Managing Suppliers

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In the context of Risk Assess, a supplier is any party, internal or external, that provides goods and/or services to a business. External suppliers provide goods, such as printer paper, and services, such as document management. Internal suppliers also provide goods and/or services. For example, the Help Desk provides assistance to internal associates under a service level agreement.

The Risk Assess application provides the ability to store and manage the documents, attributes and processes around a relationship with internal and external suppliers, including:

Assessing the risk of doing business with a supplier
Measuring a supplier’s performance
Confirming that the supplier is compliant with the organization’s business practices and policies, as well as government regulations
Understanding the mix of supplier sites/locations from which products/services are being delivered
Providing an online community for people to collaborate and track relevant documents.

A logical connection between a supplier and its subsidiary organizations can be created through designation of a parent/child association between any two suppliers (to any number of levels).

Supplier records are comprised of a combination of standard- and user-defined fields and objects. Inclusion of fields in the “Supplier Management” page (Suppliers tab) is managed through the Data Dictionary (Admin tab > Configuration Data Management section > Data Dictionary Management link). For more information on the Data Dictionary, see the Data Dictionary Management help topic.

Standard fields in the supplier record and their descriptions are listed in the following table. Required fields are designated with an asterisk (*):

FIELD TITLE	FIELD DESCRIPTION
Corporate Name*	Business name of the supplier
Supplier Number*	Auto-generated/pre-assigned by the application, but can be changed manually by the user, if preferred
Default Account Manager*	Name of the supplier employee who is responsible for the supplier’s account with the customer company
Default Account Manager Email	Contact email address for the supplier employee who is responsible for the supplier’s account with the customer company
Status	Active or Inactive designation of the supplier in the application’s workflow
Supplier Life Cycle Status	Stage of the sourcing process in which the supplier is categorized
External Reference	Reference key that uniquely identified the supplier in one or more external systems (for example, SAP, Oracle)
Corporate Short Name	Common abbreviation or acronym representing the supplier
Legal Name	Name by which the supplier corporation conducts its operations
Business Type	Business category by which the supplier corporation was established
Supplier Type	Industry in which the supplier conducts its business
DUNS Number	Data Universal Numbering System 9-digit number issued by Dun & Bradstreet to uniquely identify the supplier for the purpose of credit reporting
On Hold	Status indicating whether the supplier is barred from entering into relationships
Hold Reason	Description of why the supplier has been indicated as “On Hold,” if applicable
Ticker Symbol	Stock trading symbol that uniquely identifies the supplier as a public business entity
Industry Classification	North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code identifying the primary business activity of the supplier
Classification	Supplier segmentation classification indicating the type of business relationship the customer has with the supplier (e.g., commodity, strategic)
Risk Rating	Assessment of overall risk assigned to the supplier
Tax ID	9-digit identifier issued by the federal government for the purpose of reporting income
VAT Number	5-12 alphanumeric character identifier issued by many countries, including countries of the European Union for Value Added (consumption) Tax purposes
Year Established	Year the supplier was founded
EDI Enabled	Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) protocol type used for the supplier
TEL	Indicator of whether the supplier is on the U.S. State Department’s Terrorist Exclusion List
Auto Approve Compliance	Indicator of whether all compliance programs in which the supplier is enrolled will be automatically approved or will require review and approval by the designated approver
Supplier Group	Name of the customer-defined supplier group in which the supplier is a member
Supplier Parent	Name of the parent supplier to which the subordinate supplier (child) is a subsidiary organization
Default Supplier Manager*	Application user name for the internal (customer) user responsible for managing the supplier
Phone	Contact telephone number for the supplier
Fax	Contact facsimile number for the supplier
Country of Origin	Country from which the supplier’s goods are shipper or services are rendered
Default Language	Primary language by which the supplier communicates
Website	Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address of the supplier’s corporate website
Available Supplier Groups	List of all user groups to which the supplier users may belong
Selected Supplier Groups	Designation of an internal user group to the supplier in the event of an incomplete external only program; this group assignment can be utilized to delegate the external program to an internal user for completion on behalf of the supplier
Products and/or Services	Description of products and services provided by the supplier

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