Customer & Vendor Management Software Solutions

[Krk2573]

I'm the QA Supervisor at a small fastener manufacturer/distributor and we are currently looking for new software or platform to manage our customer and vendor complaints. About 12 years ago the company had an independent software developer build us a platform that handles both customer and vendor complaints, feedback, disposition of goods as well in-house communication to facilitate product investigations related to issues from customers and vendors. It is used by our QA, Sales, Accounting/Admin, Purchasing and Manufacturing departments and we are all growing tired of how clunky it has become.
We are weighing our options on whether to invest more money into the present platform or find a suitable replacement. The current platform communicates with with our ERP, Epicor Prophet 21, so that is one functionality we are looking to continue if we choose a new solution.

Here are few other things built into the platform that we are hoping to continue if went with something new.

• Direct email communication with suppliers and customers from the platform
• Charge back and return management
• Non-conforming/quarantine management
• Freight damage/carrier claims
• Inventory investigations/Bin Checks
• Supplier and Customer Corrective Action

Welcome any feedback, thank you.

Kendall

 

[optomist1]

Hi Kendall,

I will take a stab at this; w/o knowing company size and markets geographic and industry, it would seem that "manage our customer and vendor complaints..." might be missing additional, important data and input especially from the vendor or supplier side. My thought is that this should be part of a larger QA/Supplier platform??

Hope my 2 euros help...

Optomist1

 

[Tidge]

(Hexagon) EtQ's Reliance can do a lot of what you are asking for, but with some caveats:

• It can be rather expensive, for licensing and for configuring.
• They will steer you towards a hosted solution... nothing wrong with that, but you lose some flexibility
• Interfaces with external database (e.g. your ERP) can be somewhat tricky to configure... usually this is not a show stopper
• The OOTB solutions (for workflows, and to a lesser extent database construction) aren't terrible, but they are usually lacking one-or-more element that companies need. Configuring the workflows is 90% of the effort.
• The 'direct email' to users outside the system is one of those features I never saw work in practice, so I don't know what the current mechanism would be recommended... but it is something that should be possible (in a couple different ways) to implement.

 

[Krk2573]

Hi Kendall,

I will take a stab at this; w/o knowing company size and markets geographic and industry, it would seem that "manage our customer and vendor complaints..." might be missing additional, important data and input especially from the vendor or supplier side. My thought is that this should be part of a larger QA/Supplier platform??

Hope my 2 euros help...

Optomist1

Thanks for the feedback. We are hoping for it to be part of a larger QA/Supplier platform. We are looking for something to handle Customer/Supplier Complaints, Corrective/Preventive Action, Calibration, Document, and Non-Conforming Material Management. I'm sure we may not be able to get all of that in one platform to our liking but are growing and need a more robust way to manage everything.

 

[Krk2573]

(Hexagon) EtQ's Reliance can do a lot of what you are asking for, but with some caveats:

• It can be rather expensive, for licensing and for configuring.
• They will steer you towards a hosted solution... nothing wrong with that, but you lose some flexibility
• Interfaces with external database (e.g. your ERP) can be somewhat tricky to configure... usually this is not a show stopper
• The OOTB solutions (for workflows, and to a lesser extent database construction) aren't terrible, but they are usually lacking one-or-more element that companies need. Configuring the workflows is 90% of the effort.
• The 'direct email' to users outside the system is one of those features I never saw work in practice, so I don't know what the current mechanism would be recommended... but it is something that should be possible (in a couple different ways) to implement.

Thank you, we will check it out.