Learn how MetaCX can help you align internal initiatives to vendor selection with a real-time view into whether vendors are delivering on the value promised.
Using MetaCX, you're able to connect with your vendors in a co-owned, digital space to collaborate on shared initiatives and monitor progress toward desired outcomes through real-time performance metrics.
By capturing and conceptualizing real-time, multidirectional data, MetaCX creates a comprehensive view of performance that allows you to create accountability with your vendors.
Vendor collaboration is a great way for businesses to connect with their suppliers and get to know each other’s goals and values.
But what is supplier collaboration?
The supplier collaboration meaning is the process in which a company works with its vendors to ensure continuous alignment and the achievement of desired outcomes. Building a collaborative supplier relationship is dependent on many things, but maintaining an open line of communication is the first step to establishing a trusted partnership and channel for collaboration. This is crucial to forming a strong partnership.
Buyer-supplier collaboration can also help ensure that there are no misunderstandings or mistakes being made on either end. It’s easy for something to get lost in translation so by regularly collaborating with your vendors, airing your concerns, and sharing your vision for the future of the partnership, you can clarify different points and craft a solid roadmap for your vendors going forward.
Collaboration fosters new ideas and perspectives, allowing for business performance improvement, heightened customer satisfaction, and an enhanced buyer-supplier relationship all around. These are just some of the reasons to promote vendor collaboration within your organization. Everyone can benefit from increased collaboration and alignment on shared goals.
The vendor collaboration process can take many different forms. Smaller businesses that work with a limited number of suppliers might have a simpler supplier collaboration strategy in place, while a large enterprise may rely on a more complex supplier partnership in supply chain management. The type of collaboration you should strive to foster within your organization will depend on several factors, including the size of your company, the number of vendors you work with, and your overall goals for the partnership.
Because there are different types of collaboration in supply chain management, it’s important to understand the individual needs of your business in particular and how you and your vendors can benefit from increased collaboration. Common reasons for collaboration include collaborating on more strategic items like shared initiatives and desired outcomes, as well as more tactical items like purchase orders and supply chain logistics. Being able to confirm accepted purchase orders from vendor collaboration is another great reason to get together with your suppliers and discuss business operations.
MetaCX aligns suppliers and buyers on expected outcomes and measures value delivery over time. Using next-generation enterprise software, MetaCX helps vendors and businesses come together to outline shared expectations of value exchange. With this platform, users can connect with their business partners through co-owned digital spaces where two or more organizations can collaborate to align on the desired outcomes, action plans, and evaluation measures necessary to achieve shared success.
They can also track the success of an initiative by capturing data not only from their organization but from those they partner with, turning disparate data points into a dynamic view of performance toward the achievement of outcomes and delivery of value. With MetaCX, users can eliminate sensitivity to data access and control through the platform’s neutral third-party network in which all members are equal and have full control over who they collaborate with and how their data is used and shared. In this way, MetaCX is a great tool for fostering vendor collaboration.
The benefits of supplier collaboration are practically endless. By fostering quality collaboration with their partnered vendors, businesses have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Having this line of communication with suppliers opens the door to new ideas and aligned objectives, but overall, the greatest benefit and ultimate aim of supplier collaboration is shared success. Each business and vendor is going to have its own priorities and motivations, but outlining some common goals can put all parties on the path to success.
While the benefits of a collaborative relationship between buyer and supplier are a worthwhile pursuit, poor collaboration can sometimes yield worse results than not collaborating at all. This is why it’s important to not only communicate and collaborate with your vendors but to do so in a way that’s productive for all stakeholders. Be open to each other’s concerns; listen to what your partners have to say.
Most importantly, go into any collaborative session or meeting with a goal in mind. Having a set plan for what you want to achieve can help things run more smoothly and keep everybody focused on a shared objective. By contrast, disorganization and a poor understanding of desired outcomes can lead to even more confusion for your vendors and those within your organization.
If you’re new to supplier collaboration, you may not know how to get started. Of course, there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to do things, as long as your strategy promotes quality partnership, but you might want to view some supplier collaboration examples for ideas. Thankfully, there are various supplier partnership examples to help you on your way. It can be especially useful to purposely seek out templates used by those in your industry, as these can offer the most tailored examples of what supplier collaboration could or should look like in your unique sector.
For instance, if you work in manufacturing, consider the example in which a manufacturer collaborates with a SaaS vendor to shorten the procurement process by 25% through automation. Likewise, those in the retail space might draw inspiration from a fellow retailer that has collaborated with a marketing automation vendor to improve their online shopping experience or increase pipeline and revenue.
Looking into supply chain partnership examples and supply chain collaboration examples can help give you a greater understanding of what quality partnership looks like and set you on the path of success. You might also look for vendor group examples.
A vendor collaboration portal or supplier collaboration portal provides a means through which vendors and the businesses they serve can meet and collaborate on shared initiatives. Having a supplier collaboration platform can help you achieve shared business aims and offer a platform through which to stay updated on key metrics and other performance measures. In terms of the “best” vendor collaboration portal, there isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution that’s going to meet the needs of every business. So much depends on your company and what you’re hoping to accomplish through supplier collaboration.
Take SAP for example. Within their supplier collaboration portal, SAP objectives can be tracked over time. Supplier collaboration SAP aims might include goals around data management and real-time insights. In a similar vein, the Kroger vendor collaboration portal may be centered around Kroger’s objectives and key targets concerning their partnered vendors. There are many different ways to take advantage of a collaboration portal, all of which come back to one thing: fostering business-supplier collaboration and keeping teams across the board aligned on shared outcomes.
MetaCX has created the first-ever Business Value Network, where companies can manage their business relationships. Within this network, businesses can connect with their vendors through Bridges, co-owned digital spaces that allow organizations to come together to define and collaborate on desired business outcomes. In this way, all parties are held accountable for their performance and encouraged to focus on the goals, action plans, and evaluation measures necessary to achieve shared success.
Companies can benefit from this Business Value Network by setting clear expectations for each vendor partnership and ensuring continuous alignment around their goals by collaborating with vendors in a shared digital space that ensures complete transparency. They can also close the loop by establishing a true correlation between their investment and the achievement of their goals and objectives. Companies are able to visualize their own data related to the use, adoption, and effectiveness of vendor services, enabling them to establish a consistent, repeatable process for proof of performance across their entire vendor network.
The Microsoft vendor portal (Dynamics 365 vendor portal) is one of the more well-known vendor collaboration tools. Within the Dynamics 365 vendor portal users can set up and maintain vendor collaboration, manage vendor collaboration users, set up vendor accounts, and more. With this vendor collaboration portal, Dynamics 365 offers businesses a means to stay on top of their vendor relationships and keep track of shared goals and outcomes. The vendor portal D365 is targeted at vendors that don’t have EDI integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX for exchanging PO information. The vendor posting profile in D365 enables users to assign general ledger accounts and document settings to all vendors, a group of vendors, or a single vendor.
The vendor catalog D365 feature is available for purchasing professionals to create and maintain catalogs for company employees to use when ordering items and services for internal use. Microsoft Dynamics 365 procurement services cover the steps required to procure new products and services, such as receipt and invoicing. The vendor onboarding process in D365 includes a number of helpful tips for getting started. Once you’re in, Dynamics 365 vendor management tools can help you manage your various suppliers and their activities.
To create a vendor group, D365 provides an outlined process that first involves clicking on the accounts payable tab, selecting vendor groups, and proceeding from there to create a new group. D365 vendor collaboration invoicing exists to streamline vendor processes and manage invoices. D365 vendor performance can be evaluated using a certain set of criteria within the platform. Additionally, with a user request workflow, D365 allows businesses to create workflows to manage user provisioning for user requests and to inactivate users following inactive user requests.
These Microsoft Dynamics vendor tools can be incredibly valuable for businesses, which is why many choose the vendor collaboration Dynamics 365. It’s clear that, in terms of vendor collaboration, Dynamics 365 has a lot to offer, but you do need a Dynamics 365 vendor collaboration license to use it.
Additionally, unlike MetaCX, Microsoft’s vendor portal system doesn’t actually track value delivery. To monitor vendor performance in a truly meaningful way, MetaCX captures multidirectional data. Within the co-owned space, individual metrics combine into a dynamic, comprehensive view of performance toward the achievement of outcomes. This, in turn, help the buyer assess whether or not the partnership should continue on a long-term basis.
Reach out to MetaCX today to learn more about how the platform and its Business Value Network can help your company foster quality vendor collaboration and create alignment across shared objectives.
