Six logins before lunch
The morning starts with the portal emails. One customer has issued three new purchase orders that need acknowledging within two working days. Another has changed a delivery date and wants it confirmed. A third needs an advance shipping notice before tomorrow's delivery, and the invoice for last week's shipment was rejected because it did not quote the portal's line reference.
Each portal has a different login, a different layout and a different idea of what a purchase order line is. The person who knows them all is off on Thursdays.
Why portal work never gets easier
Big customers move supplier admin onto their portals to save their own staff time. The work does not disappear; it moves to you. And because each portal is different, the knowledge of how to use it sits with whoever did it last.
- Notification emails are mixed in with everything else in a shared inbox.
- Deadlines for acknowledgements and ASNs are not tracked.
- PO data is retyped from the portal into your MRP.
- Invoices are rejected for missing portal references.
- Portal changes to dates or quantities are missed.
What falling behind costs
Unacknowledged POs count against you in the customer's supplier scorecard. Missing ASNs can mean deliveries are refused or held at goods in. Rejected invoices delay payment by weeks. And mistakes when retyping portal orders lead to wrong quantities or dates in your own plan.
The portal task list we build
- Notification emails from every portal are routed to one mailbox and read automatically. Each becomes a task: acknowledge PO, confirm change, send ASN, upload invoice, respond to query.
- Where a portal offers a data download, an API or EDI, orders and changes are collected directly and compared with your MRP.
- New orders are prepared for entry into your MRP with the portal's references kept, so invoices and ASNs can quote them later.
- Each task has a deadline from the customer's rules, and the list is sorted by what is due soonest.
- Where the portal accepts uploads, ASNs and invoices are generated in the file format it expects, ready to upload.
- Steps that still need a person to log in and click are listed clearly with the data they need, so nobody is working from memory.
| Portal task | How it is handled |
|---|---|
| New purchase order | Read, checked and prepared for your MRP |
| Acknowledgement due | Task with the customer's deadline |
| Date or quantity change | Compared with your plan and flagged |
| Advance shipping notice | Generated from the dispatch record |
| Invoice upload | Built with the portal's line references |
We will not promise to automate every portal. Some forbid automated logins in their terms, and we respect that. We tell you portal by portal what can be done.
What the office gets
One list of portal tasks across every customer, with deadlines. Orders go into your MRP without retyping, with the references needed later. Invoices stop bouncing for missing line numbers. And the knowledge of each portal is written into the tool, so Thursdays are not a problem.
Your scorecard with each customer tends to improve too, because acknowledgements and ASNs go on time. That matters at the annual supplier review, where on time admin is often scored alongside on time delivery, and a poor admin score can cost you work that your machining quality deserved.
Are portals eating your office time?
- You log into several customer portals every day.
- POs have gone unacknowledged past the deadline.
- Invoices have been rejected for missing references.
- Portal orders are retyped into your MRP.
- One person knows how each portal works.