Vendor management portal template

Vendor management simply means dealing with vendors — anyone who sells you the supplies and services you need for work.

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A vendor could be an internet provider, a plumber, or a package delivery service. Businesses of all sizes rely on vendors—and handling the details efficiently is critical.

If you’re still juggling vendor information using a combination of drives, spreadsheets, and other systems, it’s time to upgrade. This free template will let you manage all your vendor data in one place.

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Whether you’re tracking expenses and contracts, monitoring performance across vendors, or anything in between, Airtable’s vendor management template makes it easier to manage vendor and supplier relationships with Portals.

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Try the template

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What is vendor management?

Vendor management is the process of selecting and managing vendors. That includes a huge array of activities, including evaluating vendor performance, allocating your resources, and even getting those vendors paid.

If you’re working with more than two or three vendors, a clean organized system is essential.

Most often vendor management is broken into four steps:

• Step 1: Establish your goals! Are you trying to buy flowers on a budget or are you seeking florals so exquisite they’d make the queen blush?
• Step 2: Select the best vendors for your needs. This may require a bit of research before picking up the phone or sending off an email.
• Step 3: Manage suppliers. When do you need those flowers by? How long is the delivery estimate? Getting your numbers in order—whether it’s dates, cost, or something entirely different—is a huge part of the process.
• Step 4: Evaluate what’s working—and what’s not. By looking at an organized set of data, you can objectively decide what’s working, what needs refining, and when it’s time to scrap a vendor and start again.

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Who is this vendor management template for?

If you work with a business or person who sells something you need for work, this vendor management template is for you. And vendor management isn’t just for large companies—it’s for mom-and-pop shops, classrooms, tech start-ups, commercial gyms, and just about everyone else. It’s not an exaggeration to say that most people in most industries can benefit from a template like this.

In fact, you don’t even have to have a business use-case for this template to help you. For instance, let’s say you have the daunting task of running a household. Just think about all the vendors you use from day-to-day. There’s an internet provider, maybe a grocery delivery service, a plumbing service, a gardener… it’s a lot.

This template can help keep you organized, giving you more time to spend with your family, friends, or a good book.

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Benefits of managing vendors with our template

Airtable doesn’t just let you store your data in one, easy-to-find place–it also gives you the power to align stakeholders and make keen insights.

When you use this template, you can:

• Use Portals to directly invite your vendors into your workflows with limited access.
• Scale processes by standardizing how you source and evaluate vendors, onboard new vendors, and schedule recurring tasks like payments
• Improve accountability and communication for all stakeholders by assigning tasks and sharing updates, instead of communicating across long email threads
• Evaluate performance by leveraging scorecard factors such as quality of service, rate of delivery success, complaint history, and more
• Sync other relevant apps to your base with Airtable Integrations, ensuring no information is lost and everyone is on the same page

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Explore more free templates: Expense tracking, Employee directory, Office inventory