What’s the common thread and question we’ve heard from our customers?
It may surprise you.
More often than not, customers come to us asking how could they onboard their vendors faster. Vendor onboarding is a slow and monotonous process, albeit necessary for the health and prosperity of the business.
Flexibility and adaptability have become critical to onboarding success, and an increasing number of companies are discovering strong vendor onboarding policies and practices are vital for supporting their ability to nimbly respond to changes in the supply chain.
Automated vendor onboarding processes have become more popular as companies push towards digitizations to remain competitive. In this article, we’ll take a look at the fundamentals of vendor onboarding and how to leverage automation to onboard vendors faster and more accurately.
What Is Vendor Onboarding?
Vendor onboarding, also known as supplier or contractor onboarding, is a systematic process for collecting the information required to qualify, approve, and contract third-party organizations.
This process involves verifying prospective vendors are in compliance with pertinent laws, regulations, and organizational standards to allow companies to confidently purchase goods or services, make payments, and more.
An efficient vendor onboarding process saves companies valuable resources by reducing redundancies and ramp-up time for new vendors and offsetting risks with unqualified organizations. Many companies are turning towards artificial intelligence-based vendor onboarding automation systems to onboard vendors faster and optimize the process even further.
Vendor Onboarding Best Practices
Successful vendor onboarding systems vary according to industry, product, and even between competitors. However, there are a few universal strategies and practices that any business would benefit from implementing.
- Involve Company Leadership — Involving executives and other pivotal leaders in the early phases of creating your vendor onboarding processes leads to a smoother rollout process, reducing costly mistakes. A diverse panel of leaders is instrumental in encouraging the rest of your team to implement the new program with enthusiasm rather than cautious reluctance.
- Stay Flexible — While a one-size-fits-all process would be ideal, the reality of vendor onboarding is that no two suppliers will be exactly alike. Additionally, as vendor onboarding continues to evolve, practices and policies may emerge that are more advantageous to your particular business needs than your current process. Maintaining a degree of flexibility, with the ability to scale operations regarding vendor onboarding allows companies to take advantage of the best suppliers and solutions to drive growth and profits.
- Build Strategically — It’s more vital than ever for companies to consider a host of circumstances that could challenge their vendor onboarding system. By developing contingencies for unexpected challenges, companies become better positioned to adapt their vendor onboarding systems to new circumstances, and pivot to maintain consistency and speed.
The Benefits of Automation in Vendor Onboarding
Advancements in automation have revolutionized vendor onboarding.
One of the primary benefits that automated vendor onboarding tools provide is a rapid ROI because of minimal IT requirements. Traditional vendor onboarding workloads were often prone to user error with mistakes or omissions.
Automated vendor onboarding systems reduce or eliminate human errors, ensure required information is collected and reconciled across systems of record.
Vendor onboarding automation improves record-keeping for regulatory compliance and audits. Automated onboarding systems could be customized to deliver highly accurate financial reports to shareholders, investors, and auditors.
How Auditoria SmartBots Automate Vendor Onboarding
In the past, ensuring a highly accurate and smoothly operating vendor onboarding process required extensive and detailed attention. Now, companies use automated tools to streamline their vendor onboarding, saving valuable time and money.
At Auditoria, we help increase finance teams’ speed, accuracy, and efficiency using intelligent SmartBots to automate manual and time-consuming vendor management processes such as vendor onboarding.
Purpose-built for finance, with next-gen advanced technology, our SmartBots integrate with systems of record and email boxes to act as a system of engagement to optimize vendor management while generating data that provides key insights into cash performance.
By leveraging cutting-edge machine learning algorithms, Auditoria’s SmartFlow Skills for Autonomous Vendor Management onboard and activate contractors and vendors worldwide. If a problem is detected by the SmartBots’ cutting-edge programming, it will automatically reconnect with vendors to collect the correct information and documentation.
What’s more, the insights and contextual intelligence built into these algorithms continually assess the likelihood of vendor and invoice fraud, detect suspicious invoices/transactions, and ensure ongoing risk mitigation.
If you’re interested in optimizing your vendor onboarding system for a modern and rapidly evolving marketplace, schedule a demo with one of our automation experts to learn more.