Prospective Suppliers

When you begin a business relationship with a supplier, the supplier usually has a provisional status. For a provisional supplier, the amount of information you need is typically minimal. You need more information for suppliers with whom you conduct financial transaction.

The level of review and oversight needed for a potential supplier is also typically less than that required by a contracted supplier.

An efficient way of addressing the need for different levels of supplier information is to provide two statuses for the suppliers. The provisional status allows a restricted level of access to the application capabilities. The full status allows access to a more complete range of capabilities.

Prospective Suppliers

Suppliers can ask to be registered with the application either independently by accessing the buying company's registration web page, or they can be registered internally, for example, a category manager can request to register a new supplier when completing an invitation list for a new negotiation. In either case, the registration requests go to the supplier manager for review. Once the supplier manager approves the registration request, the supplier becomes a prospective supplier in the application. Prospective suppliers have a restricted level of access. They can participate in supplier qualification initiatives, and they can view and respond to negotiations. Prospective suppliers are identified within the application by an icon that indicates their prospective status.

Spend Authorized Suppliers

If the category manager decides to award business to a prospective supplier who responded to a negotiation, that supplier needs to be authorized in the application to conduct spend transactions with the buying organization before a purchase document can be created for that supplier. Spend authorization requires a more complete level of information about the supplier and is subject to approval by the supplier manager. Once the supplier is approved for spend operations, they have access to all the normal capabilities of the application.

Purchase Documents for Prospective Suppliers

Prospective suppliers are provisional suppliers that are newly registered with the application. These suppliers haven't been authorized to conduct spend operations with the buying organization. You can award business to prospective suppliers, but before the award can be completed, any prospective suppliers must be spend authorized

When you complete your award decision, if any business has been awarded to prospective suppliers, the negotiation moves to Award Completion in Progress. The application sends a request to the supplier manager to authorize the supplier for spend operations. Once the supplier is spend authorized, an entry appears in the Recent Activity table in your workbench notifying you that the supplier is now spend authorized. Also, a notification is sent to the original requester of the spend authorization (note that if the supplier was already in the process of being authorized when you made your award decision, the application doesn't consider you the original authorization requester, and you won't receive this notification)

You must monitor your Recent Activity table to know when the spend authorization requests have been processed. Once all the prospective suppliers who have been awarded business for a negotiation are spend authorized, you can create the purchase documents for that negotiation.

If the authorization request is rejected, an entry shows up in your Recent Activity table and you receive a notification (if you're the originating requester). The status for the negotiation reverts back to its previous status, either Award in Progress or Award Approved.