BirchStreet creates a private purchasing portal for your organization with your suppliers and products. As part of our implementation process, our Supplier Adoption Team will on-board your suppliers into the BirchStreet system. However, many of your suppliers are most likely already online, as we have on-boarded (adopted) over 400,000 industry suppliers on behalf of our existing customers.
When we start a new implementation, we typically run a cross-reference to see how many of your suppliers are already online. In most cases, 70-80% of new customer suppliers are already adopted. Send us a list of your vendors and we will be happy to run a cross reference for you.
First, our Supplier Adoption Team will work with you to prepare a communication method to release to your suppliers. Typically, this would be an email from you introducing BirchStreet as your eProcurement system and explaining the supplier implementation process.
Next, our Supplier Adoption Team will contact your suppliers and assist them through the adoption process. Our team provides simple catalog templates to upload product and price information into BirchStreet.
BirchStreet provides initial and ongoing supplier training so that the suppliers can continue to maintain accurate product information in the system. The BirchStreet support line is also available to your suppliers should they require any assistance.
It’s crucial that product information—including pricing—be kept up to date in the system. Most often, suppliers maintain catalog data through BirchStreet’s supplier-facing part of the portal. From here, they can upload catalog updates and receive their orders.
Yes. BirchStreet offers a set of features called Price Regulation. These allow you to setup approvals and notifications on catalog updates, allowing you to review them before showing your users. We also offer a series of reports that allow you to track and monitor catalog updates coming from your suppliers.
Technically, the supplier adoption process can be completed in a few days. However, if the supplier is new to BirchStreet, it can take 3-4 weeks for most suppliers to submit their information. Once the product data is submitted to the Supplier Adoption Team, it goes through a review process before going live in BirchStreet.
No, catalogs are not required. BirchStreet has a feature called Supplier-on-the-Fly, which allows users to setup suppliers and transact with those suppliers through the system without a catalog. The Supplier-on-the-Fly setup process is simple, short, and only requires basic supplier information. Items that your users frequently purchase can be input and permanently stored in their personal order guides to make the re-ordering process quick and easy. Most national or regional suppliers go through the adoption process, whereas the rest are implemented using the Supplier-on-the-Fly feature.
When using a GPO Partner, the supplier adoption process is much shorter because the GPO suppliers are already in our system. Therefore, the supplier adoption process only applies to your non-GPO suppliers.
As we adopt suppliers all over the world, the same supplier adoption process applies for international suppliers.
BirchStreet rarely receives push back from suppliers. In most cases, we’ve found that suppliers are keen to do business since they know that getting online makes it easier for you to purchase their products and/or services.
No, BirchStreet does not charge the supplier for the supplier adoption process. There are additional features we may charge a supplier for, such as a custom interface to their back-office system.
BirchStreet developed the eProcurement system and the supplier adoption process to make it as easy as possible for suppliers to onboard and immediately participate in your eProcurement initiative.
Yes, BirchStreet has implemented a wide variety of electronic interfaces with suppliers, including, cXML Punch-outs, flat-file interfaces, EDI interfaces, and CSV transfer files. BirchStreet can implement virtually any kind of electronic interface, as long as it’s a secure and reliable technology.
If your company chooses to not use a supplier that has already been adopted for you, BirchStreet can easily remove access to the supplier. The Supplier Adoption Service can be used at any time to adopt new suppliers.
The BirchStreet System includes a set of features called Catalog Exposure, which allows us to configure the catalog to show only the appropriate products for each property. Using Catalog Exposure, we model each supplier’s territory so that only the properties within a given supplier’s sales region will see that supplier online. Additionally, the Catalog Exposure feature allows us to setup rules based a wide variety of property attributes (brand, ownership, management, type, etc.) so that only the right products are exposed to each property.
First, we need a list of your suppliers sorted by spend volume so we can prioritize the supplier adoption process, as well as their contact information. Then, you will need to send out an email introducing BirchStreet to your suppliers (we can provide several different formats for this email). BirchStreet will take it from there. If suppliers are slow to respond, we may need you to contact these suppliers.
The Supplier Adoption Team can send you weekly reports from our Supplier Adoption Tracking System. Every supplier interaction, including overall progress, is tracked in the system.