Vendor discovery: Gathering complete information about a vendor partner before evaluation and verification is a herculean task, the complexity of which is inversely proportional to the size of the vendor. You can really save time and effort by capturing minimal details of the vendor and let technology automatically collect all the information—either by scanning available documents and/or with API-fetched information from public and third-party databases. This real-time information gathering can align technology decisions to the existing processes. Moreover, automatically harvesting these responses into centralized databases for future references can expedite pre-contract risks analysis and monitoring.

Vendor verification and due diligence: Validating a vendor and determining the accuracy of the information submitted are important steps to mitigate reputational and regulatory risks of dealing with fraudulent entities. Replacing the manual task of verifying every bit of information with AI-powered authentication technology can bring down the errors and reduce the verification turnaround time from months to days with fewer resources. For example, catching probably bounced payments, loan defaults, and other such dubious transactions, and help to profile vendors’ financial health more accurately can now happen in real-time.

Automated workflows: Configuring and automating approvals/disapprovals via rule-based engines can speed up the process and bring transparency to the system. Adding the layer of artificial intelligence via digital personas/robots—which can analyze and automate commonly performed tasks—can improve the efficiency for onboarding cycles. It reduces paperwork and document management and streamlines sourcing, verification, and recruitment of vendors with a swifter and simpler onboarding experience.

Comprehensive dashboards: Imagine running after multiple departments to know where your vendor approvals are stuck without an automated system. These become a significant feature of a SaaS-based vendor onboarding platform to follow-up on items, deliverables, and any other necessary information from the vendors. These provide transparency and tracking of the onboarding progress. Moreover, customizing these dashboards can help to determine vendor controls.

Monitoring: Re-verification and monitoring of vendor partners for large organizations—with hundreds or thousands of partners—ensure that the partner risk profiles are not changed. Such screening processes involve the capture of alternate data points such as negative news, referential checks, interviewing employees, and physical site visits. Auto-triggers for updates in vendor information via public databases can alert the organization in case of any dubious scenarios.