Supplier qualification
Summarize
Summary of Supplier qualification
Supplier qualification enables procurement specialists and Procurement Case Management (PCM) agents to engage only with suppliers who meet their organization's purchasing requirements. This process involves creating qualification cases that represent the necessary steps to prepare for supplier engagement. Qualification cases are integrated with sourcing and negotiation workflows and ensure compliance with fair competition laws by requiring completion before advancing procurement activities.
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Qualification Cases and Requirements
- Supplier cases: Include conducting supplier risk assessments, onboarding suppliers, and performing supplier tiering assessments. These require the Supplier Lifecycle Operations application and, for tiering assessments, the Risk Assessments Integration and GRC Vendor Risk Management license.
- Contract cases: Cover contract review and sending NDAs for signature.
- Finance cases: Include GL coding review and budget review for purchase requisitions.
Only cases marked with the "Qualification dependent on case" field set to Yes are considered qualification cases.
How Qualification Cases Work in Procurement
Qualification cases can be triggered at different stages: on sourcing requests, negotiations, or negotiation events. Initiating qualification on a sourcing request (via the Source-to-Pay Workspace) automatically generates the relevant qualification cases based on predefined decision tables and moves the sourcing request and associated purchase lines to a "Qualification Needed" state. Updating negotiated unit costs on purchase lines also triggers this flow.
Completing and closing the qualification cases moves sourcing requests, negotiations, and sourcing events to a "Qualified" state, making them ready for awarding. If suppliers are already qualified at the time a sourcing request is raised, qualification cases are not created and the request moves directly to the Qualified state.
Integration and Tracking
The supplier qualification process integrates with sourcing and procurement operations as well as third-party risk management when applicable. All state changes are captured in activity streams, providing a transparent and traceable negotiation history with suppliers.
In cases where qualification starts on a sourcing request and then transitions to associated negotiations or events, overlapping cases are managed automatically by closing duplicates and retaining relevant new cases.
As a procurement specialist or Procurement Case Management (PCM) agent, you would want to engage with suppliers who are qualified to fulfill your organization's purchasing needs.
The supplier qualification process can be very involved with multiple teams wanting to engage with a supplier on different levels. Based on your process, you can define qualification cases to reflect the work that needs to be done to ready the engagement with a supplier. This is achieved through decision tables for your sourcing and negotiation work streams. For information on the relevant decision tables, see Purchasing tasks and procurement cases.
- Supplier cases:
- Conduct a Supplier Risk Assessment: Conduct a risk assessment for a supplier.
- Onboard a Supplier: Onboard a supplier for a purchase.
- Conduct a Supplier Tiering Assessment: Conduct a tiering assessment for a supplier.
Note:For these supplier cases, the decision templates are available only when you have the Supplier Lifecycle Operations application installed. You must also enable the Risk Assessments Integration for Sourcing and Procurement Operations application and have the GRC Vendor Risk Management license if you want the Conduct a Supplier Tiering Assessment case to be generated. For information on how a supplier tiering assessment task influences sourcing request states, see Sourcing and Procurement Operations integration with Third-party Risk Management. - Contract cases:
- Contract Review: Review contracts for a purchase.
- Send NDA for Signature: Send an NDA for signature to the supplier for a purchase.
- Finance cases:
- GL Coding Review: Review accounting details for a purchase line.
- Budget Review: Review budget details for a purchase requisition.
For a case to be considered as a qualification case, the Qualification dependent on case field in that case template must be set to Yes.
To enable you be compliant with fair competition laws, when engaging with multiple suppliers, qualification cases that you’ve defined in the decision tables need to be completed before continuing your sourcing and negotiation work streams. You can define qualification cases to be initiated on a sourcing request, negotiation, or a negotiation event.
To initiate the supplier qualification flow on a sourcing request, select the sourcing request you want to work with from the Source-to-Pay Workspace list page, , and select Begin qualification. This automatically creates the qualification cases that you’ve defined within the decision tables to be associated with this sourcing request, and also moves the sourcing request and its associated purchase lines to the Qualification Needed state. Alternatively, updating the negotiated unit cost on any of the purchase lines within the sourcing request automatically triggers the qualification flow on the sourcing request. Closing the cases moves them to the Qualified state, and readies the sourcing request for awarding.