Vendors and contractors don’t manage themselves. Well, maybe they do, if you have only two trusty contractors and zero plans of expanding your business. But that’s not you, as you probably wouldn’t be here, reading this. You’re here because your business has outgrown spreadsheets and endless email chains for vendor and freelancer management. Time has come for you to advance to the next level, and get a VMS - Vendor Management Solution.
So What is a Vendor Management Solution?
Put simply, a vendor management solution is a type of software (or service) that serves as a communication,project and payroll management system for companies employing contractors and freelancers.
VMSs serve three main goals:
How to Choose the VMS for Your Business
Or you could just take our word for it, skip all the intro, and start reading here. If you’re just joining now: Hello! We checked dozens of VMSs (so you don’t have to), and here are the best ones for small businesses like yours.
This award-winning global payment automation solution is your end-to-end payroll and supplier management system, and more. It can help you organize the administrative side of employee, vendor and supplier payments, from onboarding to tax compliance, all in an online cloud-based solution.
Who it’s for: Businesses looking to manage their payroll and streamline other payment processes.
Pricing: $850 per month plus a flat per transaction fee that varies according to the payment method the payee chooses.
This online tool is built for managing projects with teams of freelancers, issuing payments, managing invoices and tracking vendor performance and qualification. It’s accessible online, and allows vendors to manage and update their profiles.
Who it’s for: Companies employing over 50 freelancers or vendors for project-based work and need an internal directory, project management tool and invoicing capability.
Pricing: By quote
ProcureWare is a supplier management, sourcing, bidding, and contract management software-as-a-service. Supplier management features support the creation of a customized supplier self-registration process, allowing centralized access to a searchable, up-to-date supplier database.
Who it’s for: Organizations looking to automate vendor diversity and allow for vendor project bidding.
Pricing: By quote
Beakon for small business is a modular system to manage safety, risk, compliance and other aspects of contractor employment. It also includes modules for auditing, vendor training and even visitor management.
Who it’s for: Businesses working in highly regulated and high-risk industries including construction, aviation, transport, services and healthcare provision.
Pricing: Free for one user, from $59 Australian dollars for 2-10 employees.
Developed specifically to cater to the needs of organizations employing a large contingent workforce, Beeline VMS offers automation of service procurement, contingent staffing, resource tracking and self-sourcing.
Who it’s for: Large organizations and enterprises employing a massive global contingent workforce.
Pricing: By quote
A mobile-first solution for managing and engaging your vendors and contingent workers. The Connecteam solution includes a comprehensive manager dashboard, pre-made templates and workflows, built-in time clock with geo-tagging capabilities and extensive integration with payroll management systems.
Who it’s for: Small to medium businesses looking to effectively onboard, manage and communicate with vendors.
Pricing: Basic plan is free for unlimited users. Plans with additional features starting at $3/month.
If you’re having trouble managing all your vendor’s documents, contracts, profiles and records, Profile Gorilla is looking to make your life easier. This SaaS solution includes comprehensive vendor profile management and online collaboration tools suitable for businesses of most sizes.
Who it’s for: Organizations looking for a central profile management solutions for their vendors, and a place to centrally store related “paperwork”.
Pricing: Starts at $19.99/month
This cloud-based solution attempts to automate as many steps as possible of the hiring process: from recruitment and contract management to tracking and invoicing. Among a variety of modules to select from to suit your business, Connecting-Expertise VMS offers the CE Marketplace, to give you access to a broad network of niche suppliers, linked to a benchmarking system of your current vendors.
Who it’s for: Companies looking to automate their vendor hiring process, and expand their vendor pool using the CE Marketplace.
Pricing: Starts at $7,500.00/year
Conrep is a comprehensive solution that goes beyond vendor management with workflow, tracking and controlling using a single software system. It offers role-based dashboards, customized workflow creation, Web forms integration into CRM and extensive reporting capabilities.
Who it’s for: Large companies and enterprises looking for an all-in-one solutions for employee, vendor and compliance management.
Pricing: By quote
This robust SaaS solution offer 22 modules for different business processes: procure-to-pay; e-sourcing, spend analysis and supplier management. Its supplier management platform includes features for vendor data management, document validation workflows, risk evaluation and more.
Who it’s for: Businesses looking for a central profile management solution for their vendors. For organizations in highly regulated industries (like manufacturing and healthcare) Ivalua offers industry-specific solution packages.
Pricing: $2,000.00/month/user
BravoSolution positions itself as a strategic procurement solution, integrating supplier lifetime value throughout the entire procurement process. It offers contract lifetime management, procurement, invoicing, spend analysis and other features. BravoSolution offers industry-specific combinations of the modules offered, or you can choose your own according to your business needs.
Who it’s for: Companies that procure and employ a large number of vendors, as well as industry-specific organizations looking for an all-in-one procurement and spend analysis tool customized for regulatory compliance.
Pricing: By quote
Vendor Insight offers a very comprehensive and customizable platform that includes productivity tools, policy and compliance management tools, as well as control and monitoring solutions. This solution is designed specifically for financial institutions, banks and credit unions. As such, it includes features and workflows that are unique for that industry, including compliance and due diligence processes in vendor qualification.
Who it’s for: Financial institutions
Pricing: By quote
Top 3 Vendor Management Solutions - Goal Specific
Best for Vendor Engagement: Connecteam
Best for Project Management: Lystable
Best for Payroll Management: Tipalti
Top 10 Social Media Reporting Tools
Without effective social media reporting, the resources invested in collecting and analyzing the data are wasted. Sure, you can create a social media report in a spreadsheet or tables in a document, but that takes precious time. Why waste it when you can automate most social media reporting tasks with one (or more) of the tools we’ve picked for you?
Marketing Automation vs Sales Automation
It’s clear that organizations looking to scale up embrace automation tools and solutions to boost their marketing and sales operations. However, they often miss the distinction between these two methodologies.
Top 10 QMS Software for 2020 by Industry
When it comes to manufacturers, quality assurance is crucial if you want to stay competitive — not only because the quality is what people seek but also because it’s required for regulatory purposes in many industries.
