We’ve been thinking a lot about end-of-year reporting recently. I guess it’s that time of the year. Before you can get into the festive mood, there’s usually a lot of hard work that goes into reviewing your – and your supplier’s – annual performance.
Our development roadmap has the end destination of being a complete procurement solution, which is equally affordable for SMEs and multinationals and is simple to implement and use. Using AirFaas for all your purchasing means that you’re in control of a wealth of data, and having everything centralized in one solution means that it’s effortless to produce reports.
This release focuses on a few new features that will improve your reporting, several improvements that will make process execution more efficient, and a couple of fixes that improve the logic of the system. Let’s have a look at each new development in a bit more detail!
To ensure that purchase order (PO) and sales order (SO) delivery accuracy is more in keeping with what we see as the industry standard we’ve changed from header to line-based reporting. Now you will see your supplier’s delivery performance towards your company and your companies performance towards your customers calculated based on line data.
Delivery schedules change, even more so in the current global supply chain crisis. However, it’s important to record data and be able to report on how many changes to the initially agreed ship by date are made. Therefore, AirFaas now records and clearly displays the number of changes made to the ship by date and has an audit trail that shows who made the change with a date and time stamp.
AirFaas previously supported sales and purchasing reporting in a way that gave you a broad overview of the data regarding all RFQs, quotes, orders, shipments, invoices, and projects. You also had the ability to view and export shipped header and line data.
Now you can view and export data for sales and purchasing regarding all your invoiced header and line data. Furthermore, credit notes created are also now reflected in the invoicing data section of sales and purchasing reporting.
Adding to the increased functionality of sales and purchasing reporting you can now view header and line data for all the parts and products that haven’t been shipped in the order tracker tab of the reporting section. This ultimately gives you a 360-degree view into your orders, ensuring that you understand the amounts of parts and products as yet to be shipped, alongside reporting on shipped and invoices data.
To ensure that when you send your RFQ to chosen suppliers you have all the associated documents and files packaged conveniently, the RFQ excel is now automatically added to the archive and is forwarded as an attachment when sending the RFQ.
You can now add new parts to your product database or update existing parts from a specification. Parts can still be added manually or via Excel upload from the Product section of AirFaas, and are also automatically added from quotations.
Now when you create a specification you can simply press a button to add the parts to your database. If the part already exists you can also use this functionality to update existing info or to create a new revision directly from the specification.
Previously you could view a comparison table of the quotes that you have received from Suppliers outlining the payment and delivery terms, the time to order, and the prices. Now it’s possible to download an Excel of the quotes that you want to compare.
When you have a shipment of hundreds of lines and you’re trying to create a partial shipment it might be easier to export the order lines to Excel, make your adjustments, and then import the data back into AirFaas. Now it’s possible!
You can now select the currency that you have agreed on prices with your customer or supplier for a price list.
If you want to be able to filter orders with a specific tag or identifier, you can simply enter it as text into the custom comment field in the order form. Then from the order grid, you can filter using the custom comment.
The AirFaas mobile version has limited functionality as executing some tasks on a small screen just isn’t feasible. However we have now included the option to be able to view AirFaas from the desktop version from any device, so even if your phone is the only screen you have you can conduct any AirFaas process on the go.
Our business is the production of Hydraulic cylinders and components, also general machining (production of different types of parts and consumables).
Our primary ambition is to get one of our products on the market to grow in volume and gain a larger market share.
The biggest challenge is the lack of good personal, unstable electric power cost, also the global impact caused by COVID.
Yes, we have been affected by the unnaturally overheated market in supply – prices are unpredictable especially for raw materials. The delivery accuracy of raw material is also questionable, and as everything is in a determining state, our sales side is impacted. Our clients use our product only as one of their components, if they are not getting most of their needs covered, they are late with their shipments, which impacts us financially.
Yes, it is so. It helps you make the right choice, by having things like simple KPI tools, automated mail notification, and information exchange. Still, at present, most of our suppliers are not using AirFaas, so it is in a way a double work. However, the transparency is great, decision-making easy, and it makes procurement fast!
Keeping track of records, helping to identify possible delays prior to them happening, as we are depending on supply and production planning.
My family is Nr 1 on this list, I also adore movies, motorcycle riding, and love traveling seeing new places and cultures.
I love being in the wilderness fishing by myself or sitting at the fire and looking at the river where my friends are fly fishing. I was enjoying that kind of view during the last few days of my vacation this year.
Then my phone rang and everything suddenly changed. I was asked to become the CEO of AirFaas, which means I must leave my current responsibilities at Combi Works, my other company.
After the phone call, I did some deep contemplation by myself. At that point, I did not check my emails or discuss with anybody.
Monday arrives. Announcements are made internally. My team assures me that everything will be alright. And they are right. It is not only about me, it is about us doing this together.
I’m excited and grateful to have the best team around me. I know our product inside out – better than anyone at this point. I have been the central person in developing the logic of the system from the very beginning. And more importantly, I’m proud of our team’s ability to solve problems and help customers develop their strategic purchasing.
During my long career working with supply chains and procurement I have always made it a priority to help people find ways to be more efficient. I have worked with frontline Finnish and Swedish manufacturing companies, supporting their supply chain and system development, which gives me a solid background to bring this company to the next level. This is my passion. It is time to make AirFaas BIG!
The coming weeks and months will be the most exciting ones of my life. I trust that my colleagues, friends, and partners will support me in this new path, as I promise to support them.
I’m Robi, the CEO of AirFaas, the system that I recommend for all companies to use to make their strategic purchasing more efficient, more data-driven, and less manual.
Say Hi To Good Buys
Robi
Good things come to those who wait, and we’ve all been eagerly anticipating this update to AirFaas! We’re happy to announce that we’re now live with a whole host of new features, improvements, and enhancements that will make your life better, your procurement easier, and have you wondering what life was like before everything changed!
We think the most exciting part of this update is the new look RFQ process. It features a new UX for the Project function and the ability to create specifications from past orders, quotes, categories, as well as enhanced and simplified import and editing of BOMs from Excel, and improvements for how you create a specification based on your existing AirFaas products and BOMs.
The new RFQ process also has the ability to merge, split and copy specifications in a project. This gives users a powerful tool with a simple interface so you can build and edit complex BOMs, or split BOMs down into subassemblies ready to create RFQs to Suppliers.
After building your Specification you can use the workbench to create RFQs by adding information for payment and delivery terms, delivery and shipment dates, as well as supplier info, and then save all of this data ready to be sent at a later date. The ability to create RFQs in stages has been requested by many users and these improved features will mean that your strategic purchasing becomes easier to manage.
Learn how to use the new RFQ features here.
The AirFaas Message Hub is a brand new feature that will improve the efficiency of your procurement by allowing you to further centralize how you communicate and share files from inside the AirFaas solution. Now you can send emails from the new Message Hub and share data on RFQs, Quotes, Purchase Orders, Sales Order, Shipments, Receipts, Invoices, Nonconformities, Specifications and attach necessary files.
By pressing the mail icon you can review sent or received messages. If you press Message Icon from a specific page, you can forward the data included in that page to the email of a supplier, customer or team member. You can also link different items together and forward multiple types of data in the same message.
Learn how to use the Message Hub here.
The File Manager allows you to upload, store and share different files and associate them to different processes in AirFaas. Use the File Manager to upload files to RFQs, Quotes, Purchase Orders, Sales Order, Shipments, Receipts, Invoices, Nonconformities, and Specifications. Uploaded Files can then be password protected and shared. Shared files are currently valid for 7 days, and the receiver can download them as a Zipped file.
Learn how to use the File Manager here.
Finally, if you’ve followed any of the links to learn how to use the new features you will have noticed that we have a new and updated AirFaas user manual. You will find the links integrated into the page actions of each section of AirFaas, or denoted by a question mark (in the Message Hub and File Manager). The links take you to the user manual, where you can use your left and right arrow keys to browse through different sections of the manual, and your up and down arrow keys to look at the info in each section.
We hope the integrated User Manual will support our users in learning how to use the new features and act as reference material for all processes in AirFaas.
View the User Manual from the first page here.
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RAULI RATASVUORI, YOU’RE THE COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR OF NIKOLAI SOURCING. WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS?
We help European companies with procurement matters locally in Asia.
HOW DO YOU CREATE VALUE FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS AS A SOURCING COMPANY?
We give eyes and ears to our customer’s purchasing departments locally in Asia. We provide direct buying opportunities with a transparent cost structure.
WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES?
Communication. There are language, cultural, business, and time difference challenges to mention a few. Communication is our core task and at the same time our biggest challenge.
YOU HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF NIKOLAI SOURCING. WHAT PROBLEMS LEAD YOU TO MAKE THIS DECISION?
The company must have a sight to the future. We are determined to create value for our customers now and in the future. Digital tools help our professional purchasers perform at their best.
HOW HAS AIRFAAS SUPPORTED YOU IN CREATING SOLUTIONS?
We are still at the beginning of our Digitalization project. AirFaas is our central solution and other solutions will be integrated with AirFaas. The support from AirFaas has been solid, fast, and human.
WHEN YOU’RE NOT BUSY WITH WORK WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? FAMILY LIFE, HOBBIES, CULTURE?
Spending time with my family makes me happy. We do a lot of stuff together. Now it’s also the best season to watch Finnish baseball final games. Go on Kopla!
AirFaas Oy is happy to announce that Robert Blomstedt, founder and member of the Board of Directors of the company, has been appointed the CEO of AirFaas Oy from 20th of September 2021. Robert has been part of AirFaas from the very beginning as Product Owner and has deep knowledge of the product. AirFaas is at a stage, where its vision, mission and strategy are ready for implementation. Its product market fit and general processes have been developed and will be tested during the incoming months. Current CEO Juuso Jankama has done an excellent job building the daily operations for AirFaas together with the operational team and the Board of Directors. Robert will now take the lead and steer the company to the next level as Juuso is headed to a similar role in another tech company
I am thrilled by this nomination and the trust I have received from the BOD and the operational team. I am very enthusiastic about the challenge and I feel I have all the needed skillsets for taking AirFaas to the next level. Incoming months are going to be extremely interesting as the product has developed hugely during the past year.
We guarantee 100% Spend Control. This is the bold statement that is repeated everywhere in AirFaas material. And sometimes we get asked, “what the hell does that even mean?”. That is a fair question, and luckily it is easy for us to answer!
Just to be clear, when we talk about spend, we talk about direct spend. With our customers, direct spend constitutes a major cash flow and indirect spend doesn’t play a major role for them. Spend Control in our view consists of 3 core elements:
Being able to define, monitor, and adjust the processes is crucial for having control over your spend. Without an established best practice it is very difficult to have a uniform way of working, documenting, comparing, and making decisions. In the worst-case scenario, all buyers work in their unique highly personal way. They make decisions based on their own criteria, leading into a situation where the results of the work are all over the place both literally and figuratively speaking. Sometimes, when a buyer is highly experienced this can be a good thing. But overall having a standardized process supports both strategic and operative purchasing.
Spend visibility is the only way to really understand outgoing cash flow in a meaningful way. It also allows you to analyze and understand the performance that you are getting for each euro spent. With proper spend visibility connected to category management capabilities, you can continuously evaluate how your spend changes. This means you can understand what the root causes are behind those changes, act on anomalies, and detected trends before issues become problems.
The ability to audit is an important element for creating a culture of accountability in your procurement organization. It will greatly reduce the amount of time in finding root causes for various purchasing-related problems and set a standard that nothing can be swept under the rug.
Individually, all of these are great vehicles for driving better buying and better control over your spend. But together, they are a truly powerful combination for understanding what is going on in your organization and driving cost-efficient, compliant behavior. When your organization can do the right things, document them in a way that information can be accessed later, and you have full visibility into everything procurement-related, you have reached 100% spend control.
How can AirFaas guarantee 100% spend control?
Because of the capabilities we provide to all AirFaas users we are not shy in guaranteeing 100% spend control. Because that is what AirFaas was built for.
All digital tools can bring great value. There’s not a single business out there that isn’t dependent on at least one IT solution for running their business. If I was to guess what the most important solution is, I would say either email or excel, as they are incredibly versatile and even indispensable. So much so, that we don’t even consider them as IT or digital tools, they just are, like the sun and the moon. And that is the nature of evolution in general. We’re faced with new technologies that seem totally weird when new, but once we can fully grasp how to make the most of them, we soon find we can’t live without them.
Digitalizing procurement isn’t yet at the point where it’s seen as a crucial part of our business, in the same way as excel, email, or even ERP systems. Currently, only the largest corporations can afford to implement procurement systems. As procurement systems evolve and companies like AirFaas begin to offer competitively priced solutions that are accessible to SMEs, more and more businesses need to start thinking about the digitalization of their procurement.
There are a few basic things you should be thinking about when assessing the need to implement a new system. The first thing is to identify the types of procurement transactions that you need to manage repeatedly. Typical procurement transactions are request for quotations (RFQ’s), purchase orders (PO’s), order confirmations, nonconformities, and the creation of shipping documents. There may be others, but these would be the main ones. Also think about reporting – both daily operational reports you need to run, and weekly, monthly, and yearly reports you need to put together for planning and strategy. The next step is to determine their volumes: how many of each transaction type do you manage monthly, weekly, and daily? This gives you a good estimate of the total amount of procurement transactions your organization manages.
Now think about the way you process these transactions now. Which tools and systems do you use? How much time does it take per transaction? How much of that work is manual and repetitive – the type of work that doesn’t really add value but must be done? For example, do you need to type the same data into multiple systems many times? Also consider how much time you spend on these tasks: looking for drawings or other information in different places? Trying to trace back the last steps that have been completed per specific transaction, and ensuring you have the most up-to-date info. Trying to link subsequent transactions together, matching invoices to orders or nonconformities, and understanding who is responsible for what according to the associated contract. This gives you a good estimate of the total duration for completing a task, and an idea about how much of that time is value-adding and how much time is lost due to subpar tools and processes.
Now multiply the number of all different types of transactions with the time you waste on doing non-value-added activities. What is that number? If it’s just a few minutes per day, congratulations, your business is in ok shape, and digitalizing your procurement doesn’t really benefit from investing in systems. But if the number is tens of minutes per day, things are different. Just 20 minutes per day of unnecessary work is close to 7 hours per month, and more than two weeks of wasted work in a year! What could you achieve if you had two more weeks each year to work on more impactful tasks than trying to send large emails?
This simple exercise won’t take you more than 15 minutes to do. If the time you can save on an annual basis adds up to days or weeks of work, you should start thinking about how you can streamline the way you work. Digitalization will certainly help. It is important to remember that the win is not only in the amount of time you save. The real benefit comes from the things you can do with the time you save! The average manufacturing company spends 60% of its revenue on direct purchases. What if this time allowed you to manage that spend just 1% better? For a 50M€ revenue company, the benefit will be 500k€ per year. That’s a lot of money. Maybe the time to consider digitalizing your procurement is now?
Tietojärjestelmät ovat olleet arkinen osa teollisuusyritysten arkea ja pitkään. Suomesta ei löydy enää yhtäkään itseään kunnioittavaa valmistavan teollisuuden yritystä, joka johtaisi myyntiä tai tuotantoa ilman kunnon sähköisiä työkaluja. Siksi onkin kummallista, että hankinnoista puhuttaessa sähköisiä työkaluja ei ole käytössä lainkaan, tai ne rajoittuvat sähköpostiin ja Exceliin.
Yllättävää se ei kuitenkaan ole. Vaikka maailma on täynnä hankintajärjestelmiä, niin ne ovat olleet tähän asti aivan liian kalliita muille kuin suurimmille, vähintään satojen miljoonien eurojen liikevaihtoa pyörittäville yrityksille. Hintansa puolesta sopivat järjestelmät ovat puolestaan olleet liian yksinkertaisia, monesti epäsuorien ostojen hallintaan tehtyjä ratkaisuja, jotka eivät ota huomioon teollisen ostamisen erityispiirteitä.
Työkalujen puute on ongelma, jonka kanssa hankinnan ammattilaiset kärvistelevät joka päivä. Työkalut eivät pelkästään tee ostamisesta sujuvaa, sillä kunnon työkalut muun muassa
Kunnon työkaluilla yritykset voivat parantaa samaan aikaan sekä kannattavuuttaan, operatiivista tehokkuutta, että pienentää toimittajiin liittyviä riskejä.
Uusi suomalainen, teollisuuden tarpeita varten rakennettu AirFaas hankintajärjestelmä tuo myös pienten ja keskikokoisten teollisuusyritysten hankintakyvykkyydet 90-luvulta nykyaikaan. AirFaasin avulla ostamisen ongelmien kanssa painivat yritykset pystyvät automatisoimaan hankinnan prosesseja, saamaan reaaliaikaisen näkyvyyden kaikkiin hankintoihin, ja johtamaan hankintoja parhaan mahdollisen tiedon avulla.
Koska teollisuuden tietojärjestelmäkyvykkyydet hankintajärjestelmiä lukuun ottamatta ovat todella hyvät, AirFaas hankintajärjestelmä on suunniteltu toimimaan yhdessä muiden järjestelmien kanssa. Näin ollen ostajien ei tarvitse naputella samoja tietoja moneen järjestelmään, vaan tiedot voidaan ylläpitää yhdessä paikassa. AirFaas ei edes pyri kilpailemaan esimerkiksi ERP-järjestelmän kanssa, vaan tavoitteena on maksimoida muihin järjestelmiin tehtyjen investointien tuotto liittämällä niihin puuttuvat sähköisen hankintatoimen kyvykkyydet.
AirFaas on pilvipalvelu, joka on nopea ottaa käyttöön ja sitä on helppo käyttää. Pilvipalveluna ratkaisun hinta pysyy myös erittäin kilpailukykyisenä, ja hyötyihin suhteutettuna AirFaasin käyttöönotto vastaa rahan painamista: järjestelmä maksaa itsensä takaisin yleensä kuukausissa, ei vuosissa.
Every day we speak to as many of our users as possible. We also reach out to procurement professionals, managers of manufacturing organizations and industry experts to have conversations not only about AirFaas but all solutions that help simplify procurement. We’re always equally interested to talk about our solution and learn exactly what your company needs to meet its strategic and operational goals!
Whether you’re an existing AirFaas user or someone who wants to speak to one of our representatives to learn a little bit more about our solution we believe in having open and honest dialogs. Ultimately, we want all users to be our reference customers, and look to develop strong relationships that help each other grow.
Not only do we learn from all these interactions, but we actively analyze the information we receive and use that to adjust how we communicate the value that AirFaas creates. We identify what people need and we make it our priority to implement, fast!
Over the summer we have had the opportunity to process a lot of interesting information that you’ve given us. One of the most tangible results of this is our updated website. To make sure that we speak the same language, answer the most important questions, and provide the most useful information, we’ve added sections explaining how AirFaas supports different levels of your organization. Whether you’re a buyer, a supplier, a manager, or from the IT department we’ve got you covered! See the solution section for more details.
We’ve also gone into much more detail about the AirFaas features that are the most useful in guaranteeing you 100% spend management. Our idea is to give our users a reliable buying tool that makes purchasing more efficient and data-driven. AirFaas gives you tools to digitalize buying work and the ability to monitor orders and produce reports instantly! See the features section for more details.
Do you also agree that it’s important that we added information about our pricing structure to be as transparent and predictable as possible? As a SaaS solution, AirFaas pricing is based on a monthly subscription fee defined by 2 metrics: your company revenue and the number of users that will operate your company in AirFaas. There are no hidden fees, and continuous services such as customer support and all product upgrades are included. Learn about AirFaas pricing here.
Finally, we wanted to pay homage to our roots and add a Finnish translation to our website. This is important because Finland is our home market. We’re always perfecting our message. This means making all the translations we want to is time-consuming. We hope to add translations and support as many languages as possible in the future.
We continue to look for ways we can make the lives of buyers better. Say Hi to Good Buys with AirFaas!