Client Profile.
An integrated business process management services provider, offering a diverse range of customized data solutions and services across industry verticals to a global clientele. The company used a hybrid model of in- house operations and contractual outsourcing to meet deliverables.
Business Need.
The company depended heavily on multiple service providers from different geographies to deliver thousands of projects of varying complexities. A robust vendor management system was imperative to ensure quality vendor onboarding, tracking and evaluating performance and for optimal spend management.
The company wanted a digitalized and robust vendor management process to ensure:
- Effective screening mechanism to ensure onboarding of vendors who could provide best quality at optimal prices while meeting organizational and project guidelines.
- Effectively evaluate comparative vendor performance against defined metrics.
- Track status and progress of deliverables through real time visibility.
- Optimize spends across procurement spectrum through spend analysis mechanisms.
- Get an idea of resource availability/ free resources across vendor network to plan ramp ups.
Challenges.
- Integrating and standardizing the unstructured supplier related information resting in silos in various databases and with respective line managers; also putting in place historic data for proper perspective and analysis.
- Defining and implementing a complex vendor screening mechanism given the multiple geographies that vendors operated from, the diverse range of projects and varying requirements of each project.
- Defining project-specific as well as organization-centered metrics that were both quantifiable as well as relevant for vendor performance evaluation.
Solution.
Designed and deployed a robust supplier performance management system that provided real time visibility across procurement operations from sourcing to performance analysis and invoicing. Current processes were assessed and documented to create data-driven SOPs, and legacy supplier/vendor data was integrated to empower the client with interactive dashboards and real-time intelligent insights.
Approach.
Sourcing
- Assessment and documentation of current screening/sourcing process for each activity which showed huge disparities based on intuitive decisions and team preferences.
- Based on weightages assigned to relevant work experience, employee strength, scalability potential, track record, client references, pilot project performance, price quoted and a number of other parameters, a detailed macro-driven scorecard mechanism was devised to grade all interested applicants. Using a minimum benchmark score, the system would highlight 3-4 qualified applicants with whom the negotiations could proceed.
Integrated Vendor Database
- Collected and integrated supplier/vendor data into a master database from every source, be it spreadsheet, database, applications or emails. Missing data was fetched through manual record verification or tele verification.
- Macros and bots were deployed to cleanse, standardize and enrich data in multiple fields including vendor name, address, geography operating in, pricing, quality standards, specialization, invoicing details across tenure etc.
Vendor Performance Evaluation and Tracking
- Project-specific metrics were defined to assess productivity, quality and timeliness of each project across each vendor. Based on weightages assigned to each metric, the vendors could be evaluated month on month for performance against benchmarked standards. Drill down tracking for number of iterations and rejections was also enabled.
- Integration of current performance with vendor database and historical performance fetched insights on performance trends over time.
- Designed interactive dashboards for real time visibility into progress of various activities. Alerts and notifications warned on potential delays or missed timelines.  Â
- Reports on spend analysis by comparing costs and quality across vendors and over time helped in better spend management.
