Creating Discontinuation Processes

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to create a discontinuation process project in a supplier’s profile.

About Discontinuation Processes

Note

This lesson teaches you how to use process projects to disqualify suppliers. If your organization uses legacy supplier disqualification projects, refer to Qualification Management Using Supplier Qualification and Disqualification Projects.

Discontinuation processes enable you to disqualify suppliers that no longer meet your organization's standards or requirements. These processes are linked to the SAP Ariba disqualification lifecycle stage and can be started from the Qualifications or Processes detail area of the supplier profile. Any discontinuation processes you create appear on the Disqualification tile of your Supplier Management dashboard.

When you initiate a discontinuation process, you can choose to fully or partially discontinue an existing qualification process. This depends on the commodity, region, and department combination you select. To fully discontinue the process, leave the prefilled combination of commodities, regions, and departments unchanged. If you want to partially discontinue the process, select a subset from the prefilled commodities, regions, and departments.

Keep these points in mind when creating discontinuation processes:

Currently, discontinuation is only supported for qualification processes. Miscellaneous processes cannot be discontinued.
Discontinuation processes are designed to be internal. They don’t involve suppliers unless you include external modular questionnaires, in which case the supplier receives notifications.
You can only have one discontinuation process for each specific combination of commodity, region, and department.
If you partially discontinue an existing qualification process, you can still fully discontinue that process later. The partial discontinuation remains unaffected if you do so.
If two existing qualification processes have a parent-child relationship and you start a discontinuation process that has a child relationship with both, it always nests under the parent, not the grandparent, even if you initiate the discontinuation from the grandparent process.
Once you initiate a discontinuation process, you can’t create a new qualification process for the same combination of commodities, regions, and departments until the discontinuation process expires or is renewed.
If you set expiration and reminder schedules in the intake form, the discontinuation process will expire at the scheduled time. Before expiration, the system sends reminders and changes the process status to expiring, then updates the status to expired once the period ends. You can renew an expired discontinuation process to create a new qualification process with the same settings.

How to Create Discontinuation Processes in Supplier Profiles

Follow these steps to create a discontinuation process project that disqualifies a supplier for a specific combination of commodities, regions, and departments.

Prerequisites

The process project feature (SM-16798) must be enabled in your site.

To create a discontinuation process project, you must be a member of both the SM Modular Questionnaire Manager global user group and the Process Initiator group of the existing qualification process to be discontinued.

The qualification process to be discontinued must be approved or conditionally approved. You can't discontinue a qualification process that’s denied or in progress.

Business Scenario

At NSM Global, category managers maintain up-to-date supplier qualifications and initiate discontinuation processes as necessary. Recent quality issues with supplier Scalene IT Solutions have led to project delays. After evaluating these issues, category manager Joe Ortiz concludes that Scalene no longer meets NSM Global's standards. Joe must fully discontinue Scalene's qualification for computer services across all North American business units.

Additionally, Acme Business Solutions, another supplier, is downscaling and will no longer provide computer services in Canada. Joe needs to partially discontinue Acme's computer services qualification in Canada while keeping it intact for other North American regions.

In this video, you’ll watch Joe create full and partial discontinuation processes in supplier profiles.

Steps

In the Qualifications or Processes detail area of the supplier's profile, locate the qualification process you want to discontinue and choose More→Discontinue.
Answer the questions in the process intake form.
Choose Next.
Select questionnaires to include in the discontinuation process by performing the following actions:
1. In the Add new questionnaires area, select the new questionnaires you want to include in the process. The system automatically selects required questionnaires, and you can't uncheck them.
2. Optional: If the questionnaire has already been assigned and is reusable, perform any of the following actions in the Reuse existing questionnaires area:
  - Select the questionnaires to reuse in the new process.
  - Slide the toggle switch to request an update as part of the new process. If the questionnaire has been set up to always request updates, you can't change this setting.
Choose Next.
Optional: The default recipient for internal questionnaires is the process initiator who creates the discontinuation process project and becomes its owner. Change the recipient of any internal questionnaires from the default by performing the following steps:
1. To the right of the internal questionnaire, choose Change recipient.
2. Select the recipient that you want to use. If the recipient you want isn't listed, search for them.
3. Choose Confirm.
Optional: Enter a message to internal questionnaire recipients. This message is included in the e-mail notifications recipients receive asking them to complete the questionnaires.
Choose Send.
Choose OK to confirm that you want to create the discontinuation process.

Result

Discontinuation Type	Result
Full discontinuation	The qualification process changes to a discontinuation process and is displayed in red in the Processes and Qualifications detail areas of the supplier's profile. The status changes from approved to in progress.
Partial discontinuation	A new discontinuation process is created and is shown in red, nested under the existing qualification process in the Processes and Qualifications detail areas of the supplier's profile. The existing qualification process remains approved, while the newly created discontinuation process is in progress.

Discontinuation Type

Result

Full discontinuation

The qualification process changes to a discontinuation process and is displayed in red in the Processes and Qualifications detail areas of the supplier's profile.

The status changes from approved to in progress.

Partial discontinuation

A new discontinuation process is created and is shown in red, nested under the existing qualification process in the Processes and Qualifications detail areas of the supplier's profile.

The existing qualification process remains approved, while the newly created discontinuation process is in progress.

Recipients of new internal questionnaires receive notifications inviting them to complete the questionnaires. Additionally, recipients of existing internal questionnaires for which you've requested updates receive notifications with those requests.

All questionnaires included in the discontinuation process project are displayed in the Questionnaires area of the supplier’s profile, where approvers and task owners can review them and complete their assigned tasks.

Create a Discontinuation Process in a Supplier’s Profile

In this exercise, you’ll create a discontinuation process in a supplier’s profile.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Summary

Discontinuation processes allow you to fully or partially disqualify suppliers that no longer meet your organization's standards.
You can create a discontinuation process directly from the Qualifications or Processes area in a supplier’s profile.
Only one discontinuation process is allowed per unique combination of commodity, region, and department.
Full discontinuation replaces the existing qualification; partial discontinuation affects only selected regions, commodities, or departments.
Internal recipients complete required questionnaires during the discontinuation process; supplier involvement only occurs if external questionnaires are used.

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