Starting External Supplier Registrations

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to start a new external supplier registration

About Inviting a Supplier to Register

Inviting a supplier to register asks them to participate in their registration from the beginning by filling out external questionnaires. If you want to register a supplier without asking them to fill out external questionnaires, you can start an internal registration instead. In an internal registration, recipients in your organization submit questionnaires on the supplier's behalf.

Your organization's registration projects can have one or more external (supplier-facing) registration questionnaires. If there are multiple external questionnaires, some of them can be optional. You can choose which optional external questionnaires to send with the registration invitation. Each external registration questionnaire generates a separate e-mail invitation to the supplier contact.

If the ability to specify a requester when inviting a supplier to register feature is enabled in your site, you can also choose the requester for the registration, such as an individual in your organization with whom the supplier is familiar or already has a relationship. The requester's name shows in the From field of registration invitations.

How to Start an External Supplier Registration

Use these steps to start a new external supplier registration. Inviting a supplier to register creates a supplier registration project, invites them to fill out external registration questionnaires, and makes internal registration questionnaires available for editing.

Prerequisites

  • You must be a member of the Supplier Registration Manager or SM Ops Administrator group to invite a supplier to register.
  • To specify a requester for the registration during invitation, the requester selection feature (SM-20904) must be enabled in your site.

Business Scenario

Amy Chen is a supplier manager at the buying organization NSM Global. A business user at her company previously requested a new supplier, Intellitech Direct, and the supplier request was approved. Now, it’s Amy’s responsibility to invite the supplier to register.

In this video, you’ll watch Amy start a new external supplier registration for Intellitech Direct.

Steps

  1. Locate the supplier you want to register on the Supplier Management dashboard.

    Hint

    In supplier search results, you can filter by the registration status Not Invited to show new suppliers who haven't yet been invited to register.

  2. Choose the supplier's name to open their profile.

  3. Perform one of the following actions to open the Registration detail area:

    • In the classic supplier 360° profile, choose Registration in the left-hand navigation bar.
    • In the supplier's profile summary, choose the registration status link in the Supplier Status panel.

  4. Choose Invite.

  5. If the registration project includes optional questionnaires, select the ones you want to send to the supplier. If there is only one questionnaire or if a questionnaire is required, it is automatically selected, and you can't deselect it.

    To preview a questionnaire, choose Preview.

  6. Choose the contact to whom you want to send the registration invitation. If the supplier has only one contact, it's automatically selected. If the contact you wish to invite isn't in the list of available contacts and you have the appropriate permissions, you can add them now.

  7. Optional: If the select requester feature is available in your site, perform one of the following actions:

    • If there's no requester set for the registration and you want to make a person in your organization the requester, choose Select requester, select that person, and choose Confirm.
    • If there's already a requester for the registration and you want to select a different requester, choose Change requester, select a different person in your organization, and choose Confirm.

  8. Choose Send.

Result

The supplier now has the registration status Invited. The supplier contact you selected receives an invitation for each external questionnaire you sent. The supplier contact can use the links in the invitation e-mails to sign into an existing account or create a new account on SAP Business Network and fill out and submit the questionnaires.

The Registration detail area of the supplier's profile now shows the external questionnaires you sent and the contact you sent them to. It also displays any internal questionnaires your organization uses for registration and all the registration tasks. To view a questionnaire or the details for a completed task, choose View.

If you chose a registration requester, the invitation e-mail notifications to the supplier show the requester's name in the From field and the requester's e-mail address in the Reply-To field. Otherwise, the name and e-mail address in those fields are determined by how your organization has set up each registration questionnaire.

Note

On SAP Business Network, suppliers see an option to decline to participate in a supplier management questionnaire, just as they can decline to participate in a sourcing event. If the contact you invited to register declines to participate in a registration questionnaire, they can no longer access the questionnaire, but the supplier remains in Invited status.

Next Steps

While the supplier is in Invited status, but before the invited contact has responded to your invitation, you can cancel the registration if necessary. For example, suppose the supplier contact hasn't responded, and you need the supplier to achieve Registered status for business continuity. In that case, you can cancel the external registration and start an internal one. If the supplier contact has responded to the invitation, you can only cancel the registration under certain circumstances.

External registration questionnaires close after the time defined in your site's questionnaire setup. After a questionnaire has closed, the supplier contact can no longer edit it to fill it out. If a supplier hasn't responded or the invitation has bounced, reinviting the supplier to register reopens any closed questionnaires and allows you to choose a different recipient if necessary. By default, questionnaires close 30 days after the invitation is sent, but your organization can specify a different amount of time in its questionnaire setup.

You can track registration progress using the Supplier Onboarding Progress data snapshot or analytical reports.

Start a New External Supplier Registration

In this exercise, you’ll start a new external supplier registration as a supplier manager.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Steps

  1. On the Supplier Management dashboard, search for the supplier PLC Enterprises.

    1. Enter PLC Enterprises in the search bar.

    2. Choose the search icon.

  2. Choose the supplier’s name to open their profile.

  3. Choose Registration in the left-hand navigation bar of the supplier’s profile.

  4. Choose Invite.

  5. Select Takahiro Suzuki as the recipient.

  6. Choose Send.

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