Vendor onboarding can be a drawn-out, disorganized process. For everyone involved on the “buying” side, it's super frustrating when you want to place your order, but your vendor hasn’t supplied the documents your team needs to get them set up.
Today, most onboarding, especially in medium to small-sized organizations, is done by email. Teams request multiple documents from the vendor and then forward those documents and files to internal contacts who will perform vendor setup and possibly issue a purchase order (although in some organizations that’s an entirely different set of people!). Because of all the emails flying around it’s possible that your vendor might not realize that there is missing documentation.
TakeTurns is a secure, structured, external collaboration platform that helps businesses maintain continuity when collaborating with parties outside their organization, especially when working in arm's length scenarios such as those found in vendor onboarding. Each TakeTurns Flow contains all the communication and documentation related to a new vendor and is easily accessible by both organizations. With TakeTurns, organizations streamline communication and keep everyone on the same page.
We spoke to a purchasing manager who uses TakeTurns to streamline the vendor onboarding and here's what they told us.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1
The purchasing manager creates a new Flow and invites the new vendor. In the Flow, he requests all the setup information his team needs.
Step 2
The vendor fulfills requests. Both parties can see what documentation is still outstanding. If required, the vendor requests a Purchase Order Number.
Step 3
The purchasing manager sets up the vendor in their internal systems and provides the vendor ID #. If the vendor has requested a Purchase Order, he adds members from the accounts payable (or finance) team to the collaboration. They use the information attached to the Flow to set up a purchase order (PO).
Step 4
When the onboarding process is complete, everyone can download an archive for their records.
Using TakeTurns smooths and expedites the vendor onboarding process. Because the TakeTurns Flow enables all parties to see exactly what information is still required to complete the vendor setup. That transparency helps reduce confusion and stress and builds trust between the purchasing department and the vendors. At the end of the collaboration, all parties can download the Flow archive for their records so that they’ll have what they need when it comes time to issue payments and 1099s.
Try TakeTurns: The Safer, Easier Way to Work with People Outside of Your Organization
TakeTurns is your one place to share, collect, and collaborate on business-critical documents and files with your clients, vendors, partners—or any external organization. It turns that clutter of emails, attachments, shared folders, and messages into a structured, secure, and transparent TakeTurns Flow. Ready to improve how you collaborate externally? Try TakeTurns for free.
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