Let’s talk about supplier onboarding. It sounds simple, right? Send a form, get the answers, approve the supplier, move on. But in my years working with procurement teams using SAP Ariba, especially Supplier Lifecycle and Performance (SLP), I’ve noticed a pattern: onboarding is often treated like a checkbox. A one-time event. A necessary evil to “get them in the system.” And when that’s the mindset, a few things tend to go wrong.
Think of onboarding as setting up a new contact in your phone. You could just enter the name and number and call it a day. But if you take a minute to add their company, title, email, maybe a note about how you met, you’ll thank yourself later. Ask me how I know - my phone is full of contacts like “Tree guy Rick."
It’s the same with suppliers. Capturing clean, complete data at the start — banking details, diversity certifications, tax IDs, ownership structure, the right ANID — helps you avoid messy corrections downstream. You have the tools to do this well: questionnaires, approval workflows, ERP integrations. But the tech only works if the process behind it is thoughtful.
Red Flag #1: “We’ll Fix It Later”
I hear this a lot when customers are in a rush, or creating suppliers reactively. The supplier needs to be paid or onboarded quickly, so teams bypass the formal process or enter placeholder info. The problem? Those workarounds tend to become permanent. Later on, when you’re trying to route a risk assessment or requalify the supplier, suddenly nothing lines up because the foundational data was never right to begin with.
Red Flag #2: Confusing the Supplier
“If we send them the form, they’ll figure it out.” Like Field of Dreams, but for Ariba. Unfortunately it doesn’t always go the way you hope. Suppliers often get multiple invites from different buying organizations. They might not know which Business Network ID (ANID) to use, how to log in, or why the questions look different for every customer. If your process isn’t clear, suppliers get frustrated and either abandon the form or call your AP help desk in a panic.
(Shameless self-promotion, my colleague Trusha and I actually did a webinar on this exact topic - click HERE to watch it on-demand 😊)
Red Flag #3: Treating All Suppliers the Same
Do your onboarding steps reflect actually reflect what you need from the supplier? Or is a local landscaping company going through the same full workflow as a multinational logistics provider? Many of our customers use the Supplier Request to discern one type from another, the most common being suppliers that are only being invited for an RFP vs. those that are being invited to fully onboard and transact. If you're using SLP today, you already have the ability to configure onboarding by supplier type, region, category, etc. If you’re not doing that yet, you might be overloading small suppliers with unnecessary requirements, or even under-scrutinizing those with higher risk exposure.
Onboarding Is Strategy, Not Admin
Here’s the shift: onboarding isn’t just an admin task. It’s a strategic step that sets the tone for your supplier relationships, ensures compliance, and enables automation and insight downstream. And when done well, it actually makes everyone's life easier — from sourcing to accounts payable to the suppliers themselves.
If your onboarding process feels clunky, inconsistent, or like it’s creating more work than it saves, you’re not alone. But there’s a better way. Taking time to revisit your approach can have a huge downstream impact. Let’s stop treating onboarding like a hurdle. Instead, let’s make it inviting, like a welcome mat.
Bluesky
