PORTALINK CAST STUDY
KINCROME
THE CHALLENGE
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Kincrome is a warehouse and distribution business that has been supplying to Automative, Industrial and Hardware markets for 30 years.
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Kincrome has four warehouse/distribution centres, which are strategically located throughout Australia, to deliver responsive and accurate order dispatches to all target markets.
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Fast and accurate order-to-shipment cycles are an imperative component of Kincrome’s customer value proposition.
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Kincrome invests in technology solutions that can enhance its order accuracy and improve the speed of its turnaround time.
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Finding a solution to meet Kincrome’s needs that was robust, accurate, quick and cost-effective proved challenging.
1
PORTALINK CAST STUDY
KINCROME
THE CHALLENGE
-
Kincrome is a warehouse and distribution business that has been supplying to Automative, Industrial and Hardware markets for 30 years.
-
Kincrome has four warehouse/distribution centres, which are strategically located throughout Australia, to deliver responsive and accurate order dispatches to all target markets.
-
Fast and accurate order-to-shipment cycles are an imperative component of Kincrome’s customer value proposition.
-
Kincrome invests in technology solutions that can enhance its order accuracy and improve the speed of its turnaround time.
-
Finding a solution to meet Kincrome’s needs that was robust, accurate, quick and cost-effective proved challenging.
1
PORTALINK VENDOR EXCHANGE
Portalink Vendor Exchange is purpose built to simplify the bi-directional data exchange between Suppliers and Universities that use Technology One's hosted internal catalogues.
Integrates with TechnologyOne - Finance and Procurement Suites
Eliminates waste – faster, easier, cost effectively
Less overhead and fewer headaches
Portalink is a solution that provides unprecedented efficiency gains for the University and its Vendors
Portalink Vendor Exchange is a new system that automates product data exchange between a University's Supplier Community and their CiAnywhere internal catalogue/s and finance modules. Portalink also simplifies end-to-end EDI connectivity for the full transaction cycle, enabling quicker and more cost effective onboarding of trading partners - regardless of their EDI capability - and a richer experience for users.
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Links all supplier product data to CiAnywhere internal calalogue/s … with minimal effort … and without additional resources
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Achieves greater financial control
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Facilitates two and three-way matching (purchase order, goods received and invoices)
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Automates e-Invoice processing for ALL vendors
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Reduces costly leakage
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Enables more granular reporting
Sandra Matthews | Deputy Chief Financial Officer
University of New England
how it works
Portalink works with your preferred suppliers to build rich catalogue data.
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If we are not already working with any of your vendors, we will reach out and get the process underway.
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There are no barriers to entry for your supplier community. Portalink will help to ensure that contract pricing is correctly represented and that all the critical data fields are captured, regardless of the technical capabilities of each supplier:
Portalink makes the process as easy as possible for each Supplier by adapting to their existing Master Product Data lists rather than expecting them to build special files. We even go the extra mile to capture as much rich data as possible by capturing images and specifications from their websites to create a great user experience for your staff.
Portalink appeals to big and small vendors with an engagement model that enables them to become part of your CiAnywhere online community without incurring any fees. Suppliers have an option to subscribe to an integration plan to achieve additional transaction automation benefits.
Portalink simplifies the work needed to manage your online catalogue/s.
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Having eliminated the hassle of chasing suppliers and manipulating data, the Vendor Exchange portal makes the process of loading data to the CiAnywhere catalogues as simple as it can be. Portalink has worked closely with Technology One to simplify the process of preparing and exporting product data:
First - select the products you want to make available to your staff
Then - add the remaining attributes such as Categories and UoM.
Finally - Export the data file from your Vendor Exchange Catalogue Management portal to your CiAnywhere catalogue/s - WITH A SINGLE CLICK. In a few seconds, your staff can start ordering the new products online without having to navigate in and out of multiple websites. Together with TechnologyOne, we have eliminated seven or more steps that would otherwise be required to upload product data and images to first, the CiAnywhere supplier products module and then the internal catalogue end point.
The Vendor Exchange portal simplifies the whole EDI cycle.
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The electronic exchange of Purchase Orders, ASNs, Invoices and Credit Notes between CiAnywhere and the Vendor Exchange portal is seamless and turnkey
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Portalink has unique capabilities to capture and convert any type of supplier EDI, PDF, Excel or flat files into an EDI format that can be automatically imported into CiAnywhere. Your Vendor Exchange portal will automate Advanced Shipping Notifications (ASNs), invoices and credit notes from end-to-end, without manual data entry and regardless of each suppliers technical capabilities.
step one
product management
step two
transaction automation
step two
transaction automation
without
Portalink-2-CiAnywhere
with
Portalink-2-CiAnywhere
A high percentage of procurement will occur without a Purchase Order
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No control
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Too many orders placed with uncontracted suppliers
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High waste
Managing the product data from Supplier to CiAnywhere internal catalogue is timeconsuming, resource-heavy and hard to scale
Setting up traditional EDI connectivity is costly and can take six to twelve months per Supplier to achieve an EDI-compliant state.
A high percentage of Purchase Orders will be raised in a rich, user-friendly online environment
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Greater workflow controls for authorisation
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Tightly integrated GL Business Intelligence and reportability
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Improved budgeting and financial controls
By simplifying the demands and resources of product data management, Portalink provides a scalable solution that frees up staff for more productive activities
Portalink one-connect EDI is seamless and turnkey for you and your Suppliers. ALL ASNs, invoices and credit notes can be automated without costly integration with each Supplier.
PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
Portalink enables the University to dynamically receive and upload rich supplier product data from Suppliers to their internal eCatalogue
DATA
CLEANSING
Portalink provides a gateway to prevent products passing to the eCatalogue without the correct contract pricing, codes, search filters, images etc.
TRANSACTION
ENGINE
Portalink automates ALL transactions, including Purchase Orders, Invoices and ASN’s between the University and the Suppliers in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional EDI.
ENHANCED USER
EXPERIENCE
By filling the gaps between the (ERP) systems at either end of the supply chain, Portalink compliments and enhances the user experience.
why?
In the past, Procure-to-Pay solutions have been limited to external Punch-Out systems which have minimal data integration, compromising financial controls, and provide a less than perfect user experience.
By contrast, internally hosted catalogues are deeply integrated with University financial systems and workflow management. By eliminating the traditional challenges and resource dependencies of managing and maintaining Supplier Catalogues, and by eliminating the need to setup costly EDI connectivity with each Vendor, Portalink has made the CiAnywhere Internal Catalogue a very viable proposition.
Hosted or internal catalogues have always provided greater control over products offered, pricing, GL codes, inventory management, budgeting and reporting. A well presented hosted catalogue also provides a better user experience for staff when buying with a single interface to become acquainted at one site rather than navigating across a multitude of supplier websites, as is the case with Punch-Out alternatives. Being able to easily cross reference product offers from diffrent suppliers at a single site ensures that staff are empowered to make better procurement decisions, which reduces wasted expenditure and increases the likelihood that the most appropriate product for the purpose will be ordered.
Providing a great user experience also equates to higher user uptake, which helps by ramping the volume of Purchase Orders raised, which in turn facilitates better two and three way matching. Achieving such KPI's also accelerates the ROI.
So why have Punch-Out systems made such an impact over the past twenty years?...
Universities around the world are searching for innovative ways to reduce cost and eliminate waste. The University Procurement Hub (UPH) is an example of how the University sector in Australia is collaborating to tackle this important challenge.
The Procure-to-Pay suite market is growing rapidly as organisations seek automation and innovation to control spend and improve supplier collaboration.
Gartner Report
May 2018
Vendor Exchange is being adopted by Australian Universities because it:
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Empowers Universities to implement better Financial Controls with:
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More granular accrued expenses for better budget management
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Improved reconciliation with two & three-way matching of POs, Invoices and ASNs
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Greater capacity to implement online approval processes
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A more precise audit trail from order to receipt
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Manages and maintains supplier product data
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Reduces leakage
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Enables faster processing and payment cycles to leverage early payment discounts
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Automatically assigns expenses using uniform product categories
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Empowers analytics and detailed expense reporting
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Integrates inventory into CiAnywhere catalogues [optional] - reducing risk of re-ordering goods that are already available in stock
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Increases utilisation of contract products - - increasing your importance to contracted suppliers and optimising ongoing mutual commitment
the supplier community
Portalink works with your Suppliers to build your catalogues
Portalink uses sophisticated mapping tools to import each Supplier's Master Product Data without them having to create purpose-built files, making onboarding and maintenance easy for you and easy for your Suppliers
With a single click each Supplier's catalogue is pushed from the Portalink Vendor Exchange portal to the CiAnywhere internal catalogue - complete with images, contract pricing, categories, UoM, dangerous goods codes, specifications etc. - instantly ready for your staff to commence placing orders online.
The Supplier Community on Portalink Vendor Exchange is growing rapidly. More than 30 key Suppliers have already committed their support and new Supplier catalogues are continually being added. Just introduce the Suppliers you want and Portalink will do the rest.
Suppliers supporting Portalink Vendor Exchange:
