A Supplier Community Day full of surprises

Yet again, a global audience at the Supplier Community Day — but all the attendees have one thing in common: They are SupplyOn Administrators. They play a key role at SupplyOn and that’s why our latest Supplier Community Day has focused on exactly this target group. Read on to find out all about the event and its two highlights.

The key note brings it to the point

For the Supplier Community Day kick-off, we were able to get Thomas, our Vice President for SRM and Portal Solutions on board. The main point of his key note being: “The administrators are the enabler for their companies at SupplyOn”. It is therefore all the more important that they know about the processes, solutions and possibilities.

Tips and tricks that make the life of an Admin easier

As a survey showed, the tips and tricks are very appreciated by our participants of the Supplier Community Days. Regina, our trainer, therefore compiled the most frequently asked questions from supplier admins and demonstrated the answers live on the platform. It is interesting to note that more than 20% of our suppliers’ administrators have to manage more than 30 different user accounts. For them and all others we reveal some tricks around the user management. Did you know that you can copy the settings of an old account instead of creating a new user from scratch? Suppliers discovered this, plus information on two-factor authentication and much more right at the start of the Supplier Community Day.

The next part of the event is one of our highlights:

Premiere at the Supplier Community Day: A supplier reports

For this Supplier Community Day we were very lucky to have Marcus Hylla as a speaker. He works at the global lubricant manufacturer Klüber Lubrication (Link: german homepage of Klüber) and has been using SupplyOn since 2003. As Customer Portal Manager, Marcus knows the situation of other suppliers inside out:

At Klüber, we face the challenge as a supplier of having to manage over 500 different customer portals and receiving more portal requests every day.

So, if anyone knows the ins and outs of portal management, it’s Marcus. Under his influence, the Klüber Lubrication Group has implemented the VDA 4993 guideline, which includes a systematic approach from the approval and testing of new portals all the way to user and rights management. At the Supplier Community Day, Marcus talked about his experiences as a Portal Administrator and his day-to-day work with SupplyOn. He also answered questions from the audience. We would like to take this opportunity to thank him once again for this great insight and for supporting the Supplier Community!

A sneak peek into the further development of the SupplyOn solutions

The “News and Roadmap” topic is a must at the Supplier Community Days. Here, suppliers can catch a glimpse of the plans and further developments of the SupplyOn solutions. Three of our Product Managers and Product Owners presented what they are currently working on and gathered feedback from suppliers.

Our Product Manager Portal Joachim showed suppliers how to map their company structure at SupplyOn, now and possibly in the future. He described how Contact & User (Identity) Management could look soon.  The suppliers had the opportunity to actively get involved at this point and answer Joachim’s questions live in a poll. This way he’s able to take their feedback into account when developing solutions.

Frank, as Product Manager for Supplier Management Applications, provided insights into the new Certificate Management as part of the modernization of the Business Directory solution. Just as with Joachim, suppliers here could volunteer for user interviews, which take place after the event to gather detailed feedback from our suppliers.

Mirjam, Product Owner for SCM, revealed to the suppliers her intentions and ideas for the Notification Manager from Logistics & Finance that is planned for this year. She also took the opportunity to have the suppliers vote live on what information they would like to receive by email in the future, and how often they would like to receive it.

Supplier Community has big plans for 2022

But we didn’t just present the roadmap of SupplyOn solutions to administrators. We also outlined our plan for Supplier Community activities in 2022, because the Supplier Community Days are just one part of what we offer our Supplier Community.

We will therefore not only continue our existing Supplier Community activities, but also expand them. This much can be said: The foundation of a Supplier Expert Group is the logical next step. The aim is to motivate our suppliers to become active members of SupplyOn and to get involved.

The cherry on top: We launch the Supplier Forum exclusively on Supplier Community Day

After a successful event all around, we had one last ace up our sleeve: The go-live of the Supplier Forum. The Supplier Forum – a place where suppliers can exchange ideas with each other – is personally introduced by the authoritative idea generator Jonah, Junior Consultant in the Supplier Onboarding Team. The participants of this Supplier Community Day were among the first to become active in the forum, as this is where the voting took place regarding the topic for the next Supplier Community Day. (Learn more about the Supplier Forum in the corresponding blog post).

If you believe the bare figures, we are right on target with the concept of our Supplier Community Days. Our first events 9 months ago attracted 59 participants, this time there were a remarkable 841. This is also the reason why we muted the microphones during the event. However, this did not dampen the interaction, as our Social Interaction Team was typing away in the background of the Supplier Community Day to answer 150 individual questions from the suppliers.

Conclusion: We are happy and so are our suppliers, because 95% of the suppliers will come back according to the survey results. But regardless of this little success story, the following applies: Nothing is older than yesterday’s newspaper. Or to put it in other words, the preparations for the next event are already starting, because:  After the Supplier Community Day, the next is in the making!

Are you a supplier on the SupplyOn platform? Log into the Supplier Forum and watch the recording of the Supplier Community Day!