This was a recent posting in the Nsite community and funnily enough we have had the same issue arise here in our office.
Who makes the determination on what addresses or information gets entered into your financial system? How do you know the information you have received is accurate? What about multiple locations for the same Tax ID (EIN) number?
When you are in a large jurisdiction where procurement and finance are separate departments this is a constant battle on who “owns” the vendor file. When you are in small jurisdictions it is a collaborative effort to make sure both sides of the house (procurement vs accounts payable) have all the information needed to do their job.
As we just implemented a new ERP system there is a considerable amount of vendor clean up coming out of the old system and some retraining on thought processes for vendors.
As an example our old system allowed for us to have a tax ID number in it multiple times mainly due to the fact that there was only space for a corporate address and a remit to address. In our new system we can add an unlimited number of addresses associated with a single tax ID.
Because of this we have tried to create a standard:
The first address listed is the corporate address as listed on the W-9, the second address is the remit to address, all other addresses are added as needed such as PO address, contract administration address, etc.
Now the conundrum of ensuring the information you have is accurate. As stated in the previous Nsite posting you can check against the IRS, however that is typically only the corporate address and not all the others. Since we can scan and attach the documents to our vendor file we do so and have to rely that the vendor is providing us with the most up to date information.
procurementrulz 
Great Blog.
Now, without writing a longer message (which I am certainly tempted to do) explaining my organisation’s business model, I wanted to ask how a new organisation like mine can get its voice heard in the procurement community.
Even though our proposition costs nothing and creates new (and potentially significant) value for buyers – we are not able to engage with a single buyer willing to listen, let alone try our proposition.
Whilst I understand that it is always difficult to identify early adopters, it feels like the buyers that we have engaged with are defensive of existing practices (by the way we do not undermine any existing procurement levers), say that they have seen it all before, or may even feel threatened by a digital platform. If we can get past that, they would see that we really are different, and that we would actually strengthen the procurement function rather than threaten it.
Of course – it is also about how we communicate our proposition – but unless we get eyes on it in the first place – we are not able to assess our communication efficiency.
Here is what Bertrand Malterverne wrote from Procurement Tidbits: https://medium.com/procurement-tidbits/2-remarkable-applications-of-the-platform-economy-in-procurement-fc4a3bee0908#.4yz7tyo6h
If you would be willing to offer some advice – perhaps I can send you a 1 page explanation in my very own words about us. I hope you would find it intellectually stimulating at least.
We also have a number of blogs that you can take a look at: http://blog.innovo-network.com/
Kind regards,
Asif
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