An Apparel ERP with a Vendor Portal can Ease Supply Chain Bottlenecks

With today’s supply chain challenges, it’s important to optimize alignment with vendors/contractors. A fully integrated and configurable vendor portal will offer a better and more up-to-date collaboration with suppliers. Having a ‘one stop’ platform for vendors to see their assigned purchase orders, documents, notes, instructions, and more is just the start. Add to that, their ability to provide confirmations/approvals, update the stages of each task, exchange relevant communication, post shipment notifications, attach invoices, and label generation. 

An effective vendor portal takes collaboration and automation further with full integration providing real-time purchase order, timeline, and status updates directly to the apparel ERP system. 

Having one, web-based solution allows you to work with factories and contractors and them to respond easily and quickly whether overseas or next door. Through one global application, you’ve ensured better product turn-around, proactive management of your supply chain, and a healthier bottom-line. 

Spending an enormous amount of time sifting through emails and shared folders for correspondence, images or techpacks is a thing of the past for both you and your vendors with a vendor portal.  All relevant documents, approvals, specs, images, and correspondence are attached and housed within the portal for easy and quick access.  Having a centralized repository is a cleaner and more efficient way of streamlining the production process.

A robust, fully integrated ERP for apparel that includes a vendor portal can provide significant benefit, such as:

Quick Supplier Onboarding

For most businesses, the supplier onboarding process is manual and can take days to complete. An efficient vendor portal allows multi-factory suppliers or agents access to multiple vendors. With web-based portal access, onboarding is easy because it’s simple, fast, and completely automated. Secure credential authentication is a simple, one-time setup. After that, portal access requires only an Internet browser. 

Better Visibility/Faster Turnaround

The need to make calls or send e-mails for important information such as production statuses is drastically reduced with a vendor portal. Suppliers are able to provide real-time updates via notes and production stage statuses anytime, no matter where they are located. It’s this convenience that makes the portal an impactful source of visibility.

Important completed tasks are also promptly updated in the apparel ERP, providing immediate visibility organization-wide while eliminating the need to manually add/change dates and shipment data.

Self-Service Ability

The vendor portal is a tremendous self-service tool that allows suppliers access to view, update and generate information anytime day or night. Suppliers can see their purchase orders, update key status information in real-time, submit their invoices, generate labels and print UPCs, view and update spec packs, and perform a multitude of relevant tasks - all autonomously.

The ability to “self-serve” promotes faster communication exchange, contributing to a substantial reduction in emails and time-consuming tasks such as continual back and forth messaging. Giving suppliers the ability to easily, self-service gives them and your internal staff time to concentrate on improving process and product.

Third Party Data Validation

Once you collect data from suppliers, you may need to reach out to several 3rd parties to validate that data. This includes submissions to private entities like D&B or Experian, and others such as the IRS for TIN validation, the Office of the Inspector General or the Office of Foreign Assets and Controls. The vendor portal makes this much easier with innate data validation, and information more accessible with advanced filtering and sorting capabilities so you can quickly locate what you want. 

Process Automation

A vendor portal should integrate seamlessly with your system of record, your apparel management software, especially with key applications like Accounts Payable, Procurement, and Warehouse or 3PL API, to effectively update relevant data. 

Seamless updates mean true process automation and much more data integrity. The portal should also enhance collaboration through easy remote, web-based activity like inspections and product Q&A. 

Informational Updates

Buyers also receive compelling benefits with having a ‘one-stop’ platform for their vendors. Buyers can directly manage their own information and eliminate ineffective and time-consuming data exchange. Portal usage significantly reduces administrative workload and redundant tasks through streamlined, process automation. An effective portal supports vendor notes which can be entered in general for a factory / plant or entered specifically for a cut or purchase order number with search capabilities for all notes.

Capturing and updating important information should not be cumbersome or labor intense. 

Notifications

A robust vendor portal is also a scheduling and tickler device as it can be used to set up automatic notifications for important milestones & dates. Automatic notifications support proactive rather than reactive communication; especially relevant when there are delays. Automatic apparel logistics notifications to facilitate receiving at your warehouse or 3PL, to ensure target dates are met or mitigate risk, allow your internal team to react more swiftly. Proactive, real-time notifications help you manage exceptions rather than an entire process to proactively improve customer satisfaction and much more. Notifications help to eliminate the onus on staff to monitor and track events, and ensure all relevant stakeholders are informed in a timelier manner.

Portal notifications can also be used as an effective broadcast mechanism to communicate more effectively and consistently with one or multiple vendors. 

The ABS Vendor Portal is a tremendous value add to the ABS software solution suite. The portal allows companies to have secure, reliable, integrated, and effective collaboration with their vendors. In times of supply chain disruption and siloed 3rd party exchanges, consider a vendor portal that can optimize your business through improved supply chain exchange. 

With today's supply chain disruptions outside of your control, it's important to optimize what you CAN control in order to keep challenges to a minimum, and maintain strong order fulfillment processes all around.

Looking to address supply chain constraints with your vendors? Is your business faced with overwhelming customer demand? Expanding your sales channels? Or is your business simply underperforming? Talk to us about how we help our customers and how we can help you.