The Mission
Next thing on the list is to add in your suppliers. We know that it can be complicated to keep track of your suppliers, so we have made it so you can group your suppliers by Company or by Category. This should help ensure that you can find the right suppliers when creating requests.
Note: The RFQ Supplier list is really just an address book. Suppliers will only receive notifications from SourceDay RFQ when they are invited to bid on a request. You may have as many suppliers & contacts as you'd like - even ones that are not currently within your ERP.
Adding Categories
Categories allow you to group suppliers by parts, type of parts, fun facts, whatever helps you ensure you're requesting quotes from the suppliers that will help you move your business forward, that's the categories you should use. You can assign as many categories as you like to your supplier companies.
Let's pretend for my fake company I sell things that are knit, so for my day to day, I need to keep track of things by the types of products I make, but I might also want to organize by what I need to make the items. It is also good to think of how templates play into this, would you have a different template for say making a hat than just buying the yarn or a pair of scissors?
I've decided to make 7 categories that we will use throughout this exercise
- Hats
- Knitted Animals
- Yarn
- Notions
- Blankets
- US Only
- Global
Show me how to make and manage a category
Adding Companies
Depending on the size of your business, you may always work with one contact at a company, or you may have many that you deal with based on location or what you are purchasing. RFQ has the flexibility for either of these models or a mix. When you add a company you will also need to add the primary contact for the company. (You can add additional contacts after the companies are added.) To add a company you will need to know:
- Their company name
- The category you would like to add them to (if applicable - you can add as many as you like)
- The supplier's ID in your ERP (optional)
- The primary contact for the supplier
- The primary contact's email address
For my example, I am going to add in my companies that I most often do business with.
Show me how to make and manage a company
Adding Contacts
You may only need your primary contacts for your company, however, if you need more you can enter as many as you need. If you do business with multiple people from the company, you will need to create a contact for anyone that you would like to send a bid request to. To add a contact you will just need to know:
- The company that they work for
- The contact's name
- The contact's email
For my example, I mainly do business with the primary contacts, but for my global company I have two contacts that need to be added.
Show me how to make and manage a contact
Viewing, Managing and Editing Your Suppliers
It's all great to get things set up, but the real pay off is being able to see and manage your suppliers in one place. The supplier tab dashboard acts as your hub for understanding interactions with your suppliers like (bids won, bids submitted, outstanding bids), and managing your suppliers, categories and contacts.
Show me how to use the Supplier Dashboard
In This Series
- Getting Started with RFQ for Buyers
- Creating Your Template
- Help Us Get to Know You
- Adding Your Suppliers - You are here
- Creating Your First Request for Quote