So much to do, and so little time, but we’re happy to be back with our second update of the year! We continue to work closely with our users to develop new features, improvements, and fixes that bring increased efficiency to their daily working life. Without further ado here’s a list of the most recent updates to AirFaas.
A “product” can be a nonshippable service or cost (shipping or handling fee) that you want to add as a line in an order, but do not need to appear in shipping documentation. Similarly, components or subassemblies may be nonsellable if the price is associated only with the main part, but you would like the information on these parts to be displayed on shipping documentation without price info.
The purpose of this blog is to emphasize the importance of digital procurement solutions within an organization. Procurement managers do not have the luxury of not getting it right the first time. For one thing, paperwork errors can be costly when acquiring the products or parts. Meanwhile, suppliers cannot afford to mishandle the sales order and shipment or fail to address any nonconformity-related issues that may have resulted during the transaction.
What better way to have a strong and healthy customer-supplier relationship than adopting a cloud-based digital procurement service that streamlines customer-supplier transactions from the beginning to the end?
Managing the risk associated with the tedious procurement process using the aforesaid improvised systems can be time-consuming for procurement professionals. Nevertheless, there are other factors, which can also impede the smoothness of a procurement process, that are worth mentioning. Transaction costs for instance, regardless of which type is relevant to an organization, may have significant impacts on an organization’s procurement.
Some of those costs can be easily managed internally meanwhile others may be outside of a company’s control. It is equally important to keep in mind that having a digital procurement solution over a traditional one will not only help reduce the associated transaction costs but also save time.
Den Butter and Linse describe transaction costs as hard costs and soft costs in the article “Rethinking Procurement in the Era of Globalization”. Hard costs are transport charges, import levies, and tariffs. Soft costs include the costs of creating and checking contracts, information costs, and costs resulting from cultural differences and communication failures. Additionally, costs can be related to knowledge of legal procedures, building trust and reputation, network building, risk mitigation—including regulation—and security requirements (Den Butter & Linse 2008, p.76-77)[2].
Den Butter and Linse also contend that the soft costs are of a more strategic importance for organizations as the distance between trading partners grows and their economic, cultural, political, and social systems are intertwined in the global markets (Ibid. p.76-77)[3].
The conversation to adopt a new way of doing procurement within an organization is not an easy one. The bigger the organization, the more difficult to overcome the bureaucracy that encompasses getting a manager’s approval. Companies must decide if implementing a new procurement, whether a stand-alone software or a partially integrated software, will provide the ideal return on investment (ROI).
Most professional procurement managers would agree that the stakes are too high not to get the right digital solution. Implementing the digital procurement solution that makes the most sense for your business can be beneficial in the management of inventory, monitoring contract life cycle, analyzing relevant spending, submitting e-invoicing, overseeing supplier quality management, optimizing transport, and collaborating with others using live data.
AirFaas’ cloud-based digital procurement solution offers both customers and suppliers a streamlined and centralized procurement process from requesting a quotation to invoicing with real-time collaboration access. Through its open portals, AirFaas provides transparency and simplified communications between parties. AirFaas’ strategic procurement solution also supports companies’ soft costs and direct purchasing. Contact us and schedule a Demo to see if our cloud-based digital procurement solution is the right service for your organization.
[1] Coleman Radell & David Schannon (2019) DIGITAL PROCUREMENT: The Benefits Go Far Beyond EFFICIENCY. Supply Chain Management Review. 23 (2), 14–21.
[2] Frank AG den Butter & Kees A Linse (2008) Rethinking Procurement in the Era of Globalization. MIT Sloan management review. 50(1),76-.
[3] (Ibid. p.76-77).
AirFaas on jälleen kehitellyt uusia toimintoja käyttäjien tarpeisiin perustuen. Lue blogi ja näe mitä uutta on tarjolla!
New year, same AirFaas, back with another update! We have been discussing with our users and focusing our technology roadmap for 2022 on the new features that will have the biggest impact on the largest number of companies. Our key goal is to deliver increased efficiency from the RFQ stage onwards and make purchasing simpler through digitalization, centralization, and automation!
One element that we don’t discuss much that is a key functionality for many of our users is the quality management handling capabilities of AirFaas. To us having quality data centralized for nonconformities in the same system as a request for quotations (RFQs) and orders is a no-brainer. Likewise, having an audit trail from RFQ to a supplier nonconformity just makes sense.
When an RFQ is linked to an order, which in turn is linked to a nonconformity, you can analyze supplier performance easily. All this data existed in AirFaas already, but we wanted to present quality data in the reporting section clearly and allow for the export of datasets to Excel. Therefore, we’ve decided our first release of the year should be focused on making the life of a quality manager as easy as possible!
We also have some exciting new features so you can better define the unit of measurement (UOM) and minimum order quantity (MOQ) for products and parts, along with the ability to receive RFQs from customers who are not even registered in AirFaas. This can be achieved via a sharable link or by adding the link to your website! Let’s check out all the new features, improvements, and fixes.
Nonconformity type: observation, minor, or major, with data displayed for the total number of each type of nonconformity and their financial values. This data reflects both nonconformities received from customers and sent to suppliers. You can filter and split the data based on the customer, supplier, date range, and user.
The data also reflects the statuses of nonconformities that have been created, remain open, or have been closed for the filtered data set.
Producing a data set is great, but being able to compare this year to last year is better! In quality reporting, you can now load presets for multiple time periods to compare previous months, quarters, or annual quality performance. The data sets can then be exported to Excel for a deeper analysis. You can also define multiple custom date ranges.
With the nonconformity tracker, you can filter and export data for nonconformities based on their status. You can filter your nonconformities and then show which are open, have been closed by the supplier, have been closed by the customer, or have been closed by both parties.
You can now define in free text form UOM for a product. This can be for example KG, EA, M, etc, or if dealing with smaller components in reels the definition can be 1000 EA. The UOM will automatically flow from one process to another.
For example, if entering the data to a product in your product database the UOM will be displayed when entering the product code into a line of a purchase order (PO). Next, if creating a shipment from the PO the line data will be replicated in shipping documentation such as packing lists to correctly show the products and their UOMs.
You can define the MOQ for each product from the corresponding product page. Then, when creating an order, if you enter an amount for a product that is under the MOQ a message will be displayed informing the user that the MOQ has not been met. Please note that it is possible to disregard the message and order an amount under the MOQ if necessary.
This link can either be shared with specific customers (or potential customers) or can be added to your website. Via the link, the customer is required to add their contact details, along with the company name, company VAT/Registration code, country of company, and a project description.
There are optional fields where you can add lines or BOMs. This can be done by manually adding lines into the table or using the BOM generator. You can also export an excel template and then import the completed data. Finally, you can upload files.
When customers submit an RFQ you will receive a notification and will be invited to import the data into a project and download the files before the expiry date. You can then work with the data in AirFaas, by adding the new company to the AirFaas database, creating the RFQ on behalf of the customer, and creating a quotation.
You can now add a margin to a supplier quote to form a custom quote.
Digitalization is happening in all walks of life and as a concept, it’s far from being a cutting-edge idea. But digitalization in procurement is still relatively unexploited and can therefore be a vehicle to drive competitive advantage in an age of volatile raw material and transportation costs.
At AirFaas we talk with a lot of industrial manufacturing companies in Finland. Whether they’re SMEs with aspirations of growth or global multinationals looking to increase efficiency, the problems they face are often relatively similar.
Most procurement is completed manually with a trusty Excel file, stored in the cloud so all members of the team have access. Communication is conducted via phone and email, and business data is entered into a legacy ERP system that is necessary for production. Often the data will be scattered as team members have their own way of working and their own copies of files stored on local devices.
When management wants insight, the trusty Excels are cross-checked with ERP data, reports are compiled, and findings presented. This data reflects manually entered business data and on some occasions strategic data from the RFX and quote comparison stage.
ERP systems are great at supporting procurement by making sure that you buy the right goods at the right time. But often they do not give tools or insight into areas such as supplier performance, and they lack the ability to fully support the centralization of both strategic and operational procurement from RFX to the handling of quality issues and all processes in between.
Most companies don’t have easy access to data on direct spend. Of course, the largest companies in Finland can utilize systems such as SAP Ariba, Jaggaer, or the Oracle Procurement Cloud to get a 360-degree into their spend and work towards having 100% spend management. However, for the large majority of other companies price and time of implementation excludes them from getting on the same digital footing as these industry leaders.
AirFaas offers an affordable, fast to implement, cloud-based solution to give the large majority of companies the tools to digitalize and automate strategic and operational purchasing simultaneously. Buyers get digital tools to create request for quotations, compare quotes, create and approve orders, receive shipments, and handle quality problems. Based on the data in these processes you can create price lists, organize product categories and centralize all data inside a single project.
As AirFaas is an ecosystem you also open a portals for customers and suppliers, ensuring higher degrees of accuracy in data, increased transparency and better communication. Ultimetly this leads to efficiency gains towards customers and suppliers alike.
Management can log in at any time, view real-time data, and get KPIs and reports directly from the system. AirFaas is not an island and easily integrates with your existing systems to allow a seamless flow of data. You can connect items such as orders, price lists, or products, from your PDM, ERP and accounting system via an API.
The truth is that AirFaas is not a silver bullet for an ineffective process, no system is. Motivating a team to commit to the implementation of a new system and process is the most challenging aspect.
We will be here to support you throughout the transition though!
We will help you analyze your current process, and then define and create a document of best practices to support your staff in transitioning to a new system. We will provide you with enough training so that every team member that is involved is confident and happy with this new process. We will offer you continued support and will work with you to develop new features and functionalities in a way that constantly creates new value for your company (we update the system every month and as a cloud-based solution all updates are instantly available for all users).
All of this is part of our standard package to deliver exceptional customer service alongside a best-in-class product. It’s not an optional extra and there are no consultancy fees. So there’s only really one question left, are you and your team ready to transition from manual to digital?
Tarjouspyynnöt ja keskitetyn tiedon helppo saatavuus ovat haasteellisia teollisuuden PK-yrityksissä. Haastattelemamme hankintapäälliköt ja teollisuuden johtajat kertovat myös, että digitalisoidun tiedon saatavuus koetaan hankalaksi.
Teollisuudessa on nykyään käytössä aina vain paremmat pelit ja vehkeet kaikkeen. Tämä koskee myyntiä, tuotantoa, sisäistä laskentaa ja resursointia. Nyrkkisääntönä voidaan pitää, että mitä suurempi yhtiö, sen paremmat työkalut.
Haastatteluiden perusteella meille on syntynyt mielikuva, että vaikka itse perusprosessi toimisi hyvin, tarjouspyyntö on yhä Exceleiden ja sähköpostien varassa. Syy tähän on luonnollinen; kun yrityksen toimintaa aletaan digitalisoida, ovat myynti ja tuotannon tehostaminen etusijalla.
Silti – teollinen hankintatoimi on usein yrityksen suurin menoerä. Se saattaa olla liikevaihdosta 40-80%.
Monet isot yhtiöt ovat ratkaisseet asian joko kehittämällä omia järjestelmiään, jotka linkitetään järeisiin ERP-kokonaisuuksiin, tai ostamalla isoilta IT-yhtiöiltä lisäosia olemassa oleviin ratkaisuihin palvellakseen yhtiön prosessien jokapäiväistä hallintaa mahdollisimman ketterästi.
Me AirFaasissa keskitymme ennen kaikkea hankintatoimen automatisoimiseen ja siihen liittyvien prosessien digitalisoimiseen ja helpottamiseen.
Hankintapäälliköt ja ostajat saavat käyttöönsä alati paranevat työkalut, joilla he muuttavat Excelinsä ja sähköpostipyörityksensä Best Practice -käytäntöjen mukaiseksi. Laajat rajapinnat ja datan liikkuvuus nopeuttaa ja vähentää manuaalista työtä, sekä minimoi inhimillisten virheiden mahdollisuuden.
Tämä tuo yrityksille turvaa ja luotettavuutta, data-analysoinnin mahdollisuutta sekä ostamisen johdettavuutta, kun tarjouspyyntö ja muut hankintatoimet ovat siististi kokonaisvaltaisessa ympäristössä. Ostajille AirFaas tuo työarjen helpottamisen lisäksi nopeutta, uskottavuutta ja toimittajien hallinnointia. Hankintojen kontrolli tehostuu, kun ostaja näkee yhdellä vilauksella hankintojen kokonaistilanteen ja pystyy sitä helposti hallinnoimaan.
Ensinnäkin tehty työ ei ole yksittäisen henkilön omalla koneella tai sähköpostissa. Tieto on keskitettyä ja kenen tahansa yrityksen vastuuhenkilön saatavilla ajasta ja paikasta riippumatta. Keskitetty tieto mahdollistaa prosessivirheiden nopean huomaamisen, jolloin niihin on helppo puuttua.
Tieto on jaettavissa, jolloin esimerkiksi tarjouspyyntö voi lähteä järjestelmästä suoraan toimittajille. He puolestaan vastaavat kyselyihin, joko vanhaan tapaan sähköpostilla tai kirjautumalla järjestelmään.
Toinen hyödyllinen mahdollisuus on raportointi: raportit hallitukselle ja johtoryhmälle syntyvät helposti, kun tietoa ei enää erikseen kerätä eri paikoista. Tieto on nyt, koko ajan, ajantasaista ja raportoitavissa.
Vuosien varrella on kuultu monella eri kielellä; voitto tehdään nykyään ostamalla eikä myymällä. Kun kilpailu kovenee, tulosta on usein helpointa kohentaa parantamalla hankintatoimea.
Katteita ei enää nosteta helposti vain hintoja nostamalla. Se on väärä tapa ja harvemmin tuottaa toivottua tulosta. Toki jos molemmat konstit onnistuvat, voi yhtiön tulos harpata kerralla mojovasti ylöspäin.
Rohkenemme siis näillä ajatuksilla kehottaa hankintapäälliköitä ja muita vastuuhenkilöitä tarttumaan hirveä sarvista ja ottamaan markkinoiden tehokkaimman ja nopeimmin kehittyvän ratkaisun käyttöön.
Näin varmistat olevasi etusijalla yrityksenä ja myöskin positiossasi. Say Hi To Good Buys!
AirFaas was from the get-go meant to be either a companion or a contender for heavy-hitting “business engines” like ERPs MRPs etc.
My late uncle, who was a Senior Engineer at Nokia during the “Finnish IT boom”, taught me programming when I was knee-high, and as a result, at 10 years old I had already compiled my first Linux kernel.
I’d say getting an awesome like-minded team like we’ve managed to build here at AirFaas would count very high in the highlights department for me.
We started answering to a real perceived need, as well challenging the more rigid, exponentially expensive, and heavily siloed, systems out in the market today, while trying to bring more control, visibility, and transparency to different supply chain structures.
Our main focus now is on the Strategic Procurement sector, as that area feels totally neglected in the market landscape. We hope to fill this void, bringing a lot of win-win-win situations to our users.
Overall the iterations of AirFaas to date have been leaps and bounds, both as a platform and the people as a team, I believe we’ve evolved into a proper business disruptor – Say Hi to Good Buys! We have a lot of stuff in the pipeline, but perhaps the most exciting ones are Open APIs, and as I believe in solving real-world problems, the enhancing/fixing processes for our existing customer base always makes me smile.
A long time ago landed at Chiang Mai International Airport, placing my feet on the ground feeling like I arrived home – I suppose that’s the realization “you were born in the wrong country” – haha! When I turned 20 I promised myself, that at the age of 30 I’d be living in another continent, and after years of struggle, handling all the work/related issues – it became true! On the 11th of March 2015, I was in a metal tube over Asia with a one-way ticket towards “Home”.
Family of course comes without saying (though planes fly 2 ways ;), Summertimes at mökki, Puusauna, and of course Jaloviina & Salmiakki.
I love Audi Quattro’s – so an Audi Sport Quattro S1 E2 from World Rally B-Series would be epic to topple the mountainsides around northern Thailand! I’ve also a newfound love for my current project ~440BHP Nismo Skyline / Cefiro Crossbreed aka Black Bastard – won’t probably give that one up until it either rusts on me or I’ll drive it out of the track that one final time, hahaha!
I know what you’re thinking – “didn’t they just release an update?” YES WE DID! But we’re back with more gifts for our users already. We also have some top-secret projects that our CDO Jabis Sevon is working on in the background that we can wait to share with you all. Speaking of Jabis, he will be thrust into the spotlight in our upcoming elevator interview, released next week.
In the meantime here’s a list of all the new features, improvements, and fixes for this month!
To ensure that all relevant data can be added and shared between customers and suppliers for the receipt and delivery of goods, it’s now possible to add multiple addresses for your company and for your counterparty.
You can add new delivery addresses for your company by navigating to your company settings page, scrolling down to the delivery addresses section and pressing create new.
You can also add missing addresses for your customers and suppliers by searching for their company, scrolling down their company page to the delivery address section, and adding a new delivery address.
As the owner or responsible person of a transaction, you now have increased abilities to delete RFQs, Quotes, Orders, and Shipments. More information can be found in the user manual.
If you have multiple pricelists for the same customer or supplier with different currencies, the data from the pricelist with the highest weight will be chosen for a specific part.
To ensure it is easy to find pricelists simply use the option to filter based on either customer or supplier.
Automation of data added for a new revision with description and weight. New revisions will have their historical data reset. Tabs in the history section now display a number to show how many POs, SOs, Shipments, Receipts, AR Invoices, AP invoices, Nonconformities and notes there are associated with the product. When adding a part to an order the newest revision will appear highest in the list. When adding or reviewing a note you can navigate back into the product from the “Open Product” button. You can now drag and drop attachments into the product page.
After sending RFQs to suppliers you can individually set the status for each supplier dependent on the current situation.
You can set the RFQ status to – draft, sent, awaiting supplier quotations, calculations, supplier quotations analysis, quotations sent to client, approved and closed, or project rejected.
As stated above you can manually set the status of an RFQ. Currently, there is automation of status change when the RFQ is sent and now when the RFQ is quoted.
Include multiple nonconformities for multiple parts in an RFQ that you send to a supplier.
RFQ on behalf of the customer – The currency selected when creating an RFQ on behalf of a customer follows from RFQ to quote automatically.
From your user settings, you can now set your default portal to either customer or supplier portal. This means the location where you will land once logging into AirFaas as well as when selecting RFQ, quotes, order, and nonconformity pages.
In case you want to reset a warehouse bin you can now delete all the parts.
Customer RFQ Project – If a supplier has digitalized an RFQ on behalf of your company you can create a project from that RFQ and centralize all following data.
Nonconformity reporting – Open nonconformity from customers values added
Specification – When creating a specification you can no longer save with lines that have no data entered. Either delete the blank lines or add a part to save the specification.
We’re always working behind the scenes to improve AirFaas and make fast changes based on user feedback. We also have a few new features and improvements that we just couldn’t wait to release so we’re happy to announce even more gifts to our users in the run-up to the festive period!
Automation of the closing of partially shipped orders and the creation of new orders based on the unshipped lines. This ensures that delivery accuracy is unaffected by an agreement to amend the order.
We are always working to make communications standardized and seamless. Now when sending an RFQ to suppliers, the company’s users automatically appear as recipients in the message. You also have similar functionalities from the message hub, such as a list of recent contacts from your address book, and file manager actions. Parts, notes, and nonconformities will also be visible in the message.
You can now set the delivery status to manually closed. This will automatically close the order for both parties in the transaction.
The main use case is for when an order is under or over-shipped and, upon agreement between parties, this can be accepted. Setting the delivery status to manually closed ensures that the delivery performance accurately reflects the final agreement between parties.
The order and shipment will reflect the original data, and the delivery accuracy will show that even though the order wasn’t shipped as per the original order, it is 100% in accordance with an agreement between the parties to close the order.
Data groups can be used for company segmentation and to produce reports based on the members of a specific data group. We have now increased automation between data groups for customers based projects.
You can now use data groups as a filtering mechanism from the project, RFQ, quote, orders, and nonconformity one-page overviews!
Opportunities were very scarce when I was growing up in Haiti, but I never stopped dreaming big. As a child, I was always curious about anything too complicated for my young brain to comprehend. I would ask myself the following questions: What makes it possible for me to see those images on my TV? How is it possible to listen to someone speaking from the box that is called the radio? How is it that this machine called an airplane can fly above my head?
Many years later when I moved to the United States, the seed of curiosity that was planted in my childhood grew and I knew that I wanted to learn about technology for my higher education. It was during my senior year in High School in North Carolina, that my High School invited many local professionals to speak about their respective professions. It was done to introduce to the High School junior and senior students to different types of bachelor’s degrees they could pursue at their chosen universities. But it was one speaker, in particular, a Computer Scientist, that caught my attention. As he started explaining how machine languages are used to teach machines to perform certain tasks, I was hooked.
After I graduated from High School, I did not go to university to become a Computer Scientist like that speaker. I simply could not afford it. However, my hope to pursue my aims never faded. That seed of curiosity surrounding technology was still planted firmly. Therefore, I did the next best thing. I joined the United States Navy to serve and access the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) educational fund. This fund is for eligible Service members and US Veterans to attend university, Technical or vocational school, and for flight training.
After serving for four years in the US Navy, I attended Florida Gulf Coast University where I acquired a few Bachelor of Science Degrees: Finance, Economics, and Computer Information Systems. I did say I was always curious! Although it took me many years to finally get where I wanted to be, I have learned to be relentless in the pursuit of what I consider to be important to me and to be patient. My fascination and passion to learn about different aspects of technology are still burgeoning and unending. I will never stop learning.
It was only a few years ago that I completed my master’s studies in the Strategic Finance and Business Analytics program from the Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology. During the study process, I learned to use Excel to an advanced level and became familiar with different programming languages and tools such as MATLAB, R, Python, Stata, and SAS.
I continue to read a variety of books about tech for self-improvement to help sustain this long-lasting curiosity. Many of those books are about Tech for self-improving, and they are ranging from Advanced Excel for Business Analytics to Machine Learning with Python programming language. My favorite so far that I would recommend is Machine Learning with R: Expert techniques for predictive modeling, 3rd Edition by Brett Lantz.
Recently, I accepted an internship position offer with AirFaas. AirFaas is a software company that facilitates digitalization for procurement services. At AirFaas I feel at home. The team allows me to be involved in different meetings with existing or potential clients, participate in different projects, and take part in major software specifications for new features. I truly feel like a part of the team. Not just an intern. They also help me to feed my unending curiosity!
I do not know what the future will hold for me, and I know that today is the only day that is guaranteed. Therefore, I make sure to use every opportunity to keep learning, growing, and chasing my goals. Time is too important to waste on old ways that may consume most of your precious time. Feed your curiosity with AirFaas and adopt a simpler way of digitalizing your procurement process.
My name is Frantz Desvallons, and I am the new intern at AirFaas.