Characterizing Supplier Certificate Management

You can use supplier management questionnaires to gather certification information from suppliers. Any internal or external supplier management questionnaire can include certificate questions, including request, registration, and qualification questionnaires. However, SAP Ariba recommends using modular questionnaires to collect supplier certificates.

Managing supplier certificates in modular questionnaires involves the following tasks:

• Sending certificate questionnaires to suppliers

  You can ask suppliers to provide information about their certificates by inviting them to complete the relevant modular questionnaires. Depending on your site's solution package, these certificate-related modular questionnaires can be standalone questionnaires, engagement risk assessments, or included in a process project.

• Making approval decisions for certificate questionnaires

  If you’re an approver, you must review supplier answers and approve or deny their certificate questionnaires or questionnaire updates.

• Monitoring certificate status

  You can monitor certificate status by viewing certificates in the Certificates detail area of supplier profiles and by:

  • Receiving e-mail notifications

    If you’re the primary supplier manager or the owner of a modular questionnaire project, you may receive e-mail notifications for upcoming and expired expirations, depending on how the questionnaire is configured. These notifications can relate to a particular certificate or the entire modular questionnaire project.

  • Monitoring questionnaire status

    In the Questionnaires area of the supplier's profile, you can view the status of linked modular questionnaire projects and the questionnaires themselves. If a modular questionnaire project's status is Expiring or Expired, it may follow an expiration schedule. Administrators can configure certificate questions in the questionnaires to trigger an Expiring or Expired status for the questionnaire when the certificate expires.

    Note

    It's important to remember that the certificate expiration date always determines certificate expirations and the status of the modular questionnaire project in which they are collected does not influence them.

Modular questionnaire projects offer special features to support certificate management. A template creator in your site sets up these questionnaires. Some questionnaires may request multiple related certificates, while others may ask for a single critical certificate.

Modular questionnaire project templates and the certificate questions they contain have the following features to help with certificate management:

• Commodity, region, and department properties

  Modular questionnaire project templates include properties that enable you to associate a certificate or group of certificates with the specific combinations of commodity, region, and department to which they are relevant. The certificates you collect in a modular questionnaire project inherit that commodity, region, and department information.

• Questionnaire and certificate types

  A questionnaire type, found in the template properties, and a certificate type, located in the settings for certificate questions, enable you to distinguish between various modular questionnaire projects and categorize the certificates they include based on their specific purposes.

• Support for various types of questions

  Modular questionnaires can include multiple questions of the Certificate type, sections dedicated to certificates with their own individual questions, and other types of content.

• Expiration schedules and notifications

  Certificates always have expiration dates, and the modular questionnaire project where they're collected can also be set up to expire. Notifications alert users about upcoming expirations and when the expiration date has passed.

Each questionnaire has its own template and approval flow, allowing your organization to send certificates to the appropriate approvers.