How to improve your vendor approval process.

Vendor approval is an essential part of the purchasing process. Learn more about how your company can streamline the vendor approval process to prevent purchasing delays.

A vendor approval process ensures your company can purchase what it needs and always get the right products at the best price. But what happens when the approval process delays important purchases? Use PDF vendor approval request forms and electronic signatures to keep the approval process moving along.

Considerations for your vendor approval process.

When improving your vendor approval process, make the following considerations:

• Process evaluation. Review the efficiency of the overall process.
• Team importance. Ask the team which parts of the current process are still important to them. Any parts that are no longer important could be streamlined or removed.
• Internal requirements. Confirm that your company has not adjusted any requirements that affect the vendor approval process, such as security updates or payment timelines.
• Vendor organization. Based on your company’s current situation, evaluate whether or not you still need a vendor — or require additional vendors — for a product or service. Additionally, for each existing vendor, review characteristics, such as payment history, quality of deliverables, and other factors that may help determine if you should maintain the vendor relationship.
• Vendor criteria. Discuss whether or not the requirements for vendor selection are satisfactory, including your risk assessment. Your criteria may need to be adjusted based on previous results and accuracy.
• Personnel needs. Consider if all team members are still relevant to the approval process. Any adjustments to the approval process may require you to add or remove team members.

Optimize vendor approval process to avoid purchasing delays.

Sourcing, vetting, and approving vendors can be a lengthy process. Sometimes, you won’t have time to complete the entire process to get goods and services. For example, if your regular vendor can’t fulfill an order, you’ll need to find an alternative source. A streamlined vendor approval process with vendor contracts can help you get the products you need quickly.

How to make the vendor approval process more efficient.

Here are some steps to help speed up the vendor approval process:

1. Maintain a database of potential vendors for goods and services your company regularly purchases. By keeping this list current, you can avoid sourcing delays when you need a new vendor. You’ll already know where to find what you need.
2. Create an expedited “exceptional needs” approval process that empowers managers to sign off on purchases from unapproved vendors for an amount under a specified limit. You can use this process to quickly bridge the gap created when changing vendors under emergent circumstances.
3. Establish a conditional approval stage that allows managers to purchase from vendors who still need to complete the approval process. This step can enable your company to buy what it needs from a vendor during the approval process, if necessary, with appropriate conditions.

When to make changes to the vendor approval process.

Vendor approval requirements naturally change over time. However, you will need to make changes to the process if:

• The process seems slow
• You find errors in the system
• Communication and expectations are not clear
• An employee is included multiple times in the approval process
• The process is too difficult to follow
• Spending thresholds are too small or too large

Use tools for efficient vendor approvals.

Remember, you can streamline your company’s vendor approval process using PDF forms with electronic signatures. Don’t waste time printing approval requests and waiting for managers to sign them. Simply email a PDF approval request so managers can sign documents online electronically.

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