Vendor Certification and Pre-Qualification: Overcoming Common Pain Points
For buying organizations, vendor certification and qualification are critical aspects of a successful procurement strategy. Some of the greatest challenges faced by procurement departments involve ensuring that vendors associated with a project are qualified and capable of handling the work they've taken on. While it may seem obvious that a vendor is qualified to undertake a job based solely on the fact that they have relevant experience, projects can be derailed by miscommunication between buying organizations and vendors about what qualifications are required. In this context, having the ability to efficiently pre-qualify vendors and to review their certifications before project work begins is a must.
In this article we'll review some of the pain points commonly associated with the vendor qualification process, and how an e-procurement solution with a vendor prequalification and certification module can help mitigate issues for buying organizations.
Pain Point #1: Keeping certifications organized
Buying organizations can face significant challenges when it comes to managing the certifications of their vendors. In many cases, responsibility for managing certifications is spread out among several departments, making it difficult to keep track of who is managing what, much less gain quick access to a certification when it is needed.
By using an e-procurement solution with an integrated vendor certification and pre-qualification module, buyers benefit from having all certifications organized and accessible in one central location. Certifications are housed securely along with all corresponding documents, making it easy for purchasing staff to consult certifications when required.
Pain Point #2: Choosing vendors from a large pool
For buyers, manually reviewing vendor qualifications from an organization's large vendor pool can be time-consuming and costly and potentially lead to oversights. E-procurement with vendor certification and pre-qualification can simplify the process by centralizing vendor information in one location, allowing procurement staff to easily review a vendor's credentials before moving forward with assessing proposals. For buying organizations, having a way to easily assess vendor suitability for a project and to review certifications, including for minority, woman or veteran owned small businesses, is more important than ever. Vendor certification and pre-qualification modules also easily integrate with other e-procurement modules to create a seamless vendor assessment process.
Pain Point #3: Controlling the approval process
When it comes to approving vendor certifications, one option buying organizations have is to rely on a third party to review and approve the applications for certification that are provided by vendors. The problem with this method is that it requires reliance on an outside entity to manage the approval process – but with e-procurement there is a better way. A vendor certification and pre-qualification module automatically alerts buyers when a new vendor applies for any type of certification, allowing the buying organization to determine who will review the application and ultimately approve or reject it.
What’s more, a vendor certification and pre-qualification module makes it simple for buyers to send solicitation documents directly to a pre-approved list of certified vendors, taking the guesswork out of distributing solicitations.
All of these pain points can disrupt the purchasing process, however they can just as easily be solved with vendor prequalification and certification module provided by a trusted e-sourcing solution. Buying organizations would do well to explore how an e-procurement solution can help them become more efficient while freeing them from the burden of outdated purchasing processes.
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