Purchase Order Collaboration Archives

Things Between Napoleon and SourceDay Are Heating Up

Posted by Ari Roth on November 14, 2019November 18, 2019 Blog

We recently sat down with Jean Louis Marin, VP of IT & Louise Mayer, ERP Improvement Manager at Napoleon to learn how launching a cloud supplier collaboration platform impacted their business. We were excited to learn that after adopting SourceDay, Napoleon increased their on-time delivery by 35%, decreased invoice errors by 90%, and saved their buyers 1-2 hours a day.

For more than 40 years, Napoleon Products managed supplier pricing, quantity, and lead-time data through email, spreadsheets, and phone calls. However, as the company started to grow, their team struggled to maintain customer satisfaction and avoid product margin erosion. With SourceDay’s PO and AP solution, Napoleon gained the visibility necessary to cost-effectively deliver against the growing demand for Napoleon products.

At the root of Napoleon’s challenges, they needed to transform their purchasing process and automate manual procedures and make their supply chain more reliable. With SourceDay, Napoleon simplified their supplier communication and reduced mismatched AP invoices without having to maintain a supplier portal, go through complicated training, or support revisions.

SourceDay provides us a platform where communication is all orchestrated in one place… It facilitates a lot of the notification and communication processes by letting the users know when they have to take action on things. We see the ability for both users on the procurement side as well as the vendor side to get access to information very easily.”
Jean Louis Marin, VP of IT at Napoleon

Speedy Results

Napoleon went live with SourceDay in April 2018 and soon after noticed an improvement in buyer productivity, increased on-time deliveries, and stopped overpaying suppliers. Production plans became more accurate thanks to SourceDay’s software and Napoleon discovered a drastic increase in their ability to deliver to customers on time.

SourceDay paid for itself in less than 3 months.“
Jean Louis Marin, VP of IT at Napoleon

Learn more about Napoleon Products and how adopting SourceDay changed their business.

Read the Full Case Study

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3 Ways to Improve Your Supplier Relationship

Posted by Sam Maurer on October 31, 2019November 8, 2019 Blog

The buyer-supplier relationship can feel strained at times because so much depends on performance and orders moving smoothly. As a buyer, the development of your product and its assembly are completely dependent on your suppliers. The stronger your communication is with your suppliers, the stronger your relationship will be.

One of the biggest challenges to the buyer-supplier relationship is communication.

If you’re like most buyers, your procurement team probably uses multiple platforms to communicate with suppliers. These platforms can include email, phone calls, texts, and fax. While your business can function with this system, the margin of error in your purchase order operations is high. Errors can include anything from missed PO acknowledgments to operating with inaccurate PO details. Every hiccup in your PO, AP, or RFQ process puts the buyer-supplier relationship at risk and can lead to late deliveries.

With this in mind, we’ve created a list of 3 ways to improve your supplier relationship and your ability to communicate with them.

1. Invest in a Supplier Collaboration Software

Building a relationship with your supplier may not involve face time, but it should always involve collaboration. Managing purchase orders, accounts payable, and RFQs across multiple platforms makes your supply chain vulnerable. Missing details on POs can have a severe impact on your ability to get deliveries to your customers on time. Collaboration solutions, like SourceDay, seamlessly connect buyers and suppliers in a single platform where all interactions are archived in real-time and available for both parties to see.

Through our solution, both buyers and suppliers can track every part of the PO process and communicate in a single dashboard. Alerts, notifications and even color-coded flags ensure nothing gets missed. Using SourceDay, buyers have experienced a 35% increase in on-time deliveries.

2. Make Your Software Accessible to Suppliers

For effective collaboration between buyers and suppliers, your suppliers have to adopt the same software that you are using. With SourceDay, buyers pay for the license, and their suppliers access the software for free. Suppliers are then able to streamline labor-intensive tasks, quickly acknowledge POs, and ultimately, get paid faster.

Plus, SourceDay provides all the necessary training for buyers and their vendors, making the transition simple.

3. Give Your Suppliers Feedback

Suppliers care about their service and want to know how they’re doing. Effective service leads to loyalty. SourceDay’s Supplier Scorecard solution streamlines grading vendors so you can quickly relay the good and the bad as far as their performance.

With SourceDay’s quality control dashboard, you can easily track the incoming inspection of supplier materials to determine if specifications are met. If the materials fail inspection, suppliers are quickly notified through the platform and the failing materials are then dispositioned. After the issue is resolved, buyers can score the interaction, giving suppliers an incentive to take care of any problems quickly.

Improving your supplier relationship starts with using the right tools. Updating your purchase order process by using software like SourceDay allows you to improve your communication with suppliers and meet more commitments. Learn more about SourceDay’s solution and chat with a member of our team!

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6 Benefits of Purchase Order Collaboration

Posted by Rachael Hyde on September 30, 2019October 3, 2019 Blog

Looking to transform your procurement team’s purchase order process? Read on to learn 6 ways PO collaboration can improve your company’s ability to manage risk, drive collaboration, and impact your bottom line.

Since 2015, SourceDay has been disrupting the world of direct-spend procurement with cloud solutions for manual Purchase Order, Accounts Payable, Request For Quote, and Quality Control processes. Our mission is to help manufacturers and suppliers remove waste and inefficiencies from their supply chains. Here are just a few of the benefits of transforming your PO process.

1. Work Smarter

By automating day to day tasks like tracking open orders or updating PO lines, procurement teams can spend more time on strategic planning. Instead of spending time tracking all POs, you can devote more time to working with suppliers and problem solving specific PO issues.

2. Mobile PO Management

Push notifications for acknowledgments and alerts for late orders allow buyers to easily manage POs while on the go. Quickly find PO updates and browse all communication between buyers and sellers organized in a single dashboard.

3. Avoid Costly PO Errors

Avoid costly data entry errors on POs. Suppliers can import data directly from SourceDay into their system without manual entry. All PO updates are automatically transmitted back to your ERP in real-time so you can always operate with 100% accurate data.

4. Improve Delivery Times

Every time a supplier makes a change, such as a due date, the buyer has the option to approve or reject the change. With accurate data and improved communication, you can do a better job forecasting deliveries.

5. Master the Art of Inventory Management

The supplier PO dashboard mirrors the buyer’s view keeping your supply chain in sync with your business requirements. Anticipating the market’s need and only ordering what is required to do business helps keeps your overhead low. Streamlining inventory management means higher profit margins and less risk.

6. Make Better Business Decisions

Data is the cornerstone of sound business decision-making. Having access to real-time data can help with decision making and avoiding costly mistakes.

Learn How SourceDay Can Transform Your PO Process