The globalized world has pushed companies of all sectors to connect with a multitude of other businesses to build their products and services. Today, any given company partners with several vendors to ensure the supply of goods, services, and materials necessary for their operations. These relationships create a network of connected companies that depend on each other to work, but it can be challenging to manage.
What Is SRM Software?
That’s precisely why supplier relationship management software exists: to help companies deal with the complexities of working with multiple vendors. SRM software centralizes all the information related to suppliers: current relationship with the brand, contact information, services and products, associated risks, and past performance. That way, people using the SRM platform can easily access relevant data to better monitor their supply chain.
Why Is SRM Important?
Having the possibility to handle relevant data easily and flexibly has become a must for companies of all sizes across different industries. That’s because data can help in understanding audiences, detecting business opportunities, identifying issues, and boosting productivity. Naturally, the wide variety of data types has forced businesses to look for specialized solutions that allow for better management of each kind of data.
In that context, SRM platforms are a great ally for anyone dealing with supply relationship management. That’s because this software allows companies to consolidate data related to all their suppliers in a central hub. The SRM platform thus guarantees data availability while also providing enough features to analyze information that can lead to an improved relationship with providers.
Benefits of using SRM platforms include:
- Heightened data availability for all SRM users
- In-depth supplier performance analysis
- Extended data accessibility across devices
- Increased data security
- Detailed reports about issues and improvement opportunities
All these benefits highlight why SRM platforms are important in today’s business environment: They provide powerful features to deal with suppliers, a must for any company.
Supplier Relationship Management Tools
Given the importance of supplier relationship management, it’s not surprising that there are multiple tools and platforms available to tackle such an important practice. That’s why you can search online and find plenty of SRM platforms packed with features to make your supplier relationship management easier.
Some of the biggest providers of SRM tools include:
- Oracle
- SAP
- Microsoft
- IBM
- Avercast
- NeoGrid
All these companies offer powerful SRM platforms that can accommodate different needs. That’s why you need to take a look at the off-the-shelf SRM solutions offered by these companies before choosing one. To pick the one that better suits your business requirements, you need to consider several things, including the complexity of your supply chain, the number of users, and the detail level of the reporting you want.
Aside from that, it’s important to mention that off-the-shelf SRM platforms might not be the best solution for you. That might happen when your supply chain is extremely complex or when you need to integrate the SRM to different tools and platforms within your digital infrastructure. If that’s your case, then custom supplier relationship management development is what you need. By hiring a specialized SRM development company, you’ll rest assured that the resulting platform will seamlessly integrate with your tech stack and your processes.
What Are the Key Features of Supplier Relationship Management Software?
Though each SRM software is different, there are essential features that are common to most of them, as they target the basic tasks of supplier relationship management. They include the following:
- Supplier data management: An SRM can deal with everything related to document storage, supplier registration, supplier data synchronization, and data tracking.
- Supplier risk management: SRM often integrates features for real-time risk mitigation and monitoring, automatic alerts, and regulatory compliance checks.
- Procurement management: These platforms are ideal to manage suppliers’ lists, track purchase and execution orders, and automate the matching process of important documents.
- Supplier selection: SRM applications have built-in options to assess potential suppliers, approve sourcing events, and even create comparisons between companies.
- Supplier performance management: Through an SRM platform you’ll access a comprehensive dashboard where you can control supplier activity and analyze their performance based on different metrics.
- Supplier contract management: These tools also allow you to track the status of all contracts with suppliers, set up automatic contract renewals based on different criteria, and create contract templates.
- Supplier portal: SRMs provide you with an overview of your supply chain through which you’ll see all your suppliers’ data, shared files, and feedback.
- Cost management: SRM platforms provide you with the necessary tools to control your supply chain expenses, allowing you to define cost limits while also giving you options to analyze how much you spend in real time.
BairesDev Implementation of SRM Software Process
At BairesDev, we have the experience and expertise you need to successfully adopt SRM software. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to integrate an off-the-shelf solution or you want to build yours from scratch—the BairesDev SRM Engineers can help you define your project’s scope and go about an iterative process to get the results you want. What’s more, our developers will help you identify improvement opportunities while contributing to delineate your SRM strategy.
All of that relies on our thorough SRM Implementation Process that has well-defined steps to get you to success:
#1 Assessment
We discuss your SRM project to better understand your goals and requirements. Here, we start devising an integration plan.
#2 Planning
Using what we learned in the assessment phase, we plan the integration considering multiple factors, including the type of supplier features you need, the off-the-shelf solution you want (if any), and the intended outcomes.
#3 Integration
After you agree with the plan, we start working on the integration with your digital infrastructure. Here, we’ll carefully implement the SRM, connecting it to data sources and other tools that expand the platform’s offerings.
#4 Launch
Once we’ve gone through the implementation phase and its corresponding testing steps, we’ll launch the platform across your company. We’ll help you train your staff and explain features and benefits.
Support and maintenance
Using an SRM platform can create issues in your infrastructure. To prevent them from snowballing, we’ll help you monitor and maintain the platform so you can take advantage of all its features.
Start Your SRM Project Today!
If you work with multiple providers and suppliers, then you need to have a proper monitoring tool for them. A supplier relationship management system is the perfect solution for that need—as long as you know how to properly implement it. Let the experts at BairesDev help you with that and avoid costly mistakes or subpar performance.
Our SRM Engineering Team is ready to help you with your project and take your supply chain management to the next level. Are you ready to do it?
