This chapter covers the following topics:
With Supplier Lifecycle Management, a buying organization can perform compliance and profile audits to gather additional information from suppliers on a periodic basis. They can gather certifications, quality controls, cost effectiveness measures, customer support services, or any other information relevant to their business processes.
Once suppliers provide the requested information, the buying organization can set up an internal evaluation team to verify that the certifications are valid and in compliance with their corporate compliance policy. The evaluation team may include members from various departments such as operations, finance, and legal. The buying organization can request the evaluation team members to answer questions such as - Please comment on the supplier’s response or – Have you verified that the supplier is ISO 9001 certified? Or the organization can ask the evaluation team to evaluate the supplier’s responses by scoring each response.
The following table describes Supplier Compliance and Profile Audit process flow:
| S. No. | Supplier Management User Actions | Supplier User Actions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
|
Supplier is notified about the RFI. | |
| 2 |
|
Evaluation team is sent a notification that supplier has responded. | |
| 3 | Each member enters evaluations | Automatic scoring set up for each requirement is applied | |
| 4 | Supplier Management Administrator views and closes the RFI | Supplier Management Administrator can
|
|
| 5 | Closes and Completes the RFI | On Complete, responses are synchronized with profile attributes based on RFI mappings. | |
| 6 | Searches Supplier Profile for gathered information using basic or advanced Search | Advanced search is an easy way of finding supplier information |
Supplier Management Administrator can set up a Compliance and Profile Audit RFI Template, or Reusable Requirements List or Reusable Attributes List, which the Supplier Management users can use in RFI documents repeatedly and on a periodic basis. Steps required to set up the RFI Template, Reusable Requirements List and Reusable Attributes List are the same as explained in Implementing Supplier Registration and Qualification Management chapter. Additionally, the RFI may contain mandatory contracts and deliverables for the supplier to submit.
You can create supplier contracts and request for mandatory deliverables from your suppliers during registration, periodic compliance audit or at any other point in time using RFI. Once signed and submitted, contracts and deliverables are visible from the Supplier Profile page in the side navigation and are easily accessible for each supplier.
RFI Contract clauses and Deliverables feature is part of Supplier Lifecycle Management license. However, for using contracts for any document other than RFI type, you should purchase an appropriate Oracle Contracts product license.
To setup RFI Contract clauses and Deliverables, see “Enable Oracle Procurement Contracts” in Oracle Sourcing Implementation and Administration Guide.
Some other differences are as follows:
RFI Template is mandatory in case of the registration flow, whereas it is optional in case of Supplier Compliance and Profile Audit. A Supplier Management User may directly create a RFI without any template.
Since the suppliers invited to the RFI already have user accounts, the notification sent to the supplier on publication of the RFI does not contain any links. The supplier directly logs into the system with the assigned user account and responds to the RFI.
Since suppliers invited to the RFI already exist in the system, responses are synchronized with Supplier profile as soon as the RFI is completed. There is no need for approval of suppliers.
Another important aspect to note is the difference in the predefined Negotiation style. If you customize Negotiation Style for Supplier Compliance and Profile Audit, then make sure that you understand the impact of each control.
If you want to keep track of the changes made to your data by application users, then you should set up Audit Trail for the relevant tables. See Set Up Audit Trail under Setup Steps in Oracle E-Business Suite System Administrator's Guide – Configuration.