In the age of strategic sourcing, a supplier is not just another stakeholder. Suppliers are success partners who need tools to quickly communicate with buyers and stay in the loop. By offering user-friendly communication tools, organizations can step up their game and eventually achieve the goals of strategic sourcing. To facilitate this, enterprises build proprietary platforms to receive quotes from suppliers.

But do these platforms simplify the way business is done? The answer is no.

Suppliers trace a steep learning curve to adopt such platforms. These platforms are often complex, filled with jargon, and difficult to navigate. Suppliers face the following problems:

 
• They need to enter the data twice. First in their own systems and then in the dedicated supplier portal. Errors, additional time, and effort for data management are eventual outcomes.
 
• They need to adopt a new medium if their buyers have a different medium or platform to carry out their processes.

Thus, the dedicated platform built by the buyers ends up having a low adoption rate, and suppliers eventually prefer conventional methods to respond to RFQs and RFPs. Such an outcome defeats the purpose of creating a dedicated portal for the suppliers.

How can a buying organization overcome conventional hindrances and move towards achieving the goals of strategic sourcing? How can we make sure that our suppliers adopt the product that we are using for e-sourcing? Let us discuss ways to resolve the chronic problem of low adoption rates.

Allowing suppliers to Quote via WhatsApp

We all know that WhatsApp has become a primary channel for person-to-person communication. Additionally, with businesses having access to WhatsApp Business, it has become imperative to have an open channel of communication through it.

In order to simplify the process of submitting RFP and RFQs, incorporating WhatsApp to improve vendor adoption becomes an ideal choice.

In cases of requirements that contain only a handful of items or sub-items, businesses can accept quotes via WhatsApp. WhatsApp integrations will remove the hassle of logging into the portal, feeding data in in-built forms, and doing data entry again in their own systems.

Allowing suppliers to Quote via Excel

Allowing suppliers to respond to your RFQs or RFPs via WhatsApp is feasible when you require a few items. However, the amount of work exponentially grows for a buying organization’s procurement function and the vendors if the RFQs or RFPs are sought for more items.

If not WhatsApp, then what are the options available?

Another everyday business tool used by almost all businesses around the world is Microsoft Excel.

Thus, incorporating Excel into your solution becomes a no-brainer to promote product adoption.

Buyers can overcome the limitation pitted by WhatsApp by allowing suppliers to submit their quotes via Excel.

How can this functionality facilitate quote reception in a real-life situation?

The buying enterprise can send controlled Excel sheets attached to emails to their suppliers. In a controlled Excel sheet, the buying enterprise can set pre-defined data limits and value formats on the answer inputs that are allowed. This is further simplified by action buttons in the email which can expedite the process of accepting or declining the request. By clicking on these buttons, the suppliers will be able to respond if they wish to participate in the evaluation process or not. Suppliers can fill in the details in these Excel sheets and reply to the same email received from the buyer. Thus, the buyer and the supplier do not have to experience disruption in their workflows.

Now what are the benefits of allowing our suppliers to send their RFQ and RFP responses via WhatsApp or Email?

Zero logins and learning

As suppliers will be sending their quotations via WhatsApp or Excel, they do not need to log in to any dedicated portals. Thus, the buying organization also does not need to worry about creating logins for these suppliers and the suppliers also do not need to be concerned about any learning curve for replying to a simple RFQ.

No double data entry

Suppliers primarily use Excel sheets. As quotes have to be submitted as Excel Sheets, they no longer have to make an additional attempt to submit data in the buyer’s portal. There is also a reduced chance for errors and they do not need a separate resource just for data entry.

Marching towards Strategic Sourcing Objectives

With the conventional bottleneck in processing RFQs removed, the buying organization can ensure that the procurement function and suppliers are on the same page in terms of requirement processing. Seamless information exchange will help procurement professionals reduce processing time and improve efficiency.

With the above-mentioned benefits, we can rest assured that both buyers and sellers will benefit if they are allowed to send and receive quotes via Excel and WhatsApp.