What is Supplier Self-Services?

Everything is being automated these days. Self checkout is spreading across retail locations every where. Today’s retail store is more focusing on automation and reduce human touch points. And the reasons are very compelling — cost effective, easy and convenient.

From the buyers perspective it is very convenient. Go to the store, see what you need to buy, pay in the exit terminal and leave the store. It’s quick, easy, and hassle free. In digital world, it is the future.

Now imaging some similar experience in B2B procurement system. Imaging you are a supplier of a large Customer. Imagine you 1) Have a question about an invoice, 2) Want to know the status of expected payment, 3) Want to ask to be paid early, or 4) Need to notify your customer that your preferred method of payment has changed. What do you think you will do? Call, Email, Text messages — sometime all. Yet, its takes days to get those updates. It’s annoying, its slow, its old, its BROKEN.

Now imagine you are a buyer and you are dealing with 100s of suppliers (by the way they are your lifeblood). Now imagine you have to notify a supplier a policy change, need a quick pricing for a report, they are sending 100s of queries against their receivables. Again it is BROKEN. Your associates spend hours figuring out how to connect with suppliers, how to get information from them.

Now what if you can at least do the following few things collaboratively?

1. Get digital invoices
2. Check invoice status (sent, approved, rejected)
3. View payment status (paid, payment coming etc.)
4. Update own business information (e.g. supplier information)
5. Dispute messaging to interact and communicate more effectively (p2p chat service)
6. Request to be paid or accept an early payment request (dynamic discounting request)
7. Send Advanced Shipping Notices (ASN)
8. Receive rich remittance information
9. Communicate real-time with the buyer

A simple digital automation like this can be self-sufficient, while saving both suppliers and buyers enormously.

While the pros might seem obvious, recent research revealed:

• Suppliers want invoice and payment visibility. Most suppliers complain about the lack of visibility. A self-service portal helps suppliers answer their own questions, becoming more efficient, productive and effective.
• A typical AP department can expect inquiries from 10–35% of their invoices volume, and 60% of these inquiries are in regards to invoices that sent and waiting for payments. If you’re processing 25,000 invoices annually, you can expect anywhere between 750–3,000 inquiries/year, and 5–10 inquiries a day. To resolve these inefficiencies, a supplier portal can real time tell them what is the invoice status, if it got approved, or when is the payment due etc. You’re also saving them (and yourself!) time from having to call about the status.
• Supplier portals can eliminate up to 80% of inbound inquiries. If your AP department spends 1–2 hours/day answering inquiries, that’s 10 hours/week total spent on communicating with suppliers. Implementing a supplier self-services portal would free up 10 person hours/week, or 500+ person hours/year.

Remember, the value of a portal is directly related to the adoption among your suppliers. The more suppliers are in the portal, better is ROI because your investment is the same.