Enterprise Supplier Management System (ESMS)
Tiered pre-qualification for your total supply base
www.achilles.com
Services for professional procurement.
Be better informed, make better decisions.
Reduce risk. Reduce cost.
Raise performance.
Total supply base risk management
As a Purchasing, Supply Chain or Vendor Management professional you are faced with the increasing
challenges of managing data, compliance and risk in your supplier sourcing and procurement activities.
Achilles’ Enterprise Supplier Management System (ESMS) supports your organisation’s risk management
strategy by reducing procurement cost, effort and risk across your total supply base.
Managing risk across your total supply base
Achilles ESMS is built around our core Community Supplier Management System (CSMS), and enables you to access validated information about all your suppliers via our advanced, secure online platform.
This enhanced solution includes a risk and compliance model configured to the specific needs of your organisation and extended to cover your total supply base.
The risk model assesses suppliers against key criteria that you define, and indicates the specific pre-qualification process you require them to complete.
Illustrative supplier registration data used to power your risk model
We embed your policies and standards into the supplier pre-qualification process – driving consistency and compliance across your purchasing activities.
Supplier data capture, validation and maintenance Systematic risk management and compliance Bespoke risk model driving tiered pre-qualification Total supply base consolidation on one platform Secure interface and advanced search / filter tools Interface with your ERP and procurement systems
Comprehensive pre-qualification
The heart of our solution is a systematic supplier pre-qualification programme with data capture through online questionnaires supported by rigorous validation by our assessment teams and qualified auditors.
Typically the following supplier information is captured and validated:
Additional pre-qualification modules can be added to provide more detailed supplier information across areas of specific interest to your organisation:
Customers can also include audits as part of their supplier qualification process. Audit programmes align with the pre-qualification questionnaire criteria, providing enhanced validation through on-site assessments.
Illustrative areas covered by Achilles audits
Finding the right supplier faster
Once suppliers have been validated our secure cloud-based platform then allows your buyers to search for products and services and view the associated compliance and risk assessment information. A range of standard and optional online functionality is available to support your procurement activities.
General company data
Products & Services
Finance Insurance & Legal Environment Quality Sustainability /
CSR
Health & Safety
Financial Analysis Sustainability / CSR Carbon Reduction Supply Chain Mapping Products & services offered Supplier location
Estimated contract value or turnover Number of employees
Quality Health Safety
Buying organisation risk model rules
All Suppliers
Pre-qualification stages driven by your risk model
All suppliers are not the same. Our configurable and systematic risk management solutions reflect your
organisation’s approach to vendor compliance.
Pre-qualification requirements for your suppliers can be tiered based on their criticality to your business.
Our supplier pre-qualification programme for your total supplybase includes a set of preliminary questions that all your suppliers complete.
This provides a basic registration (sufficient for low-risk profile suppliers) and also powers your risk model. The model identifies which suppliers must complete additional pre-qualification stages in order to satisfy your compliance rules.
The risk model uses a range of criteria - e.g. products and services offered, contract value, supplier location – to stream suppliers through a tiered pre-qualification process based on their criticality to your business.
Data captured by Achilles at any stage of the process can be fed into your risk model to drive additional pre-qualification requirements for relevant suppliers.
Tiered pre-qualification paths reflect different supplier risk profiles
Low risk profile: Pre-qualification complete after stage 1
Medium risk profile: Pre-qualification complete after stage 2
High risk profile: Pre-qualification complete after
Illustrative tiered pre-qualification process – showing all available modules
4. Audit 3. Sustainability / CSR Reduction3. Carbon 3. Financial Analysis 3. Supply Chain Mapping 1. Supplier Registration 2. Supplier Pre-qualification Questionnaire
KEY:
Registration for all suppliers Completes pre-qualification for low-risk suppliers Drives further pre-qualification for other suppliers Core pre-qualification questionnaireOptional specialist modules 1.
2.
3. 3. 3. 3.
Part of your purchasing ecosystem
Exchanging data between Achilles’ supplier risk management solutions and your existing ERP,
ePurchasing or back-office systems enables you to improve, maintain and use accurate supplier
information across your organisation and processes.
Quality, consistency and accuracy of supplier data
To interface with your existing processes and systems we will work with you to make our data as open as possible.
Creating data feeds between Achilles and other areas of your purchasing ecosystem helps to unify information and drives a range of benefits:
• Supports presentation of Achilles’ risk management information throughout the supplier life-cycle.
• Ensures supplier records are updated and their accuracy maintained on an on-going basis.
• Maintains accuracy in the vendor master file avoiding degraded or missing data such as emails, addresses, VAT numbers etc. • Can support implementations of ERP and ePurchasing suites
by ensuring clean data enters the system and is consistently maintained.
Data Exchange solution options
1. Achilles ESMS includes a basic data exchange facility which provides a periodic update of supplier information held in your ESMS. We provide this as a scheduled CSV-formatted report to import into your ERP/Procurement/Back Office/MIS solution, or to open in spreadsheets for analytical purposes.
2. For larger purchasing operations with more exacting requirements (including the need to maintain daily scheduled data updates) we offer a configurable, direct system-to-system data exchange using web services.
3. We publish our own web service specification free-of-charge to customers, and on request we can investigate providing bespoke interfaces to meet your specific requirements.
Centralisation, alignment and co-ordination of data By harmonising through a single Achilles supplier identification number, Achilles becomes part of your master data management approach.
Data from your Achilles supplier risk management solution is synchronised with your internal systems, delivering accurate and up-to-date information across your organisation.
We also offer an automated cross-reference between the standardised industry sector product and service codes
established in our solutions mapped to the product codes used in your business.
Accuracy for supporting systems and processes
Our data exchange solutions enable access to clean and accurate data by all processes/systems downstream of Achilles:
Achilles data exchange solutions have been established with client ERP and purchasing systems including Emptoris, SAP, and CMA Contiki.
Sourcing new suppliers Contract life-cycle management Spend analysis
Financial reporting
Health & Safety compliance
Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
Reduce risk. Reduce cost. Raise performance
Our supplier risk management solutions reduce cost and effort, allowing purchasing teams to focus on
other high value and strategic purchasing activities.
FTEs engaged in validation
In-house Using Achilles Reduced effort in supplier data validation1
6 1 83% 6 4 2 0 UK Electricity Company
Supporting your suppliers through the pre-qualification process
We support suppliers through the pre-qualification process following a proven model that has already qualified over 90,000 suppliers globally. We will work with you to identify the suppliers that you wish to participate and then start our fully managed “on-boarding” campaign using branded emails and our supplier support teams.
Supplier registration, validation, and publication process
Process Suppliers Achilles Buyers
Application Apply to join via the buyer’s website portal
Risk model drives Registration process. Low-risk suppliers: No further action. Critical suppliers: Proceed to next stage
Low-risk supplier information published
Supplier pre-qualification stages
Process Suppliers Achilles Buyers
Data Submission Annual subscription payment & complete online questionnaire(s)
Risk model drives scope of questionnaire (and audit) requirements
Validation
Data validation and assessment of questionnaire(s) including cross checking with third party data sources
Publish Pre-qualification complete Validation complete Supplier information published
1 Source: 2012 Customer Interviews
FTEs engaged in supplier database compilation
In-house Using Achilles Reduced effort in supplier database management1
10 100% 6 4 2 0 8 10
