Canopy is a rules-based vendor master data platform.
It provides complete visibility of all your supplier information, and uses automation to remove the administrative burden of supplier management.
As the control centre for your supplier operations, Canopy combines your supplier information, business rules and automation to drive decision-making in spend, risk, compliance, ESG, diversity, performance and other factors.
Canopy brings together stakeholders from across your business around a single trusted supplier directory.
Where appropriate, Canopy communicates with your business systems, so that breaches in you business rules result in the appropriate downstream actions. For example, triggering supplier availability in ERP.
In this article you will learn:
What information is stored in Canopy
Which stakeholders benefit from Canopy
What information is stored in Canopy
Canopy is used to capture any information about your suppliers. It aggregates this information in a single truster master record called the Supplier Profile. Every supplier on Canopy has their own Supplier Profile. All of these profiles may be accessed via the Supplier List.
By default, Canopy is setup to hold the following information. You are free to add to this as you deem necessary for your business.
Click here to learn more about Canopy's data and where it comes from
Which stakeholders benefit from Canopy
Canopy benefits anyone in your organisation who engages with a supplier. Canopy's philosophy is to ensure everyone in your business who needs to know about your suppliers should have access to the platform.
There are 6 main groups of users who typically engage with the Canopy platform on a regular basis. They are:
Procurement
The core team responsible for managing the relationship with your supply chain. In some organisations this may be a dedicated Procurement Team, and in others it may be an individual within the Finance Team.
Among the many roles a Procurement Team performs, they have responsibility to make sourcing decisions, approve suppliers into the organisation, manage the relationships with suppliers, and balance spend, risk, performance, ESG, diversity, and other factors across the supply chain. All of these roles can be achieved through Canopy.
Finance
Most Finance Team have two primary concerns when it comes to the management of the supply chain:
Firstly, they need to ensure the P2P (procure-to-pay) process runs smoothly, which involves setting up the supplier correctly on ERP, verifying the supplier's bank information, Purchase Order management and invoice payments.
Secondly, they seek to manage overall expenditure across the supply chain to ensure the business is not spending money where they should not.
Canopy supports the Finance Team by providing secure channels to manage supplier banking information, communicating directly with ERP, and reporting on supplier activity.
Risk & Compliance Teams
These teams will vary between organisations, and in some cases their functions will be incorporated within the Procurement and/or Finance Teams. The primary objectives is to ensure all suppliers are compliant to the standards you set, and do not expose the business to risks that cannot be appropriately managed. These risks may come in the form of Health & Safety Risk, Information Security Risk, Modern Slavery Risk, Financial Risk, Anti Bribery & Corruption Risk, and many others. All of these are managed through Canopy.
Click here to learn more about how Canopy manages risk
Buyers & Commercial Teams
Through Canopy, your Commercial Teams have access to a directory of all the suppliers who have been approved into your supply chain and are available on ERP for them to trade with. It also provides clear designation of your Preferred Suppliers where you have favourable terms of trade. By putting your supply chain at their fingertips, your Commercial Teams can respond to sales opportunities more quickly and accurately. It also encourages repeat usage of your existing supplier base, reducing the volume of new supplier vetting that needs to take place and strengthening your position with your existing suppliers.
Canopy's rules engine also allows for different Commercial Teams to be presented with tailored lists of suppliers that are relevant to them. For example, if the nature of the goods/services being procured is geographical, suppliers may be approved to work in some locations, but not others. Therefore your Commercial Teams are only engaging with the suppliers that are relevant to them.
Senior Management
For the Senior Management Team, Canopy enables them to keep abreast of developments in the supply chain by providing complete visibility of what is going on and where there may be issues that need addressing.
The reputational damage to a business from non-compliant trade, and the personal consequences for Directors, means Senior Management is increasingly concerned with ensuring ethical and secure business operations. Canopy's automation rules help to eliminate non-compliant trade and manage any risks that arise during the supplier relationship.
Many Senior Management Teams have made statements about their ESG commitments and diversity targets. Canopy now provides a means for these measures to be reported on, so that teams can keep track of their progress against their targets.
Suppliers
For your Suppliers, Canopy provides a single channel of communication that makes it easy to submit, update and maintain the information you require to trade. This means that if anything changes, the supplier need only to log into their profile on Canopy to update their information, which is immediately sent to the relevant people in your organisation. Similarly when your teams need the supplier to take action, the supplier is automatically notified.
Furthermore, the nature of the information asked of your suppliers is driven by a core understanding of who they are, what they do, and where they do it. This means suppliers are only asked questions appropriate to the level of spend, the risks they pose, the regulatory jurisdictions in which they operate, etc. which significantly reduces their workload.