Managing the Supplier Portfolio
Supplier master data comprise key information about suppliers, including their identification, addresses, contacts, and bank and tax details. If you have a contract with D&B, you can display the data that the D&B products Quick Check and Vendor Management provide for your suppliers.
The supplier data can be consolidated from operational systems within your network into a single repository in the SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management (SLC) system, the supplier portfolio, which serves as the central point for supplier data maintenance.
Supplier master records provide the basis for managing your business relationship with your suppliers throughout the supplier lifecycle. They include settings for controlling the relationship and information that characterizes and classifies that relationship. This data is enhanced over the course of time through ongoing maintenance.
Suppliers
A supplier is a company from which goods and services can be obtained. Technically, a supplier is an SAP business partner that has been assigned the relevant roles, such as Prospect
, Bidder
, or Vendor
. For the purposes of supplier lifecycle management, the technical role is represented by a business naming reflecting the functional role played by the supplier.
A supplier can be denoted as one of the following:
Potential supplier: The initial status of a supplier on successfully completing the registration process or when created manually. As a business partner, it has the
Prospect
role.Bidder: A supplier with bidding authorization, but not yet a qualified supplier. It has the
Prospect
andBidder
roles. A role change to bidder is enabled by classification. Note that in the supplier portfolio, bidders are not displayed as a separate bidder entity but as potential suppliers classified as bidders.Supplier: The supplier has successfully completed the qualification process and, as a qualified supplier, is automatically a bidder as well. It has the
Prospect
,Bidder
, andVendor
roles. A role change to supplier is enabled by promotion.
Contacts
These are the individuals in the supplier company with whom you deal directly. They can be categorized as follows:
Contact person: The contact for queries and problems and the person to whom you address questionnaires and forms.
Service provider: Performs a service on behalf of the supplier company and, as such, is part of the procurement process.
Like suppliers, contacts are also based on the SAP Business Partner, but are persons rather than organizations and have either the Contact Person
or Service Provider
role, depending on their function. The supplier and its contacts are connected by a contact person relationship.
Supplier Creation
Suppliers can be created in the following manner:
Manually from the supplier portfolio: Suppliers are created as potential suppliers and can be promoted to suppliers through a supplier promotion workflow.
Through initial upload from SAP ERP, SAP SRM, or supplier registration systems (ROS systems): Suppliers are created with roles corresponding to those in the source system.
Through self-registration: Suppliers are created as potential suppliers after their registration data has been approved through a workflow.
Supplier Distribution
You distribute supplier master data from SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management to the back-end systems for operational use. To create the suppliers in each relevant back-end system in which they do not yet exist, you have to manually perform an initial distribution. After this, any changes made to the data are automatically replicated to the back-end systems concerned.
Master Data Changes on Sell Side
When suppliers update their master data on the sell side of the SAP SLC system, the changes they make are replicated to the buy side. This initiates a workflow that forwards a work item to the relevant category manager. The category manager has to accept the work item to approve the changes and allow the supplier’s master data to be updated and distributed to the back-end systems. The supplier can see that the update has been successful by the status of their request on the sell side, which indicates that data synchronization has been completed.
Certificate Reminders
You can set reminders for certificates that suppliers need to submit on a regular basis. You can, for example, configure the system in such a way that it sends out a first reminder 30 days before the expiration of a certificate, then a second one 10 days before.