How to Collaborate with Your Vendors in Dynamics 365

Vendor collaboration is a feature of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management that allows you to work more efficiently and effectively with your external vendors. It enables vendors to access a limited set of information and functionalities in Dynamics 365, such as purchase orders, invoices, requests for quotation, and consignment inventory. Vendors can also view and update their basic company information and respond to your requests and queries.

Vendor collaboration helps you streamline your procurement processes and improve your vendor relationships. Some of the benefits of vendor collaboration are:

• You can reduce the manual work and errors involved in communicating with vendors via email, phone, or fax. Vendors can directly access and update the relevant information in Dynamics 365, and you can track the changes and responses in real time.
• You can increase the visibility and transparency of your vendor transactions and performance. You can monitor the status of purchase orders, invoices, and consignment inventory, and use workflows to approve or reject vendor actions. You can also use analytics and reports to evaluate vendor performance and compliance.
• You can enhance the collaboration and trust between you and your vendors. Vendors can provide feedback and suggestions on purchase orders, invoices, and requests for quotation, and you can negotiate and agree on the best terms and conditions. You can also share best practices and insights with your vendors to improve quality and efficiency.

To use vendor collaboration, you need to set up the security roles, workflows, and options for each vendor account. You also need to provision the vendor contacts as users in Dynamics 365 and assign them the appropriate permissions. For more information about how to set up and use vendor collaboration, you can refer to these resources:

• Vendor collaboration with external vendors - This article explains how you can collaborate with external vendors who use the vendor collaboration interface to work with purchase orders, requests for quotation, and consignment inventory.
• Set up and maintain vendor collaboration - This article explains how to set up vendor collaboration in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. It also explains how to set up a workflow to provision new vendor collaboration users, and how to manage the security roles for those users.
• Dynamics 365 Vendor Collaboration Setup & Functionality - This blog post provides a step-by-step guide on how to set up vendor collaboration for existing vendors in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
• Setup Vendor Collaboration portal access for existing vendors in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations - This blog post provides another step-by-step guide on how to set up vendor collaboration for existing vendors in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
• Vendor collaboration with customers - This article describes how vendors can use vendor collaboration to work with customers in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
• Seamless Collaboration with External Vendors in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Vendor Portal - This blog post explains how you can use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Vendor Portal to work with your vendors.