Linkana - suppliers monitoring
Linkana is an end-to-end supplier management platform that operates from the supplier approval request to the supplier phase out. Linkana performs automated checks on public lists and automatically generates available supplier certificates. It then requests the additional private documents needed for approval according to the hiring company’s policy.
Initially, the product only operated in the supplier approval phase, but through mapping the pains within the supplier management process, we identified the opportunity to generate more value by also monitoring these suppliers. So we started from the initial question to explore possible solutions:
“How can we monitor the suppliers in our active base?”
We conducted an internal CSD dynamic to map the scenario with the sales team, customer success, and support. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with customers based on the generated hypotheses
- Supplier Monitoring: Current practices and frequency.
- Audit Rules: Importance and rules for audits.
- Monitoring Parameters: Criteria for supplier and document selection.
- Monitoring Priorities: Ranking of Public Data, Certificates, and Private Documents.
- Notifications: Scenarios for notifications and preferred methods.
- Approval Reversal: Process for invalidated documents.
- Private Document Monitoring: Criteria, focusing on expiry date or period.
- Document Resubmission: Cases for resubmission of documents without expiry dates.
- Monitoring Interest: Percentage of supplier base of interest for monitoring.
- User profiles: Whether the individuals involved in the registration approval process are different from those who do the monitoring.
We identified that users were unable to satisfactorily monitor the supplier base and that they did so by sampling. With the automation of the process, we would be able to activate for the entire base. We set the deadlines for reissuing certificates and checking lists according to the frequency they occurred (quarterly, annual and semi-annual).
We had to decide how to deal with 3 different types of information origin: public certificates, public list queries, and private documents sent by the supplier. As the origin was different, the way we could update this information was different, especially from a technological point of view. The business rules decision had to take into account the way the checks were implemented by the developers.
The data and documents that were requested directly from the suppliers would be charged by periodic emails requesting the update in Linkana before their expiration, without the Linkana customer needing to charge them for the update. Once there was a problem identified in the monitoring, the user would be notified to take the necessary measures with the supplier.
Certificates -> Automatic periodic check
Public lists -> Automatic periodic check
Private data -> According to validity, by email
To give users visibility, we created the monitoring panel, where the user can view all data and information from suppliers. On this panel, we inform the date of the last update of each piece of information, provide access to attachments and information on the status of these documents and data. We also identified that users would like to request specific updates outside of the monitoring routine.
Follow up…
This was the MVP version of this feature. After implementation, we defined product metrics for actions related to it to verify if it is really generating value in the process.
Actions such as, promptly notifying the supplier about a document that has expired despite the emails, deactivating contracts with the supplier due to a change in classification due to new pending documentation that is being monitored at the moment to verify the success of the monitoring feature.