In short: Supplier enablement means getting suppliers ready to work with your processes and systems: receiving purchase orders, sending e-invoices with the right PO reference, maintaining catalogues and keeping their data up to date. It pays off for strategic and frequent suppliers. For the long tail of small suppliers, the effort per supplier is high and the volume low. A single creditor removes the need to enable those suppliers one by one.
What supplier enablement covers
- registering the supplier in your purchase-to-pay platform or supplier portal;
- receiving purchase orders electronically;
- sending structured e-invoices, for example through Peppol, with your PO number;
- publishing catalogues or punch-out shops with agreed prices;
- keeping company data, bank details and compliance documents up to date.
Why it is hard in the long tail
Enablement campaigns work well for suppliers that send hundreds of invoices a year. In the tail, the picture is different:
- there are many suppliers, each with only a few transactions;
- small suppliers often have no IT team and do not want to log in to yet another customer portal;
- the work has to be repeated for every new supplier, and data goes out of date quickly;
- one-time suppliers are gone before enablement is finished.
The result is a mixed picture: some suppliers are enabled, many are not, and accounts payable still handles PDF invoices and missing PO references.
A simple rule: enable directly or route through one creditor
- Enable directly: strategic suppliers and suppliers with many invoices a year. Connect them through Peppol or your platform, with contracts and catalogues.
- Route through a single creditor: tail suppliers, occasional suppliers and one-time suppliers. You enable one creditor instead of hundreds of small suppliers.
How this works with Spot Buy Center
Spot Buy Center is the single point of contact for tail suppliers. Suppliers receive the order, deliver to your company, invoice Spot Buy Center and are paid on time. Your company receives one digital invoice per purchase order, through Peppol or another channel you choose, always with your own PO reference. Tail catalogues for recurring items are included in every plan.
For suppliers this is simple too: one contact for many large customers, no separate portals per customer, and reliable payment. More information for suppliers is on selling to large corporates.
Checklist
- List your suppliers by number of invoices and annual spend.
- Choose which suppliers you enable directly; keep this group small.
- Route all other suppliers through a single creditor.
- Make the PO reference mandatory on every invoice.
- Review the split once a year.
Frequently asked questions
Do tail suppliers need to register in our P2P platform?
No. They work with Spot Buy Center. Only Spot Buy Center is set up as a creditor in your systems.
Can we combine direct enablement and a single creditor?
Yes. That is the usual set-up: strategic suppliers are connected directly, the tail goes through the single creditor.
What about e-invoicing obligations?
You receive structured invoices from one creditor, which keeps the number of e-invoicing connections to a minimum. Read more in e-invoicing in Belgium and France.
Want to know which of your suppliers are worth enabling? Talk to us about your tail spend.
