10 Tools for Supplier Enablement Professionals
- Matthew Joe Fisher
- May 17, 2016
- 3 min read
While we all know too well that tools alone aren't good enough on their own and that you need good process and good people to go along with them, but... good tools do help.
These are the ones that have helped me enable thousands of suppliers over the years.
Now, the tools that supplier enablement professionals use will no doubt vary wildly depending on their systems being used, their company's IT standards/policies, their operating system, and what kind of enablement they're responsible for, e.g. catalogs only vs. electronic purchase orders and/or invoices.
But here's a list of tools I've either used personally or have been recommended to me by other supplier enablement colleagues (prefaced by a "maybe"):
1. General Information Gathering/Collaboration - Google Sheets
My personal go-to tool. I find it invaluable for storing anything and everything and collaborating with anyone, including supplier contact information for the team, enablement status lists for management, test results, PunchOut credentials, etc.
2. Supplier Documentation - Simple page on your company website or ScreenSteps, Zendesk Help Center, or maybe HelpIQ
Suppliers need one place to go to for all your guides, specifications, templates, examples, etc. No need to get fancy here, so just a page on your corporate website would suffice, but you could with ScreenSteps, Zendesk help Center, or maybe HelpIQ.
3. Surveys - Survey Monkey or Google Forms, TypeForm
Surveying your suppliers before engaging with them will give you tons of insight. Google Forms is getting better. TypeForms are very cool. Good idea to survey them after enablement as well to get feeback on how to improve.
4. Project Plans / Gantt Charts - SmartSheets or Google Sheets, TeamGantt, Asana with Instagantt
The supplier enablement work stream has to be properly planned out and align with the overall project plan. SmartSheets is strong, Google Sheets work just fine, but if you want give suppliers the golden glove treatment, use Asana.
5. Supplier Support - Zendesk or maybe Team Inbox, or just a good ole email alias
If you want to get serious about supporting suppliers, Zendesk is the way to go, however they also offer a neat looking tool called Team Inbox that might suffice. Or, just create email aliases that forwards emails to appropriate team, e.g. catalogs@acme.com
6. Diagrams - Lucidchart or maybe Creatly, Cacoo
Anybody who knows me knows I love to draw pretty multi-colored diagrams. Lucidchart is my staple, but there are other decent looking options out there as well. I know Visio is still the standard in some companies, but sharing the diagrams are easier with online tools.
7. Videos - Adobe Premier or iMovie, maybe Wideo
If you have the energy and the money, creating videos for suppliers is ideal. Maybe one high level overview video and then one for notable request/feature, e.g. catalog creation, or portal features.
Want/Need to get your hands dirty looking at XML PunchOut setup requests, order messages, or XML POs and/or invoices? These little guys will help.
Every supplier knows how to spell FTP these days but not all eProcurement systems give suppliers the option to simply upload their catalogs and images via FTP. Lots of choices out there but these two were recommended to me.
10. PunchOut Website Monitoring - B2B Uptime
As of 2016, supplier enablement pros can now monitor all their PunchOut supplier's websites uptime and performance, including real-time alerts if your VIP suppliers go down during business hours, a beautiful dashboard with tons of valuable metrics, as well as a status page for users to see the status of all your PunchOut sites.
For what it's worth, I can personally vouch for these tools and I've never met a supplier I haven't enabled yet!
With that said, I'm eager to learn what tools you use/recommend?
Appreciate sharing by commenting below.
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