The Future of Vendor Interface Looks Much Like Today, Only Different

Size 9 With the summer conference season in full swing, vendors are showcasing their current wares, many of which are the same offerings – even ‘doubling-down’ on some rigid parameters. They are touting ‘best-of-breed’, ‘best-in-class’, ‘world class’, and the ever effective ‘best business practice’. But guess what? All of my conference peers say effectively the same thing … with the fundamental differences in our businesses, vendors, industries, systems, and expectations … that size 9 dress will fit a few of us, but not most of us. [Disclaimer: I haven’t personally worn a dress since I was about five when I spent way too much time in my older sisters’ care.] So, for the rest of us – for the vast majority of us who are in the trenches every day and need effective and affordable improvements to our processes, which the right systems will support – what we need is this: for vendors to listen to our varied needs and design configurable solutions that directly support our case for executive approval. Plenty of wonderful solutions abide, offered by a terrific vendor community. But let’s face it: not everyone wants to quite literally squeeze into a Size 9 through means such as – Requiring vendors to join proprietary portals (one after another for their different customers) for vendor set-up and modifications Subjecting our vendor base (extremely guarded) to third-party ‘vendor campaigns’ Insisting that vendors receive payments by EFT/cards/bitcoins (OK, stretching it a bit) – and literally penalizing them if they do not acquiesce Stretching vendor terms but offering an olive branch of ‘early payment’ for a mere 1-3% additional discount Requiring vendors to navigate an online solution to submit invoices via digital stream (aka, XML), or type their invoice data into neatly prepared forms (even coding them for our system data acceptance) Worse yet (and proven to be commercially unviable), requiring vendors on a broad scale to use the exact flavor of XML (ours is cherry walnut) for invoice submission Requiring vendors to send all invoices to Schenectady, New York for data extraction and routing Having a third-party take their best shot at routing extracted invoice data to our own employees for approval – from what is commonly called ‘business rules’ but literally a ‘best guess’ Training tens of thousands of vendors to do something different with their set-up, invoice submission, monitoring, and receipt-of-payment notifications Then training the next ten thousand to the same … or a variation, as the technology is ‘refined’ Stop the madness! Slicing the pie into thinner, proprietary pieces is just not workable. Sure – each of the above and related steps can make the vendor experience more efficient, more controlled, more standardized … more impersonal. But many of us actually have a connection with each vendor, appreciate the product and services they provide, and want to deal with them directly, while improving efficiency. Have it Your Way After 40 years, Burger King scrapped its marketing slogan in 2014 for an updated promotion – something about being who you are. (It’s complicated, but stay with me.) With vendors and payments, let’s focus on what we do well and do it better. Let’s reasonably work with our vendors to improve our connections, data transfers, validations, receipt of invoices, efficient processing, and effective payment methods. Let’s do that through navigable, non-proprietary systems, unintimidating processes, and … what do you say … a personal contact? Our organization does this in well over 100 countries, navigating dozens of languages, and with compliance to wide-ranging laws for vendor validation, classification, withholdings, and more. In fact, our local ‘vendor sponsors’ most typically receive the vendor invoices, scan/electronically forward them for data extraction and workflow, participate as on-line approvers, and retain visibility to the invoice, scheduled and processed payments. Consequently, our Global AP team fields very few vendor questions. After all, our shared services professionals have no personal insight into the delivery of earthquake relief supplies in Nepal, but the individual responsible for that vendor and budget has the process, tools, and authority to make and keep vendor commitments. As a global organization, we don’t need tools that reduce vendor inquiries to our AP team. Rather we deploy tools that give our authorized users (vendor sponsors) visibility to their vendor documents, submitted invoices, process of approval, and payment information. The beauty of this is that it is scalable to countries and commitments across the world. Though global, our Church is never bigger to a vendor than their local vendor sponsor – who has the system and information at their fingertips. I’ll take a USP Ultimately (in my view) far-thinking and collaborative solution providers should build a ‘Universal Supplier Portal’ (USP) that would receive and vet vendor data for subscriber businesses around the world. This supplier database would include all required contact information, respective government ID numbers, acceptable payment methods, service classifications, and such. This USP would ALSO provide validation of TIN/equivalent, physical and remittance addresses, and banking information. It would assure daily OFAC clearance, serve as a repository for ‘code of conduct’ acknowledgements, host executed EFT agreements, along with valid (and appropriately-updated) certificates of insurance, and more. If solution providers collaborated, they’d grow the pie, rather than battle over their size of each slice. They would own a piece of the whole pie and differentiate themselves with their services and offerings. It would be the Payments Industry equivalent to the competing auto companies’ collaborative approach in developing the catalytic converter in 1973. You selected the automobile you drive today based on many considerations, not including who developed or manufactured its device to convert nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and unburned hydrocarbons into nitrogen gas, carbon dioxide, and water. Once the industry delivers plug-configure-play vendor solutions that work with the systems we run, we the customers can best operate our businesses by leveraging the differentiators (workflow, languages, RFP facilitation, etc.) as our selected onramp to a common, vetted, updated, and secure supplier data. [inlinead]

The Future of Vendor Interface Looks Much Like Today, Only Different

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