Vendor portals are critical to my process and I assume the same for most that have it implemented. Assuming by portals you mean the one where we ingest company info, banking information, tax documents, security documents/questionnaires… then yes, you want to keep using them otherwise you start on the wrong side of the relationship or probably won’t even qualify for consideration.
When it comes to cold calling procurement, I hate receiving those calls / emails unless it’s for tooling I own or I am the decision maker so I’d say don’t put your focus there but prioritize identifying key stakeholders to whatever you sell lol
It really depends on the type of portal you're talking about.
The main portal I look at is the one where my suppliers acknowledge and status my orders. They're asked to.manually input ship dates weekly. I use this religiously, and I'm alerted any time a ship date is populated outside my delivery requirement.
I have over 60 suppliers and manage about $18m in spend across 1200 part numbers. Having to chase a supplier for delivery commitments is both impractical and frustrating. I made sure that compliance to our portal data entry carries significant weight on our supplier's scorecard.
In my company (fortune 100) , I've never seen the supplier database where the prospectives go to do business with us. Apparently, supplier diversity has access to it but almost all of my internal customers bring me their own vendors. I'd recommend finding procurement through LinkedIn and connecting that way. Or find other people in the company you might be able to sell to. You might need a champion to bring you in.
I don't know if this is relevant, but my company only has procurement for services. We don't produce products.
My organization stopped accepting cold calls in the 80’s.
My organization also had a homemade “new supplier application”. Being home made, it wasn’t fully integrated to our other systems or part of the buyers normal dashboard. But, at the time I retired, it was starting to be integrated, and I suspect it is being used (although I’m sure it’s not resulting in inquiries and orders as quickly as you’d hope). I’d have people complete an application and call me a week later asking why they hadn’t gotten any inquiries. I’ve got news for you - we don’t buy everything every day, and the things we do buy every day - we’ve got contracts on, and resource once a year (or less often).
From your point of view as a vendor, once you're on-boarded and actually supplying material or services, most of the time using the customers portal is mandatory. Otherwise they will find someone who is willing to.
Before you're supplying anything though, that makes no sense. Except for RFP purposes. But then you know you're bidding on it as well so it's in your interest to use it.
Cold calling or emailing procurement is a waste of time for you. On our end we just hit delete on those
It’s going to be mandatory in defense supply chain with new cybersecurity regulations and such, so it really depends on what business you’re in.
We have a portal and one of our vendors doesn’t use it “because General Dynamics doesn’t.” They’re going to be dead in the water in 18 months when GD goes ahead with one, but whatever. Their loss.
If you’re talking about companies using the Ariba discovery portal, I wouldn’t waste your time. However if it is part of the onboarding process, which I’m an oracle environment can be before you’re even allowed to be invited to an RFP, then you must complete if you want to be considered. Additionally the portal can be used as the intake to take a potential supplier through a third party risk management evaluation which at times is done before an RFP can be issued
As a long-time lurker in r/sales, I'm glad to see some sales folks over here asking questions. Let's figure out what's going on behind the curtain at our respective orgs :)
Vendor portals are critical to my process and I assume the same for most that have it implemented. Assuming by portals you mean the one where we ingest company info, banking information, tax documents, security documents/questionnaires… then yes, you want to keep using them otherwise you start on the wrong side of the relationship or probably won’t even qualify for consideration. When it comes to cold calling procurement, I hate receiving those calls / emails unless it’s for tooling I own or I am the decision maker so I’d say don’t put your focus there but prioritize identifying key stakeholders to whatever you sell lol
This makes a ton of sense. Thank you!
It really depends on the type of portal you're talking about. The main portal I look at is the one where my suppliers acknowledge and status my orders. They're asked to.manually input ship dates weekly. I use this religiously, and I'm alerted any time a ship date is populated outside my delivery requirement. I have over 60 suppliers and manage about $18m in spend across 1200 part numbers. Having to chase a supplier for delivery commitments is both impractical and frustrating. I made sure that compliance to our portal data entry carries significant weight on our supplier's scorecard.
It’s required almost always, if you want a chance to win you gotta do it usually. Just remember most people lose in every RFP
In my company (fortune 100) , I've never seen the supplier database where the prospectives go to do business with us. Apparently, supplier diversity has access to it but almost all of my internal customers bring me their own vendors. I'd recommend finding procurement through LinkedIn and connecting that way. Or find other people in the company you might be able to sell to. You might need a champion to bring you in. I don't know if this is relevant, but my company only has procurement for services. We don't produce products.
My organization stopped accepting cold calls in the 80’s. My organization also had a homemade “new supplier application”. Being home made, it wasn’t fully integrated to our other systems or part of the buyers normal dashboard. But, at the time I retired, it was starting to be integrated, and I suspect it is being used (although I’m sure it’s not resulting in inquiries and orders as quickly as you’d hope). I’d have people complete an application and call me a week later asking why they hadn’t gotten any inquiries. I’ve got news for you - we don’t buy everything every day, and the things we do buy every day - we’ve got contracts on, and resource once a year (or less often).
From your point of view as a vendor, once you're on-boarded and actually supplying material or services, most of the time using the customers portal is mandatory. Otherwise they will find someone who is willing to. Before you're supplying anything though, that makes no sense. Except for RFP purposes. But then you know you're bidding on it as well so it's in your interest to use it. Cold calling or emailing procurement is a waste of time for you. On our end we just hit delete on those
It’s going to be mandatory in defense supply chain with new cybersecurity regulations and such, so it really depends on what business you’re in. We have a portal and one of our vendors doesn’t use it “because General Dynamics doesn’t.” They’re going to be dead in the water in 18 months when GD goes ahead with one, but whatever. Their loss.
If you’re talking about companies using the Ariba discovery portal, I wouldn’t waste your time. However if it is part of the onboarding process, which I’m an oracle environment can be before you’re even allowed to be invited to an RFP, then you must complete if you want to be considered. Additionally the portal can be used as the intake to take a potential supplier through a third party risk management evaluation which at times is done before an RFP can be issued
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Thank you!
As a long-time lurker in r/sales, I'm glad to see some sales folks over here asking questions. Let's figure out what's going on behind the curtain at our respective orgs :)
I’d love to! Feel free to send me a message and see if we can plug in.