- Manufacturing Use Case
Optimize Vendor Spend with Supplier 360
Further Optimizing Supplier Spend
Data Domains
Supplier, Materials, Parts, Components
Business Problem
Difficulty rationalizing suppliers and parts
Teams Impacted
Procurement, Operations, Finance
MDM OUTCOMES
Optimized terms, Better volume discounts, Improved inventory use
Business Problem
Data Strategy
Outcomes Business ProblemBusiness Problem
Overspending on Critical Components
- Inconsistent discount and payment terms: Different divisions acquire from the same suppliers, but with inconsistent terms and negotiated discounts.
- Inconsistent credit terms: Business lines purchase with different credit terms from the same supplier, impacting free cash.
- Inability to negotiate on volume: Without visibility into 100% accurate aggregated spend for each supplier, procurement teams can’t negotiate optimized pricing and terms.
- Unnecessary purchases: Due to inconsistent data practices across business lines, total material and part inventory is obscured, leading to unnecessary spend.
Data StrategyData Strategy
Leverage Supplier 360 Intelligence for Business Insight
- Consolidate records and terms: Even with multiple ERP and/or procurement spend, master data management (MDM) solutions create a consolidated 360-view of suppliers, allowing organizations to identify inconsistencies and negotiate for optimized terms.
- Aggregate total spend: With a consolidated view of all supplier activity across business lines, procurement understands total spend.
- Automate part/material cross-referencing: With robust fuzzy matching and machine learning, MDM can identify like parts and materials even against inconsistent data.
OutcomesOutcomes
Reduce Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and Optimize Working Capital
- Reduced COGS: Thanks to further optimized discounts, you can reduce the total cost of goods sold and improve margins.
- Cash management optimization: By using an MDM to support consistent and optimized payment terms, you get better cash management.
- Better capital efficiency: With consistent and well-negotiated credit terms, you free up working capital and improve cash flow.
- Less material spend and inventory excess: By avoiding unnecessary and duplicative material and part purchases, you free up capital, reduce inventory costs and improve your cash flow.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is supplier 360?
Supplier 360 is the initiative of having one trusted record for each of your vendors, assembled from every system that holds their information. The goal is to have a golden record — a unified view of all your supplier data — in a single dashboard.
Most companies build a supplier 360 view with a master data management (MDM) platform like Profisee, which governs vendor records alongside product and material information.
What is a supplier 360 record?
A supplier 360 record is a complete, trusted profile of a vendor created from information across your multiple systems. Supplier master data management solutions can create this single source of truth for each of your vendors by piecing together disconnected records from your ERP, procurement and finance tools.
Supplier 360 records usually hold data about:
- Identity: Legal and trading vendor names, tax ID, DUNS or LEI, remit-to and ship-from addresses
- Commerce: Discounts, payment terms, credit terms, rebate thresholds, contract dates
- Compliance: Certifications and expiry dates, insurance, sanctions screening, ESG disclosures
- Operations: Approved plants, approved materials, lead times, on-time delivery history
What are the benefits of supplier 360?
Supplier 360 gives procurement and supply chain teams more reliable information for managing vendor relationships. Key benefits include:
- Lower procurement costs through negotiations on total volume instead of per-division spend
- Faster supplier onboarding, as supply chain teams can qualify a new vendor without chasing data across systems
- Better supplier risk and compliance management, since 360 supplier intelligence flags expired certifications and over-concentrated sourcing
- Improved inventory and demand planning, as matched part records show what another plant already holds
- Greater supply chain visibility through better data sharing
- More consistent supplier performance tracking against one record per company
How does supplier 360 work?
Supplier 360 works by bringing together vendor information that may be spread across data silos, ERP systems and other applications. Here’s how an MDM platform like Profisee creates a unified view of your vendor records in three steps:
- Integration: Profisee connects supplier data from your ERP, CRM or any other of your systems that might store vendor information.
- Matching: The MDM finds duplicated supplier records and merges them, standardizing the information according to your data governance policies.
- Publishing: Once data has been cleansed and standardized, you can make it available to downstream systems that need access to it, such as your business intelligence or analytics tools.
As a multi-domain MDM, Profisee allows you to explore relationships between supplier data and other types of information, such as product records, for instance.
Whether you decide to master data from other domains or not, you now have a single source of truth for accurate, up-to-date and standardized supplier information.
How does an MDM solution help optimize supplier spend?
How does supplier master data management support generative AI?
Supplier master data management supports generative AI by giving it a trusted source of vendor information. MDM solutions match and merge duplicate supplier records and establish trusted entity records so generative AI can ground its answers and actions in accurate facts, not just business context.
Learn more about using master data for enterprise GenAI.
How can I measure the return on 360 supplier intelligence?
Measure supplier 360 return on investment against the business outcomes you want to improve. These are the four steps to evaluate ROI:
- Set a baseline: Document current supplier-related costs and performance, such as procurement spend, onboarding time, duplicate records and compliance issues.
- Define the outcomes you expect: Identify which improvements supplier 360 should deliver, such as lower costs, faster onboarding or fewer duplicate suppliers.
- Measure the change: Compare results after implementation against your baseline over a consistent period.
- Calculate the financial impact: Translate improvements into cost savings, avoided costs or productivity gains, then compare those benefits with the cost of implementing and maintaining supplier 360.
For a broader framework, see how to measure the business value of MDM.
