Everything You Need to Know About Odoo Vendor Management System

Vendor management is basically a process that companies use to manage their suppliers, also called vendors. And this process includes a wide variety of activities such as choosing the best vendors, negotiating contracts, taking control of the money turnover, reducing risks, and ensuring timely service delivery. In other words, vendor management “enables organizations to control costs, drive service excellence and mitigate risks to gain increased value from their vendors throughout the deal life cycle” according to Gartner. 

Vendor management can include different activities like creating contracts, holding negotiations, tracking KPI, conducting Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), monitoring compliance and security, recording all the processes, and, quite frequently…resolving disputes. Actually, the latest Deloitte report shows that 87% of survey respondents answered that they experienced at least one unpleasant incident with third parties during the last 2-3 years. As a result, many of them faced supply chain disruption and failure in delivering goods on time and to the expected standard. How does Odoo vendor management system can help maintain healthy relationships with suppliers and why is it so important for your business? 

What Is a Vendor Management System? 

A good vendor management system is important for numerous reasons. For one, it may play a key role when it comes to choosing the right vendor. For two, it can help companies achieve business goals faster (harnessing cost savings, speeding up the onboarding processes, etc). For three, an effective vendor management system can drastically reduce the risk of supply chain disruption. And, finally, it can help companies build stronger relationships with their vendors. Hence, negotiate better rates.

In general, the vendor management process includes seven steps, and an efficient vendor management system like Odoo can help with most of them.

(Source: The World Financial Review)

Odoo VMS (Vendor Management System) provides centralized support and stores significant volumes of contracts, suppliers, and staff in one place. It also offers vendor onboarding support, keeps track of approvals, and maintains proper compliance management. In a word, Odoo VMS can handle all the business processes from the first contact with the vendor to the completion of the final deal.

How Odoo Can Improve Vendor Management?

Being one of the most popular ERP software platforms extensively used by companies of all sizes and industries, Odoo really takes care of everything related to supplying processes. The system shows such information as past purchases of suppliers, meetings, bills, tenders, communication details, and other details. Also, Odoo VMS can help you define and subdivide various types of vendors – foreign vendors, domestic vendors, and freight vendors. Besides that, the app lets users track all the payments, inbound/outbound shipments, stock updates, procurement status, and more. What is convenient, this data is accessible across your company so that all of your departments could quickly get the needed info. 

To continue with the user-friendliness of the app, we would like to stress that creating vendor entries in Odoo is quite simple. You just need to fill up a vendor form containing several fields – company name, address, contact info, website, and vendor tags. The vendor can be created as an individual or company, and within a single form, you may create multiple contacts if needed.

Afterward, you’ll be able to:

• Send specific SMS or emails to chosen vendors anytime;
• Schedule meetings with vendors;
• Manage vendor payment terms;
• View purchase order details and vendor bills;
• Activate/deactivate particular vendors.

Top Features of Odoo Vendor Management System

In brief, Odoo VMS can help you with:

Vendor Onboarding –  all the payment information will be right in front of you (including future automated payments). As a result, conducting a cost-benefit analysis will be easier.

Contract Management – you’ll be able to check the current status of each of your contacts, as well as get its essential data.

Vendor Quotation Management – Odoo VMS is great for organizing vendor quotes as it enables you to send your Wishlist to the vendors through an RFQ (request for quotation). And if your supplier responds to your request, then, you’ll be able to accept or reject the offer.

Data Analysis – by having a clear picture of what’s going on, you’ll have an opportunity to quickly perform data analysis and make a forecast.

Employee Engagement – as already mentioned, Odoo VMS allows you to share information with all of your workers, which will naturally result in increased employee engagement.

Payment Reminders – agree that it’s quite easy to forget about monthly payments, but you can eliminate this hassle by setting up automatic payment reminders.

What is Odoo Vendor Portal?

Odoo offers a unique menu called the ‘Vendor Portal’ to facilitate communication between retailers and vendors, thereby, reducing supplier inquiries and invoice mismatches. The Odoo portal allows you to send RFQ to multiple vendors at a time, saving your time and effort. The only requirement is that your suppliers should register on the Odoo website to access the vendor portal. Once registered, vendors will be able to submit the purchase quotations for the RFQs and track their status. You, in your turn, can view the submitted purchase quotations and choose the best offer. For your convenience, you can sort out the quotations by ‘the lowest price’ or ‘the fastest delivery time’. Once you’re done, you can create a purchase order directly through the vendor portal and send it right to the selected vendor.

The main benefits of the Odoo vendor portal include:

• A common interface to manage vendor RFQs and POs.
• Sending product RFQs to multiple suppliers at the same time. 
• Both centralized and decentralized access to the list of vendors.
• All the sent RFQs and responses from vendors are easily accessible.
• Viewing the status of submitted quotes at any time.

Everyone is a buyer, everyone’s a potential purchaser and everyone’s a potential vendor.
Joe Hochey

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a retailer, an eCommerce business owner, or a wholesale distributor, by choosing Odoo VMS, you can significantly improve the supplying processes and eventually deliver value to your business across several different areas. Odoo can help you enhance cost savings, automate purchase workflow, stick to original terms of contracts, ensure supply chain resilience, reduce risk, and many more.

So, if you’re willing to unlock the full potential of your business and the full value of your suppliers, contact us to implement the Odoo ERP system. We offer not only the fastest integration rate but also 25% lower prices compared to any other competitor on the market.