Fundamentals · master data, documents, ownership
Most supplier lists are not wrong. They are out of date.
Supplier administration is the unglamorous basis of everything else: who supplies what, who owns it, which documents exist and since when.
Before anything can be evaluated, monitored or audited there has to be a clean record. That is where most companies stall – not at the method but at the foundation. The list exists, but it grew over years and holds duplicates, departed contacts and companies that no longer trade under that name.
The cause is structural: a supplier is created when first needed and then nobody attends to them as long as deliveries arrive. Without defined ownership and without triggers, any dataset ages.
What belongs in a supplier record
- Identity: exact legal name, form, register number, seat and sites of performance.
- Relationship: what is sourced, since when, under which contract and at what criticality.
- Ownership: who inside your company answers for this supplier.
- Contacts: technical, commercial and emergency – with a check date.
- Documents: contracts, certificates, declarations, each with validity.
- History: evaluations, incidents and changes with date and author.
What keeps a dataset current
- One source
- One record per supplier that every function looks at – not three lists.
- Mandatory fields
- Few, but binding; an optional field stays empty.
- Triggers
- Changes, expiry dates and cycles create tasks instead of good intentions.
- Self-service
- The supplier maintains what only they know – addresses, contacts, certificates.
- Retirement
- Mark inactive suppliers rather than deleting them; the history is needed.
How SCRM covers it
One record, several views
Quality, information security and purchasing see the same data from their angle.
Verified and unverified apart
The difference between typed in and checked stays visible.
Maintenance at the supplier
Self-disclosure through free access instead of chasing by email.
Unbroken history
What changed when and by whom – the basis of any evidence.
Frequently asked
Doesn’t the ERP do this?
The ERP keeps payables for accounting. What is missing is criticality, evidence with expiry, evaluations and history. The two belong connected but are not the same.
How do you clean up a grown dataset?
Not in one go. Start with the critical suppliers and pull the rest along through normal operations – at the next order, at the next certificate.
How many mandatory fields make sense?
Few enough that they actually get filled. Ten maintained fields are worth more than forty empty ones.