Which enhancements have been deployed in the last three months? The results of the Product Increment (PI) 2020-4

As an important part of our agile software development, we not only plan the next steps at the end of each quarter, but we also look back: What has been developed? Which progress did the different development teams achieve? What has actually been implemented?

Here is a summary of the most important enhancements from PI 2020-4:

Portal

These new Portal functionalities simplify supplier and user onboarding on our platform:

• Users can now access dedicated, case-specific information (e.g., customer-specific training material, video tutorials, etc.) during the registration process, making it easier for them to use SupplyOn with their customers
• The process for creating new user accounts has been simplified and structured so that it can now be completed even faster

A workflow-based solution enables our customers to quickly provide suppliers with updated versions of their terms & conditions and NDAs.

In addition, the portal team is preparing the rollout of the “SupplyOn Dashboard”, which provides a clear overview of all important processes handled via SupplyOn. For more information, read the blog post: Usage Reports: Facts and figures

Flexible Surveys

Customers now benefit from two new functionalities of great value when using the Flexible Survey tool:

1. Being a collaborative solution, Flexible Survey allows surveys and questionnaires to be shared across the organization. As a new feature, each survey initiator can now decide for each survey or questionnaire she/he creates whether colleagues can view and use it, too.
2. Flexible Survey has been extended by an interface, the so-called Flexible Survey Public API. Using this, customers can now initiate surveys from their systems and send them to their suppliers via SupplyOn. All required information, such as survey title, recipient and questionnaire ID, is adopted. A status function provides continuous information on the progress of a survey started in this way. The results, including the attachments uploaded by the suppliers, are likewise shared with the customer system via API. This functionality is the basis for numerous other use cases, which were are already discussing with customers.

Sourcing

Businesses using SupplyOn Sourcing via a purchasing backend system can now leverage bid evaluation capabilities in Sourcing, including the cost-breakdown sheet and sourcing-decision sheet. Thus, they benefit from the solution’s flexibility without having to make adjustments in their backends.

In addition, the enhanced award confirmation workflow now comes with some helpful features:

• Definition of different award workflows and masks for each process such as project requests, annual price requests and other requests
• New rules, e.g. for defining a minimum number of approvers, to ensure a rule-compliant approval process
• An automatic approval proposal, e.g. based on purchase volume, helps users find the right approvers
• A new functionality for defining the approval sequence ensures that, for example, management is only getting involved once all pre-approvals have been received.

Supplier Quality Management

The VDA (German Association of the Automotive Industry) has modified its requirements for the standardized 8D process, which we are now gradually implementing in Problem Solver. For example, additional flexible fields now enable you to query more information in a complaint. This flexible field data is also transferred during Excel download of a complaint.

Supply Chain Management

In the SCM area, integration along the process chain has been further deepened: It is now possible to create a FPA (Forwarder Pick-up Advice) or an ASN (Advance Shipping Notification) directly from a purchase order. Likewise, you can create an invoice directly from an ASN.

Furthermore, an ASN’s field properties (mandatory, read-only or optional) can now be defined at item level already with the demand notification. This applies to all ASN items created for the corresponding demand item and affects the following fields:

• batch number
• production date
• consumption date
• technical change status
• serial number
• transport order number

Invoicing

With the new Excel up- and download it is now possible to use not only csv files but also xlsx files for bulk up- and download of invoices.

Numerous enhancements have also been made to reflect the dynamic changes in international tax systems and local tax laws. These include, for example, QR codes for India and Portugal, and preparations to handle purely electronic invoices in China in the future, in addition to the existing process for paper Fapiaos.

AirSupply

Last but not least, the AirSupply solution also benefitted from numerous new functionalities:

• With the multi-sort feature, AirSupply users can now sort by up to three columns. These sorting options can then be saved with a personal table profile.
• Since recently, AirSupply emails come with a new look, increasing the clarity of alert emails in particular. However, it also increases mail file size. Therefore, SupplyOn introduced guidance on how to limit the amount of information in such emails. This helps to prevent emails from not getting delivered due to their size and thus missing out on important information.

As always, it is great to see what each team has accomplished and implemented over the past three months. But there’s no time to rest, we are already working on the next enhancements.

So, stay tuned!