Vendor On-Boarding Process
Description: During the vendor on-boarding process we bring vendors into our maintenance program. It involves us gathering information about them. It includes obtaining copies of their Insurance certificates and W-9 as well as billing information and appropriate contact information. It is also the time that we inform them of how the process of billing works on our Software. For vendors that have not previously worked with us, this is quite a change for them, especially smaller vendors. If they are in the habit of sending paper bills, this is no longer a viable option. They must now electronically bill through our software. We supply them with the appropriate documentation and user credentials. None of this is automated and human intervention is required at nearly every step.
Critical Steps: Contact is critical, but once contact is made, the critical items are uploading the required documentation. There are two pieces of required documentation, the W-9 and the certificate of insurance. Without these items, we cannot do business.
Points of failure: There are two critical points of failure. 1.) Vendor contact – This involves emailing the vendors. There can be failure because it is not automated and there is no automated tracking in place. So, we send out emails, we are basically checking of a list on who responded back, so we know who to send to a second or third time. 2.) Documentation – For those vendors that responded via contact, Did they upload the documents required and were they the correct documents? Currently we have no way to monitor who has uploaded which documents and whether or not the documents are correct and/or valid.

How could we prevent or reduce failure (Poka-Yoke)– Currently there is not enough automation in the process. Everything is very manual. The initial contact should be automated (the1st, 2nd, 3rd contact). This could very easily be tracked and automated through an email marketing system. This would remove the human element of trying to keep track of who responded and who didn’t. It would also add value by providing some reporting on who had responded.
Documentation is a little more difficult. We could certainly automate tracking whether or not documents have been uploaded. The difficulty would be ensuring that we had the correct and most up to date documents. There is software available to scan and ensure that these are valid on upload, but it is at significant cost. My suggestion would be for a few additional questions on upload such as expiration date of documents etc. That way we could then track when the documents expired so we could ask for new documents electronically in the future.