Supplier Self Service

[gregglarkin]

List,

Our Mexico division is interested in writing or purchasing a supplier self service solution. Here are the requirements:

current process:
1.- Company buys something
2.- Supplier sends invoice
3.- One day a week, someone in Mexico division receives the supplier's invoices.
4.- All the invoices received are entered in JDE to generate the payment. (a lot of manual work)

Desired process:
1.- Company buys something
2.- Supplier creates their invoice
3.- Supplier enters their invoice in the portal (from their own location).
4.- The invoice is reviewed (system vs documents) .
5.- If the invoice is approved in the portal, this sytem will send to JDE to be paid.

I am in the process of setting up a demo with Oracle for their 8.12 supplier self service solution. However, we are still on XE and need a solution for that release until we can make the transition to 8.12.

I am looking for customer feedback on Oracle's supplier self service solution. I am also interested in hearing about third party solutions for XE on up.

Vendors and business partners are welcome to comment and/or contact me directly - [email protected]

Gregg

 

[Solutionkid]

In reviewing the S-S-S documentation at the 8.12 level ...
Supplier Self-Service appears to support:
Supplier initiated purchase order acknowledgements
Supplier initiated purchase order shipment notification
Supplier inquiry into receipt routing and status
Supplier initiated purchase order inquiry
Supplier initiated inventory inquiry
Supplier initiated receipt inquiry
Supplier initiated payment inquiry
Thus I'm fairly sure that "right out of the box" it will not meet several of your objectives.

 

[Gary P]

An excellent business model is to KISS (I hope I don't have to expand that). We don't do that exactly at my company, but we are expanding on designing our own portals that are later validated by JDE. Here's how I'd do it:

Create a table, sort of like a Z file, that can be accessed via ODBC. This includes all relevant information on the invoice, as well as a few 1/0 validation fields (explained later). You'll treat this like the Z files. You then create a web form on your portal so the supplier can use this form to enter an invoice. When they hit submit, a record is created in that new table, and all validation fields are blank.

Next, a user uses a JDE form that can see that table to look up any orders that need certain validations. They then use any business functions to run validations and enter a 1 or 0 based on if they pass. Users could then decide what to do if an invoice failed a certain validation. You could handle this in JDE through a find/browse form where the select option allows data manipulation, and each validation is handled by a row exit.

Once an invoice has passed all validations, it can be processed by your system. Simply filter for any records where all validation fields hold a 1.

Kind of a fast explanation, since I'm working on something similar on my own, but this will allow your suppliers to use interoperability to enter invoices through a web portal, but your company can use JDE to take it from there.