Making Vendor Onboarding Easier On Vendors And Employees

Onboarding services for bringing vendors in to work with your company can be a source of frustration if not properly organized and well thought out. Whether you develop your onboarding process on your own, bring in an onboarding expert or hire professional onboarding services, it's important to follow some best practices to keep things moving smoothly. Here are three ways to make vendor onboarding easier for both vendors and employees, reducing preventable delays and frustrating wastes of employee time.

1. Standardize

Compiling a standardized step-by-step process for vendor onboarding is critical. Without this standardization, you're more likely to get stuck somewhere along the way or end up needing to backtrack. 

Whether you choose to use a professional service for onboarding or whether it's all done in-house, this is the first step to an efficient onboarding process. Even if you think your company isn't large enough to warrant the effort it takes, you'll be surprised at how much time you can save once you've standardized your onboarding.

2. Streamline

The fewer sticking places exist in your process, the less company time the process will waste. A drawn-out onboarding process doesn't serve anyone's best interests, so streamline as much as possible. Look at your standardized process and analyze each required step. Maybe some steps are really only needed in certain situations, and you can make an amendment to skip that part where applicable.

3. Digitize and automate

It's a given that the more automated your process is, the less employee time it takes. And while onboarding can't be 100 percent automated, since you'll need to make judgment calls during the vetting process, that doesn't mean you can't automate certain parts of the process. For example, digitizing some onboarding forms and making them available on your website for potential vendors can help the vendors prepare ahead of time.

You can also choose to use an existing service that offers self-service onboarding portals. These take a lot of the work out of your employees' hands by allowing the potential vendor to take all the time they need to assemble necessary documentation and information before your employees even get involved. Then, when your company does get actively involved in the process, things can proceed much more quickly.

These three things can all improve your onboarding process, making it more straightforward and intuitive for the vendor and less time-consuming for you and your employees. For more information on vendor onboarding services, contact your local vendor service today.

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