Your vendors and suppliers are central to your organization’s success, but managing vendor-related processes and paperwork can impede your productivity if done manually. Each vendor has its own set of moving parts to manage, and trying to keep every detail organized without automation can lead to inefficiencies, errors, security risks, or even poor vendor relationships. Manually managing vendor data also inhibits scalability as more vendors complicate processes and introduce more chaotic workflows. Today’s organizations are turning to vendor onboarding and master data management and onboarding to address this challenge.
Vendor onboarding and master data management help organizations manage all data related to suppliers, but it’s most effective if used with a few best practices in mind. Read on to learn the top five ways to get the most out of vendor onboarding and master data management automation.
What Is Vendor Onboarding and Master Data Management?
Vendor onboarding and master data management and onboarding are both a technology and a set of best practices used to create suppliers, manage suppliers, and govern the data, documents, and workflows associated with those suppliers. Vendor onboarding and master data management and onboarding software helps you…
- Digitally onboard vendors
- Provide secure, compliant, and optimized payments
- Facilitate and manage vendor registration into your ERP or P2P platforms
- Replace manual paper or electronic-based vendor registration forms, processes, and data
- Fraud, identity, and compliance checks for payments
- Gatekeeper for new vendors and vendor updates
- Organize the onboarding with the vendor form, invoices, orders, payments, and more
- Easily retrieve data and documents
- Work within a central repository for all vendor information
- Ensure vendor contact data is current
Follow these five best practices to maximize your vendor onboarding and master data management processes.
Five Best Practices of Vendor Onboarding and Master Data Management and Onboarding
Ensure Consistency
Establishing a method and convention for naming vendor-related files is essential to standardizing data in your vendor master management system. Work with your team to choose a naming convention you can all adhere to so every document is named consistently. This practice will enable easier document retrievability and streamline data tracking.
Verify Data
All data that makes its way into your system must be verified first to ensure it’s error-free. Running a data-cleaning process before entering vendor data ensures your single source of truth remains exactly that — true. By verifying all data first, you’ll rest assured that your system contains only accurate data, even if it’s pulled from multiple sources and in multiple formats. It’s best to implement a cadence for cleaning vendor data as well, such as quarterly, biannually, or even monthly.
Organize Master Data
Cleaning and maintaining your vendor master file is essential to the effectiveness of your vendor onboarding and master data management system. Your data is only as good as its accuracy, so ensuring your vendor master file is up-to-date and organized helps you avoid errors like duplicating payments. It also supports compliance efforts and allows your vendor master data management practices to work as intended overall. With an organized master data file, your vendor master data management processes will be simple and scalable.
Continually Update Data
As previously mentioned, it’s important to have a data-cleaning cadence. A best practice that goes hand in hand is updating data so you can be assured of its accuracy and privacy. Whether you choose a monthly, quarterly, or biannual rhythm for updating your data, instituting it regularly ensures you never work with outdated information or put sensitive data at risk.
Establish Strong Security Policies
Speaking of risk, one of the biggest benefits to vendor onboarding and master data management is knowing your supplier data is secure in a centralized hub, but you should set access controls to keep it that way. Limit access to vendor files to only the appropriate people so you can better control data security and demonstrate compliance if needed. For example, if you have different teams managing vendor onboarding from invoicing, set permissions in your vendor management system so that only those relevant people can access files such as onboarding paperwork or payment details.
Discover How to Get the Most Out of Vendor Management
Using these five best practices can help you maximize your vendor onboarding and master data management solution, but it’s also always smart to work with an expert. Get in touch with All Star if you have any questions about implementing vendor onboarding and master data management or how to make sure it’s working for your organization.
