Paperless vendor onboardingPaperless vendor onboarding

Business challenge

Opening a new vendor meant a printed form, a certificate of incorporation, a bank letter and a tax approval passing between purchasing, finance and the supplier by email and by hand. The details were typed into SAP at the end, often weeks after the first order was needed, and the documents ended up in a drawer.

Solution

Futera built a web onboarding process. Purchasing opens a request, or the supplier is invited to fill in their own details and upload their documents through a guided web form. The company, tax and bank details are read from the documents and checked for completeness and consistency; a bank account is validated against the bank letter, not against memory. The approval workflow routes the request to purchasing, finance and compliance, each with their own checks and their own fields, on the same request. On the final approval the vendor is created in SAP with purchasing and accounting views, payment terms and bank data, and every document is attached to the vendor record. The whole trail, who uploaded what and who approved what, stays with the vendor.

Results

• One paperless route for every new vendor
• Master data comes from the source documents, not from a form typed twice
• Approvals happen on the request, not in email threads
• A full approval trail and all documents are kept with the vendor record

Technologies