compared against the cost of all prior BoM versions (that were costed). This allows the organization to understand the costs associated with BOM changes over time (independent of supplier or distributor pricing changes). Gone are the days where you have to use a completely separate application to do BOM cost estimation.

Finally, the next update to the BOM Manager will allow for the user to enter a cost estimate directly in the BOM manager for materials/parts not yet quoted for even quicker price estimates, and those estimates will be clearly marked as internal estimates only.

Other Capabilities

We’re not going to discuss the procurement modules as they are not MeRLIN‘s focus (but we will assure you that they cover the foundations if you don’t have P2P and need it), demand management as you know what forecasting should do, category management (and category strategy management) as that is rather self explanatory, or finance management, as budget and price management is also straight forward.

The Full Picture

The platform is quite deep in all core areas and one could write pages about each module and its deep capabilities, but hopefully this is enough to convey the facts that

  • the MeRLIN platform was designed from the ground up to support direct and discrete sourcing,
  • has the capability to support these projects from inception to contract signing through the very last order against the award, and
  • goes beyond just raw sourcing capability to related capabilities of supplier risk, compliance, and execution (tracking the order to the delivery and qualification)

CONCLUSION

Given the relative lack of true direct and discrete sourcing platforms in the mid-market, MeRLIN is a platform you should definitely be aware of. If you’re in direct manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and related industries, you might want to check them out today.


It’s for discrete wizards,
it’s a platform with a twist.
A discrete wizard
needs a tech assist …

The Sourcing Innovation Source-to-Pay+ Mega Map!

Now slightly less useless than every other logo map that clogs your feeds!

1. Every vendor verified to still be operating as of 4 days ago!
Compare that to the maps that often have vendors / solutions that haven’t been in business / operating as a standalone entity in months on the day of release! (Or “best-of” lists that sometimes have vendors that haven’t existed in 4 years! the doctor has seen both — this year!)

2. Every vendor logo is clickable!
the doctor doesn’t know about you, but he finds it incredibly useless when all you get is a strange symbol with no explanation or a font so small that you would need an electron microscope to read it. So, to fix that, every logo is clickable so you can go to the site and at least figure out who the vendor is.

3. Every vendor is mapped to the closest standard category/categories!
Furthermore, every category has the standard definitions used by Sourcing Innovation and Spend Matters!
the doctor can’t make sense of random categories like “specialists” or “collaborative” or “innovative“, despises when maps follow this new age analyst/consultancy award trend and give you labels you just can’t use, and gets red in the face when two very distinct categories (like e-Sourcing and Marketplaces or Expenses and AP are merged into one). Now, the doctor will also readily admit that this means that not all vendors in a category are necessarily comparable on an apples-to-apples basis, but that was never the case anyway as most solutions in a category break down into subcategories and, for example, in Supplier Management (SXM) alone, you have a CORNED QUIP mash of solutions that could be focused on just a small subset of the (at least) ten different (primary) capabilities. (See the link on the sidebar that takes you to a post that indexes 90+ Supplier Management vendors across 10 key capabilities.)

Secure Download the PDF!  (or, use HTTP) [HTML]
(5.3M; Note that the Free Adobe Reader might choke on it; Preview on Mac or a Pro PDF application on Windows will work just fine)

ADAPTONE: A Dynamic Adaptable Provider Tool Of Network Enablement: Supplier Management for Utilities, Construction, O&G and other Complex Industry Management

While the doctor has never covered AdaptOne on Sourcing Innovation, he did cover them in their early days over on Spend Matters back in 2018 in a 3-Part Vendor Analysis he co-authored (and yes, his credit was lost on this one too with the Spend Matters site migration) with The Prophet (Part I, Part II, and Part III, ContentHub subscription required).

As noted in 2018, AdaptOne is is a heavily customizable SIM solution where every implementation is different, customized to the precise needs of the customer. This makes it different from its peers, which generally sell “modules” that are easily bounded and definable. Furthermore, AdaptOne’s configuration is heavily centred on supplier registration, on-boarding as well as data collection and maintenance workflows, and can support as many validations as required. This is because AdaptOne leverages a business process management (BPM) development and deployment orientation as well as having a strong business consulting capability that includes the ability to work with a customer to design the perfect registration and on-boarding workflows, no matter how complicated and sophisticated, and implement the right overall “solution” on top of it.

At the time we noted that its strengths were:

  • extreme customizability
  • deep support for compliance and diversity
  • scorecards
  • onboarding
  • back-office capabilities

And it’s weaknesses were

  • No front-end BPM
  • Limited DIY scorecard capability
  • Performance Management is primarily survey
  • No DIY API

So what’s new? In a nutshell, nothing. And. Everything. Sorry, but you’ll have to read on.

The strengths are the same, and you can now add:

  • quick configurability and implementation in their core verticals that they have a lot of experience in and know well, no matter how customized your needs are (in under 3 months they can model, and implement, multiple workflows that would make the heads spin on the Big X Consultancy implementation teams if you suggested they had less than a year)
  • deep knowledge of compliance, health and safety, and insurance requirements that they can help you check, track, and report on (esp. in North America)
  • integration to (financial) risk data providers

And it’s weaknesses are the same, not because they don’t have the answer, but because their capabilities are so complex, you need (expert) training to understand what they’ve built (or they would have to build an advanced no-code process builder and automation platform on par with Tonkean to make it usable by the average person; and a small company can only specialize in one kind of powerful platform, so they chose to specialize in deep supplier management capabilities that didn’t exist when they started)

Thus,

  • there’s no front-end BPM configuration for the average user because literally everything in the platform is configurable
  • they’ve chosen to hide the scorecard builder as scorecards are highly configurable on what they can capture, the formulas that can score them, the multi-user weightings you can build, the data you can pull in (through a custom integration) vs. survey response, etc. you can restrict sections, time at regular intervals, scale, etc. etc. etc.
  • unless you have systems that you can integrate with to pull in performance data, supplier performance has to be survey or data entry, and they don’t have an open API builder due to the ease with which a user could mess up an integration with the extent of data they can pull in and the extent to which the process can be controlled
  • as everything is configurable, it’s hard to build an API usable by an average developer that takes standard data into standard fields with standard processes without building a full no-code process builder as those are customized by client (which means you have to develop at a level of abstraction that is beyond the comfort level of most configurators)

So what is AdaptOne? In short, it’s a supplier onboarding / information management / compliance / performance management platform that can be highly customized for complex project industries like utilities/energy, construction, and oil & gas that can be customized to the exact customer organization needs, which can be quite complex when the organization has to ensure that the supplier:

  • is a valid entity that can operate in the jurisdiction(s) (of relevance)
  • adheres to the necessary health & safety standards
  • has the necessary certifications
  • has the necessary insurance
  • has the appropriate capabilities
  • provides certified products
  • can provide the appropriate information for ESG reporting
  • has verifiable diversity / minority claims
  • accepts and agrees to the organization’s terms & conditions
  • … and provides this information for every location where it is needed

And that last requirement is the kicker. If you’re doing business with a supplier in multiple jurisdictions (which, FYI, can be province/state-level in some countries), you will have different requirements with respect to the acts in force that you need to adhere to, and most platforms just collect, and associate, this information at the supplier level. And that results in either the platform just tracking the lowest common denominator of information or suppliers self-selecting out of being a service provider when asked to provide an onslaught of documentation not relevant to them (when they only want to serve the buyer in one, localized, jurisdiction). This, of course, leads to less competition, higher costs, and lower service levels for the buyer.

The onboarding part of the application is not only highly configurable, but highly flexible to allow for not just customization by buyer and supplier (based on industry, geographic area, and products/services they intend to provide), but by supplier role — as the buyer can configure multiple roles on behalf of the supplier that can be used to limit which rep (or third party acting on the supplier behalf) has access to which part(s) of the profile that they can fill in (or submit updates to), can see exactly what information was provided or changed (and just that information), and can define different roles within their organization to review, approve, and (possibly) lock it down.

As with all good Procurement applications, it maintains a complete, unalterable, filterable audit log that tracks all actions by all parties, whether or not a submission, or a change, was accepted, so you can maintain the records you need to demonstrate your organization is making best effort to verify that all suppliers are compliant with all of the regulations the organization is subject to.

Furthermore, they can also integrate with your ERP or other system of record and keep all data in sync, as well as maintain a record of the last sync and immediately notify you if the data may be out of synch with the supplier (due to an unreviewed submission) or the ERP.

The supplier profiles are among the deepest of any SXM provider out there. The only profiles that go deeper out of the box are those from Supplhi, which is another specialist SXM vendor for direct/MRO procurement (and requires equally deep profiles for their A&D, Manufacturing, and CPG clients).

And management during onboarding, (mandatory) annual compliance updates, and random updates submitted during the year (when the supplier wants to support the buyer in more jurisdictions and decides to submit the necessary information proactively, or changes their insurance, or obtains a new certification, etc.) is incredibly easy as they can build as many review and approval queues as necessary, which can operate in sequence or parallel, and be visible to (just) those who need it. No searching for a supplier, or searching by supplier state, it’s all automated for onboarding, update, and information management efficiency. It will even alert you to set up required scorecards or necessary ([semi-]annual) reviews.

Search is, of course, fully functional and is across all fields and can be filtered to any subset of interest, allowing you to quickly find any supplier, or group, of interest.

Furthermore, AdaptOne recognizes that this data is needed for mandatory reporting requirements and makes it super easy to export all of the data, or any subset, to Excel for easy import to your organization’s reporting templates. They also provide standard out-of-the-box dashboards for summarizing different supplier states, process times, diversity, diversity spend (if you integrate with your spend analytics application), insurance levels, compliant suppliers, etc. and can quickly build any dashboards and reports your organization needs during configuration.

Scorecards can be configured to capture whatever is desired, with respect to any supplier subset, review team, scoring, and weighting system, on whatever basis is desired. This is vague, but that’s because they are not limited in the platform. You can have separate scorecards for Health & Safety, Performance, Product Quality, Contractor Services, etc. or combine them into a master scorecard with separate sections filled out by separate individuals. And you can even have Subcontractor Scorecards, which can rollup to a single services scorecard, if you are using a services organization that subcontracts subsets of services (such as telcos and cable providers that will subcontract installations or energy utilities that will subcontract connection/disconnection/plant construction/commissioning services). This is not something you see often (if at all).

End-user configuration is limited to what the user generally needs to do (their basic profile, communication preferences, language and currency settings, etc.) as part of their focus on simplicity and customization by role or function (as many of these organizations are not tech companies and don’t have time to learn yet another software stack), but they can extend that for buyer organizations that are above average in terms of technical sophistication (but have found that most of their clients prefer a simple application where their users can’t mess with the processes and settings they want enforced).

However, their administration control panel, limited to their consultants or trained buyer admins, is exceedingly powerful and can configure roles and groups down to field level permissions if needed, and, once users are assigned to roles and groups, the default permissions can be overridden to the extent required. All widgets / dashboards in the application can be customized, jobs can be scheduled based on highly specific activation criteria, and all application configurations can be inspected. As needed, select admin functions are made available to the buyer, such as manual pushes/synchs to the ERP, login key generation, integration configurations (if keys, licenses, etc. need to be reset). etc.

With respect to integrations, they can integrate with your risk management data or ESG data provider, your ERP (and have integrated with the majority of standard ERPs used by their target industries), and even your I2P/AP system (and your suppliers can log into one supplier portal and immediately answer 90% of their common inquiries without ever having to call you which are typically, in order: 1. when am I getting paid 2. did you approve the invoice 3. did you get the invoice 4. did you get the document 5. did you get the quote … etc.).

The AdaptOne Matrix

All AdaptOne‘s customers also have access to the AdaptOneMATRIX supplier database that they can use for supplier discovery. With over 10 million suppliers, the database is very comprehensive and provides customers with an extensive selection of suppliers to fulfill the majority of their sourcing requirements. Search can be very detailed and results refined by company name, keyword(s), status, vendor code, target supplier groups, and certifications, among other search criteria.

The results returned will have a complete high level supplier profile that will consist of name, location, company overview, contact, website, diversity and compliance certifications, and area(s) of primary offering(s).

The platform was built over time to encapsulate the almost two decades of experience they have in supporting their mid-size (read national / small multi-national) customers in complex industries with complex supplier management requirements and make it as easy as possible for the average person involved in the process to do their job. And they have achieved that goal with distinction. the doctor would say that AdaptOne is definitely a top 3 global platform for mid-size companies in Utilities, Construction, and O&G and should definitely be on the shortlist of any of these organizations on the market for a modern supplier management solution.

Is Your Strategic Operational Sourcing Not Succinct Enough? Maybe You Need A DeepStream To Tackle That SOS Problem.

DeepStream is a Source-to-Contract (S2C) platform that was founded in 2016 in London, England to empower midsized organizations with affordable, modern, streamlined, but still sufficiently deep source-to-contract capability that would empower their customers to be more efficient, get more spend under management (and savings, or at least cost avoidance in today’s inflationary economy), and award with confidence.

DeepStream was founded by practitioners with experience, built with the guidance of expert consultants and industry leaders and beta customers, and overseen by former implementation consultants with a lot of experience implementing the S2C Mega-Suites (and who know all the issues customers have in implementing, integrating, and maintaining those systems as well as all the reasons they aren’t always the best solution for the mid-market) who are continually developing and improving the system over time.

While DeepStream is designed to very customizeable and very general purpose (and works great for indirect/finished goods and services in general), because it is impossible to be everything to everyone (even though the Big Suites will claim they are), especially from a consulting/guidance perspective, they are highly focussed on the industries their founders are experts in and related industries. Specifically, they are focussed heavily on Energy & Renewable Energy (and O&G), Utilities, MRO, Site/Port Operations, and Consultancies that support these sectors (be they public, private, or quasi — such as public funded, privately managed). (These are the sectors in which they have the process expertise to help you set up your category templates to streamline your sourcing efforts … more on this later.)

The platform started as a core sourcing platform (RFX and Auction), and evolved to support Supplier Information Management, Contract Management (primarily Governance in Sourcing Innovation Terminology), and now offers a public Supplier Network of almost 10,000 suppliers that grows daily (and significantly with every new client. This may sound small compared to the suite supplier networks that claim millions of suppliers, but you need to remember three things: 1] many of these mega-suite networks reach their number by simply importing every government business registry globally, and nowhere near that many suppliers are active in their customer base; 2] DeepStream are focussed on a particular set of sectors which don’t have a super large supply base, and all of their suppliers have been verified as active and being interacted with; and 3] DeepStream expects your ERP/MRP/P2P/AP to be the supplier master and advocates customers only import active suppliers).

Sourcing

Sourcing revolves around a templated event structure, which can be setup by a Full User, the DeepStream services team, or both. (On implementation they will work with you to setup one template per category, as that is their recommended best practice. They have found that trying to cover multiple categories with one template misses the nuances of the individual categories and requires too much customization for every event, and having multiple per category with only slight differences by product/service makes management and upkeep too much work.) These event templates don’t just capture the RFI/P/Q requests, but all stages, including, but not limited to NDA, Onboarding, Prequalification (which can be separate from the RFI to avoid repeated RFIs), RFI, Initial Bid Collection, e-Auction, etc. etc. etc.

When an event is instantiated from a template, which requires only some basic information (name and dates), it will have a pre-populated summary, stages, details, a default evaluation matrix, a team, a starting set of suppliers, and possibly an e-Auction. The buyer can quickly access each event section of each stage and customize as needed. The application supports all standard HTML form functionality for data collection, makes it super easy to build sections, subsections, and questions for data collection, just as easy to build grids for bidding (that can collect all cost elements associated with a product or service, including complex rate cards), even easier to upload bids from a spreadsheet and, if desired, even cut-and-paste spreadsheet/Excel based bids (because it’s not just the favourite tool of a Procurement organization that doesn’t have modern tech, but the favourite tool of Supplier Reps as well). In addition, once instantiated, the event structure is not locked, the request owner or super user can modify it as needed (if more time needs to be added to a stage due to technical or communication issue, if another stage needs to be added because the responses are not differentiated or competitive enough or more requirements are added, and so forth).

Reverse Auctions have a very simple and clean UX and were designed to be easy to grasp, and use, by both buyers and supplier bidders. There is also integrated chat for real-time communication if needed. Buyers see the current total lot cost and suppliers see the current lowest bids, or their rank, in a public or blind manner, and can keep bidding until the time is up or they’ve given their best and final bid.

Evaluation is done using a grid structure on each relevant event section, where sections can be added or removed, by one or more evaluators, who can see all of the bids and responses side by side, including either full details or just summary, filtering down to just what they need to make an evaluation (and eventual award if the event is completely price-based). In a summary evaluation, they can click into the full response history or bid details (especially if the product was broken down into multiple cost components) and if it’s a multi-evaluator event, drill in to see the individual evaluator scores. There’s no graphical representation for bids just yet, but they have added BAFO (Best And Final Offer) capability to clearly designate final bids as well as automatically computing the deltas in bid responses in both percentage (%) and dollar ($) value, which are highlighted in the comparison view. Additional enhanced valuation functionality is planned for future releases.

One very unique feature of the platform is built-in support for collaborators. Most platforms make it easy to add other organizational users, but not so easy to add consultants who are helping on specific categories or projects. In the DeepStream platform, you can define collaborator organizations and users within these organizations and then, on an event, or stage [“page”], basis grant collaborators access at whatever level of access they need (read, comment, evaluate, write, etc.). This means that the platform is also great for niche consultancies as they can add their client as a collaborator and give key stakeholders visibility while managing everything on the customer’s behalf. (And, of course, it’s super easy to add organizational users to each page and grant them the precise level of access they need.)

A second very unique feature is their document management capability. Most RFX platforms just allow upload, with simple version tracking, and that’s it. The DeepStream platform understands there is a workflow around document management, especially where contracts and detailed specifications must be agreed to, and has a detailed set of process-centric statuses that can be associated with each document uploaded (for information only, upload requested, upload deviation, accept, etc. — modifiable by the client if desired) so both sides clearly understand where the document is in a request or negotiation cycle, as well as the ability to tag in-platform messaging to a document, which not only allows for audit trails to be queried at the document level but allows for in-platform discussions around documents to be captured and not only centralizes document communications (which get lost in email) but simplifies acceptance and approvals (of contract-related documents).

Contract Governance

The system allows the storage and management of contracts — which are currently defined as a collection of documents and bids accepted by both sides that are included in an award. The user can define the start and end dates, milestones, review periods and notifications and the platform will notify the appropriate parties when a milestone is do (so the appropriate individual can login and execute that milestone when it is completed, which may include notes or documentation), when a mandatory review has been completed (along with appropriate documentation and possibly future milestone steps if a corrective action is needed), or when a renewal/termination date is coming up on a contract. They don’t have integrated e-signature yet, but it is coming. Nor can they output everything to one single amalgamated PDF, but they haven’t found that to be necessary when most of the documents in the system are stored as DOCX or PDF, and it’s much easier for a user to find and extract just the information they need (original contract, delivery schedule, pricing, spec sheet, etc.) when a contract is stored as a “package” of documents and related system artifacts.

Supplier Management

The foundation of Supplier Management in the platform is the Network where all uploaded suppliers have a common, basic profile, that consists of basic organizational identifies (name, business ids, primary location[s], primary contact[s], etc.), the UNSPSC codes that the organization provides, and the locations they can provide those goods and services to. This makes supplier discovery within their primary industries practical for their rapidly growing customer base.

On top of this, a user can add their own qualification profiles to collect, and maintain, the information they need on the supplier, and these are kept private. When they do this, or when they select network suppliers as their suppliers, they show up in their “My Supplier” view where they can be selected for starting (pre-approved) supplier lists for every sourcing event template that the organization believes they are suitable for.

Finally, each organization has their own “Activity” tab in the supplier view that shows all associated Pre-Qualification questionnaires, Sourcing/RFX events and Contracts with their related status. One click will take the user into the associated document or event.

Dashboard and Reporting

When a user logs in, they see their activity dashboard that summarizes their requests, contracts, notifications, pre-qualification/onboardings, and a few report highlights (mainly negotiated savings and request completion status). It’s kept simple and streamlined so a user can get right to what they need to do when they log in, especially since they are integrating other communication channels besides email for notifications so users only have to log in to do something, not to get a status update.

Reporting right now is very basic, and very process/cycle time centric (which should not be surprising as they do not do spend analysis, preferring to instead integrate with the organization’s current platform, and if the organization does not have one, help the customer find and integrate with an appropriate partner organization for spend analysis). The reporting is really focussed around:

  • Team Productivity: how many requests made, completed, etc., by category, and average cycle time(s)
  • Supplier Engagement: requests received, responded to, awarded, etc. and associated rates and durations

With regards to saving, it’s focussed around:

  • Total Negotiated Savings: that summarizes the total negotiated savings based on the current PPU/RPH, the award rates, and the total number of units/hours requested
  • Total Negotiated Savings from Auction: that summarizes the savings from auctions, as well as savings statistics on an auction basis

Other Features

Standard Drive functionality where the organization can store all of the document templates it needs for its various supplier (pre)qualification and sourcing events.

Easy Query Audit Trails: When you bring up an Event in DeepStream, you can see a history of every action that was taken at every step by every participant (buyer, collaborator, supplier rep, etc.), filter, and export at any time.

Great Help Library:
DeepStream has a very extensive help library that is organized by role and process, to help an average user find the help they are looking for based on where they are in their sourcing process. It also has a built in advanced search function (powered by a custom in-house AI-backed search algorithm trained ONLY on all of the help documentation they have available) that can quickly find the right section of the right document with a reasonably detailed search request. This AI also powers their integrated chat/online help function that can handle full natural language questions and guides the user to right help quickly and easily (if the help exists). Since their help library covers every function on their platform, as well as best practice sourcing processes, the help bot is able to direct a user to the guidance they need and complete a help request roughly 80% of the time.

Multi-Lingual:
The DeepStream platform, including all help documentation, is fully translated into English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Easy Integrations:
Out of the box ERPs include IFS and Dynamics, which are the two most common in the mid-market in their target industries, but they can (and have) integrated with other ERPs and P2P/AP systems. They’ve also integrated with supplier qualification and certification systems (like Avetta) and you can expect more integrations as time goes on. They built on prismatic.io to allow them to integrate with any platform they need to quickly, easily, and in a standard fashion.

Easy Account Management:
In the DeepStream system, it’s really easy to define collaborator organizations, user accounts, notifications, and system preferences (around currency, notification, etc.). Remember, one of the main goals was efficiency, so the idea is that organizations and users can configure event templates precisely to their needs so it’s super easy for buyers to kick off and complete sourcing events.

Terminology Customization:
DeepStream understands that one of the biggest hurdle to adoption is trying to force an organization to switch to terminology they are not used to. Thus, in their system, the super use can define the language used in all system elements at each step of the event template. For example, some jurisdictions in the world might use bid envelope terminology, others might use bid package, the private sector just wants RFP, and so on. All of this terminology is customizable as needed.

Coming Soon!

As per our intro, they are constantly developing and a few features coming soon include:

  • Enhanced evaluation functionality with more auto-computed differentials/savings potentials and advanced ranking/weighting capability based on calculations;
  • Integrated e-Signature powered by Verify — which will be available at all stages of supplier interaction, as you may require an NDA to be signed before you can even invite a supplier for a bid
  • Microsoft teams and Slack for communications and reminders (which is in beta now)
  • More Language Support: the entire platform, including the entire help library, can be internationalized to a new language within three weeks; languages are being added based on customer prioritization

Coming Later

  • More Out-of-the-Box Supplier Certification/Qualification/Risk Integrations: to help buyers certify and qualify new suppliers for their operations without leaving the DeepStream platform
  • Category Template Library: they have a number they can set you up with if you don’t have any; right now they help you get your current (Excel) templates and processes templated
  • Supplier [onboarding] Questionnaires: there are best practice templates out there for IT/Cyber Security, Personal Data Protection, Health & Safety, regulations like the GSCA, etc. and no need for each organization to create their own from scratch; right now they will share what they have on request [enhanced onboarding is one of their newest capabilities and, as such, is still under active development]

In conclusion, DeepStream is a great sourcing platform for mid-markets who need to modernize and get efficient fast, especially in the Energy & Renewable Energy (and O&G), Utilities, MRO, and Site/Port Operation sectors (be they public, private, or quasi — such as public funded, privately managed). As the platform is true multi-tenant SaaS, it’s more or less a flick-of-the-software switch to instantiate a new instance, typically only a day or two to configure an out-of-the-box implementation, only a few days to a week for a non-out-of-the-box integration, only a few hours to pull in the active suppliers once the ERP/P2P/AP is integrated, and only a few weeks to get an organization’s category processes templated. Most customers are fully up and running within a few weeks (and a month at most), and some customers have even kicked off initial events (on a small set of suppliers pulled in through one of the out-of-the-box ERP integrations) within 24 hours (while the while the remainder of the active suppliers for near-term events were being onboarded and the remainder of the category templates built out for future events). If you’re a mid-market looking for modern sourcing tech, and especially if you are a mid-market in one of the target sectors, you should definitely consider putting DeepStream on your shortlist and checking them out.