Managing vendors with manual and disparate processes such as spreadsheets, phone calls, emails, and paper-based filing systems can prove challenging. Without a centralized electronic process, vendor management workflow bottlenecks can significantly undermine productivity. Fortunately, leading-edge vendor management software can enhance your processes by expediting end-to-end vendor management workflow with optimal oversight. Read on to learn how to supercharge your vendor management processes with CobbleStone Vendor Management Software.
Executive Summary
From communicating with prospective vendors to ensuring contractual compliance after awarding a vendor your business, you – as a vendor manager - carry tremendous responsibility within your department and your organization. Without a centralized and streamlined electronic vendor management software system, you can encounter unnecessary vendor management bottlenecks that can foment miscommunication and decrease your organization’s bottom line. Discover how CobbleStone’s industry-leading vendor management software can:
- streamline vendor collaboration and registration.
- help mitigate vendor risk.
- increase vendor transparency and tracking.
- integrate contract lifecycle management.
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and more.
Streamlined Vendor Collaboration & Registration
Vendor requests can be delayed by slow email response times, lengthy phone hold times, and other manual process inefficiencies. You cannot afford to waste time and resources with such delays, especially when gathering pertinent information to ensure vendor collaboration security and optimizing your vendor’s supply chain turnaround.
Fortunately, vendor managers can leverage robust vendor management software to streamline vendor requests and registration. CobbleStone Vendor Management Software enables interaction with third-party vendors through a vendor collaboration portal that centralizes RFIs, RFPs, RFQs, bid advertisement, bid awards, configurable vendor response ratings and scorecards, bid communications with the ability to attach virtually unlimited documents, and more. Vendor managers may award and correspond with vendors by integrated email via CobbleStone’s integrated MS Outlook Plugin – expediting your communications.
Vendor management software can streamline your vendor registration processes by allowing you to simply share a link with your vendor so they may fill out all necessary information within their centralized vendor record - including vendor commodity codes - taking the onus off of you to save precious time. Should a contract need to be drafted, negotiated, signed, and tracked, this may be seamlessly integrated within a vendor record.
Integrated Contract Lifecycle Management
When coordinating contractual elements separately from your vendor record, such as mailing paper-based documents with wet signatures and sending scanned documents via email, vendor management professionals can be frustrated by stakeholder miscommunications and purchasing delays.
Thankfully, CobbleStone Software can help solve these issues by allowing contract creation directly from a vendor record, which can streamline and centralize the contract lifecycle management (CLM) process. The entirety of contract lifecycle processes from requests to renewals can be seamlessly integrated within a vendor record – including rapid approvals and speedy eSignatures. Watch the video below to learn how CobbleStone’s proprietary electronic signature software engine - IntelliSign® - can streamline your vendor management signing processes.
With CLM integration, vendor managers can virtually ensure that their vendors and assets comply with their agreed-upon expectations, including budget parameters, until their vendor contract requires renewal - in which case CobbleStone Software can notify necessary stakeholders and VISDOM® artificial intelligence can support contract renewal improvement areas with detailed reporting for increased overall ROI.
Mitigated Vendor Risk
Pulling vendor data from various platforms, including spreadsheets and paper-based files, can significantly delay your vendor risk management processes. Without centralizing vendor information, you can increase unwarranted risk and overlook vendor compliance standards.
Luckily, a centralized vendor management dashboard can provide a holistic view of vendor data - including key dates and risk assessments concerning compliance standards. CobbleStone Vendor Management Software can provide risk visualization by rating vendors against the Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC) national sanctions list and compliance standards with integrated OFAC search. Other forms of risk and risk exposure can be comprehensively and easily managed with the help of VISDOM, CobbleStone’s industry-leading artificial intelligence engine with machine learning. Learn more about VISDOM by watching the video below.
Vendors and prospective vendors may be assessed and updated with a risk score in real-time. Vendor management software makes OFAC search easy by allowing you to make more informed decisions when working with prospective vendors and holding current vendors accountable to contract compliance standards.
Increased Vendor Transparency & Tracking
When relying on antiquated processes to track vendors with methods such as spreadsheets and non-trackable communications, you can incur increased risk of human error. When managing various vendors with ranging contracts, COIs, DBE certifications, and other pertinent documents, you cannot afford to place your organization at risk due to inadvertent compliance violation.
Fortunately, CobbleStone’s vendor management software suite can track impending expirations for COIs, DBE certifications, contracts, and other documents. To track vendors and important key dates, vendor managers can receive automated notifications to effectively communicate with stakeholders in a timely fashion.
If you need to increase supplier diversity, CobbleStone Vendor Management Software can trigger notifications to all necessary stakeholders to ensure approaching diversity certifications, including DBEs, are renewed upon or before their expiration dates.
Vendor management software can make COI tracking (Certificate of Insurance tracking) essentially effortless. Rather than wasting time manually sifting through vendor records for Certificate of Insurance expiration dates, CobbleStone Vendor Management Software proffers COI tracking and automated alerts, including via email, to all necessary stakeholders – reducing organizational risk and virtually ensuring vendor compliance accountability.
Data within vendor records may be reported on, displayed in executive graphical dashboards, and exported into spreadsheet formats – for increased vendor tracking and transparency. With such low friction and seamlessly integrated functionalities, CobbleStone Software can grant you unparalleled vendor oversight – leaving you with more time to focus on your vendor management strategy.
Streamline Vendor Processes With CobbleStone's Vendor Management Software
Streamline your vendor processes with an end-to-end vendor management software platform. Holistic vendor management oversight with integrated contract lifecycle management begins with CobbleStone Software.
CobbleStone’s trusted, award-winning, fully integrated vendor management software streamlines the purchasing process with optimal governance, reduced friction, and high flexibility from general vendor management to integrated source-to-contract lifecycle management. CobbleStone Software has been a visionary developer in vendor management software and contract management software since the mid-1990s. CobbleStone’s user-friendly, robust, and scalable solution seamlessly integrates with mission-critical applications for unified and seamless vendor management, supply chain contract management, and more. CobbleStone is also SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliant to support highly secure vendor management processes.
Discover why thousands of vendor managers and contract managers trust CobbleStone Software with their vendor management needs. To learn more about CobbleStone’s unparalleled vendor management software, book your free demo with a CobbleStone Software expert today!
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Are you looking to evaluate leading contract management software solutions for the future of contract management? Read our blog – 6 Critical Contract Management Tools for 2021 – to discover the best contemporary tools for future-minded, automated, low-friction, and user-friendly contract management.
