Web-based Vendor Management System integrated with an e-Commerce platform supports the needs of buyers and supply chain professionals working with direct material suppliers to ensure efficient manufacturing operations and to keep control of all continuous supplier development activities.
Manufacturers should look for a system that easily integrates with their existing ERP systems, is user-friendly and intuitive for users in all levels of the organization, and can manage such needs such as direct materials procurement with supply chain management and quality management capabilities.
Digital twins are a digital representation of the supply chain, able to track the real-time operation and life cycles of physical assets, people, places, systems and devices. A digital twin enables the complete testing of a Vendor Management System without having to invest in the full development; think of it as the Matrix, without the bad guys.
Block chains are blocks of transactions chained together, creating a shared record of all transactions. This establishes trust among unfamiliar or unknown partners. The information of all transactions will be stored on the internet for everyone to see. Transactions will be in an open ledger so each party can see the transaction and its validity; additionally, this ledger can be distributed for financial and auditing records of participants. These transactions can be fed directly into a spend management system. Advanced analytics, based on interacting with data using a combination of natural language and text, will fully integrate data analytics and process flows. This will enable the user to identify areas that require action and launch that action directly. In addition, users will be able to conduct such activities as creating a supplier development plan or developing an online auction to consolidate product spend and eliminate price variance.
Integrating a Vendor Management System into an existing ERP
With a services-oriented-architecture (SOA), this will allow an integration partner to leverage established system connectors, web services or APIs with the fewest number of resources on both ends.
There are dozens of pre-designed templates to make the process tailored to a company’s needs as well as any custom-developed web application, sometimes cutting integration times down to a half or third of what it would normally require.
