What Is Vendor Management Software?

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    CobbleStone Software explains the benefits of vendor management software.

    Vendor management efficiency is critical for organizations to reap the highest ROI from vendor relations.  Unfortunately, many organizations still rely on vendor management methods that depend on costly pay-per-solicitations, unclear selection of the best possible vendors, tracking vendor insurance certificates manually, decentralized vendor management and contract management processes, and other deleterious procedures.  Luckily, you can automate these processes and more with vendor management software.  But what exactly is vendor management software?  Let's improve your processes with integrated vendor management and contract management software.

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    Vendor Management Software

    Vendor management software is used to oversee vendor registration, vendor selection, vendor pricing, vendor insurance tracking, vendor contract management, and more.  When combined with a leading source-to-contract management soution, its purpose is to function as a one-stop shop for vendor management, vendor contract lifecycle management, and vendor financials and insurance management.  The goal is to provide more contraol over the vendor lifecycle, save time, decrease costs and risk, and build vendor relations.

    Now, let's look at how specifically you can improve your process with vendor management software.

    Vendor Notifications & Communications

    Your organization can leverage vendor management software to easily notify registered bidding organizations of bid opportunities and posted solicitations via automated email functionality for enhanced solicitation and vendor management oversight. 

    A robust vendor management software solution can also support notifications to registered bidding organizations based on assigned product, service, or designated commodity codes.  You can post solicitation opportunities to a web-enabled portal for optimal vendor and supplier participation (more on that later). 

    For further governance, you can also choose whether to designate solicitation opportunities as invitation-only or public-facing.  The public-facing option can allow your prospective vendors to view opportunities without registering with your organization.

    Vendor Collaboration Gateway

    Robust vendor management software can provide your organization with an integrated vendor collaboration gateway that assists with collecting solicitation, vendor, and contract information on a central, web-based interface.  Your organization can

    • post solicitations for exposure to a diverse pool of relevant vendors.
    • post vendor questionnaires, set specific due dates, quickly process answers, and rate respondents based on your needs.
    • utilize highly configurable vendor registration forms to track vendor demographics, contact information, business certifications, insurance details, W9 data and documents, vendor classifications, and more through a user-friendly online vendor registration portal.
    • easily reward the best vendor while sending a templated email thanking other participants.
    • subsequently enjoy a seamless contract lifecycle management process for your awarded vendor.
    • easily introduce contract templates and contract clauses from your organization's pre-approved language library for seamless vendor contract initiation.
    • automate vendor contract workflow management and task oversight - complete with seamless task assignment, task escalation, email alerts for your employee resources, and more.
    • leverage user-friendly electronic signature software integration for streamlined signatures and approvals.

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    Vendor Pricing & Financials

    In addition to robust vendor collaboration and vendor contract management, your organization can leverage a leading-edge vendor management software solution to track and manage financial and pricing details related to vendor and supplier proposals.

    Your prospective vendors and suppliers can easily submit pricing line items centrally with their proposals.  They can include detailed information on services and product line items with visually uncomplicated, system-defined fields to display on an easy-to-digest record screen.  You can also have virtually unlimited user-defined fields to capture additional vendor and supplier details based on your needs!  Your vendor management software details fields can be configured as calculated fields - which would allow your system to calculate specific field values based on other field values via an intelligent process.

    Want These Tools & More?  Trust CobbleStone Contract Insight!

    Now that you know what vendor management software can offer to simplify your organization's processes, it's time to select award-winning vendor management and contract lifecycle management software that provides the tools mentioned above and many more.  That solution is CobbleStone Contract Insight®.

    CobbleStone Contract Insight is innovative, critically acclaimed, scalable, web-enabled, and seamlessly integrated vendor management, contract management, eProcurement, and eSourcing software hailed as a pioneering system for organizations in a vast array of industries within the public and private sectors.  Organizations leveraging CobbleStone® can experience comprehensive vendor lifecycle management, contract lifecycle management, eProcurement management, eSourcing management, and more - all on one centralized, one-stop platform. 

    To learn more about CobbleStone's vendor and contract management software suite, book a free demo with a CobbleStone Contract Insight expert today!

    CobbleStone Software offers a complimentary demo.

    To stay up to date on best practices, industry news, and CobbleStone Software updates, be sure to subscribe to our blog and YouTube Channel.

    Published: 03/4/22
    Sean Heck

    Written by Sean Heck

    Sean Heck is Content Marketing Manager at CobbleStone Software

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