What We Do
We transform the chaos and unsecured nature of vendor onboarding into an orderly, secured, trackable process – so you can sleep better at night.
What We Do
Six Ways We Transform Your Process
Invitation
Start at the beginning: onboard only the vendors you specifically invite and eliminate a ton of problems.
Before
Multiple departments inviting the same vendor- duplicates abound!
Abundance of redundant vendors- how many office supply vendors do you need? Tail spend impossible to track.
After
Invitation workflows ensure onboarding is complete before work commences.
Multiple remit addresses for the same tax ID can be ‘routed’ to a single vendor ID.
Invitation workflows can require approval for all new vendors- eliminating maverick spend and channeling usage to already vetted and approved vendors.
Payment Optimization
Marry your payables strategy to your vendor onboarding process and convert vendors to electronic payment types
Before
Despite internal mandates and efforts, the majority of vendors are still paid by check
Incomplete contact information thwarts efforts to talk vendors off of checks
Bank calling campaigns for Virtual Card are disruptive and yield minimal results
No clear way to report on effectiveness of payment strategy
After
Drive preferred payment method when vendors onboard by configuring form to feature favorable payment terms
Earn rebate revenue from the very first invoice paid by marrying Virtual Card onboarding to the vendor onboarding process
Easily convert the majority of vendors to electronic payment types
Increase Virtual Card spend - and rebates- with continuous digital enrollment
Dashboard analytics to monitor and adjust payment strategy
Form Submission
Rely on vendors to submit their credentials, and rely on the platform to vet the submissions.
Before
Business units chase vendors for onboarding documentation, likely via email or snail mail.
Vendor desk must decipher, organize and store submitted docs.
Vendor desk must manually vet submitted info to determine if it is legit.
Business unit has no idea if the vendor has been onboarded successfully or not, unless they call (like repeatedly!) to check.
Vendor desk must communicate with vendor outside of auditable chain, e.g., email or phone call with questions or additional needs.
After
Vendor controlled submission of all required info securely via platform.
PaymentWorks runs checks with 3rd parties and with a proprietary algorithm to determine accuracy and validity of submitted identity elements.
Automatic (totally legible!) W9 creation included with submission.
Vendor desk chooses to accept, return or reject vendor submission.
Business unit can track onboarding and payment status in the platform.
Vendor desk can return form with a message instructing the vendor on additional requests/changes needed, etc.- keeping all communication related to the onboarding in one place.
Compliance + Security Checks
Don’t sweat it. Automatically stay compliant with ongoing monitoring.
Before
Vendor desk must verify tax ID, address; generally with third party tool that is not automated and has no integration (i.e., MANUALLY).
Vendor desk must check sanctions lists at onboarding AND prior to each PO issued, yes, manually.
Vendor desk must somehow gain confidence that the banking information is legitimate- through a 3rd party or with phone calls, yes again, manually
After
Automatic tax ID and mailing address checks upon form submission- ‘valid’ or ‘invalid’ responses clear.
Sanctions lists checked at onboarding and continuously monitored, any changes trigger an update and a new approval workflow.
Payments security for domestic ACH payments with banking risk assessment done in platform, liability for fraud lives with PaymentWorks.
Approval Workflows & Audit Trail
Who and what and when- all collected in one location.
Before
All approvals for new info tracked outside of the ERP- spreadsheets and emails abound.
Anyone in an approval role is likely seeing all vendor info, not just what they need to see.
No way to track cycle time on each step of approval.
Returns by specific approvers requires a paper chase to ensure everyone is seeing up-to-date info.
Practically impossible to adequately insure.
Practically impossible to adequately insure. (Worth repeating!)
After
Auditable: nothing gets in the ERP without a digital trail of who approved and when.
"Notes" field allows input for additional context for approvals.
Fine grained permissions for specific roles = approvers only see what they need to see.
Ability to have more than one person per role (compliance, HR, etc.) eliminates logjams.
Automated reminders when an item is awaiting approval keeps onboarding moving.
Timestamps allow for identifying bottlenecks.
Controlled process allows for more favorable insurance coverage.
Existing Supplier Updates
At least 30% of your suppliers will update a piece of information this year. Let’s keep it all straight.
Before
Changes incoming via unsecure channels: i.e., email, phone.
All approvals for changed info tracked outside of the ERP- generally in spreadsheets and emails threads.
New remit address, new order address often end up creating new vendor records leading to duplicates.
Difficult to organize and manage multiple vendors with the same tax ID... yes, more duplicates.
Internal controls and verification processes not airtight auditable.
Number one point of entry for fraudsters to try to take over an account.
After
Eliminates the dilemma of duplicates with choices triggered by existing tax IDs.
All vendor submitted updates automatically trigger new approval workflow.
Compliance and security checks automatically applied to submitted updates.
Change to status on sanctions lists automatically triggers a vendor update.
Nothing gets in the ERP without a digital trail of who approved and when.
MFA for vendor onboarding virtually eliminates the risk of an account takeover.
Payments Security
We saved the best for last: transfer your fraud risk to us.
Before
If your team gets tricked, your org loses money.
Determining bank account authenticity falls to an individual or a team, using largely manual processes with incomplete information.
No way to audit this process outside of spreadsheets, which isn’t really auditable.
Organizations need to stay up-to-date on fraud schemes and constantly adjust process to defend.
If the process fails, the organization is likely on the hook for the lost funds, and/or has a PR issue on their hands.
After
Vendor banking is risk assessed at onboarding and continually right up to payment time.
Vendors are given an ‘okay to pay’ status, triggering fraud indemnification (aka: it’s not your problem if there is a fraud).
Best practices in place = more favorable coverage from your insurer.
Fraud indemnification opens the door to move to ACH payments with peace of mind.
No risk of losing funds to a fraudster- up to $2M per occurrence!
How Cabarrus County, NC
Offloaded Risk and Measured Success
Cabarrus County’s $2.5 million dollar mistake turned into an opportunity to rebuild their vendor management process, eliminate the stress on staff, and to offload future risk.
Contact Us
Put Fraud Risk On Us
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200 Berkeley Street, 19th Floor
Boston, MA 02116