Today, with more than 180 utilities, this sector represents one of Achilles’ largest customer groups. It is a group which continues to grow, bringing buyer and supplier communities together. Our services are used by companies from power generation, transmission and distribution, nuclear, water, telecom and gas industries. Initially developed to deal with sourcing and qualifying suppliers, today’s services are increasingly addressing wider issues, not only of health and safety, but also of CSR and climate change.
The Asia Pacific Supplier Management System (AP SMS) is a supplier registration and pre-qualification system used by utilities and other companies to source qualified suppliers and contractors. The APU SMS provides subscribers with a single focal point for the collection and sharing of supplier information, reducing costs, time and administrative workload for suppliers and buyers.
APU SMS provides its members with tender quality information about their suppliers, which is updated by the suppliers at least annually. This allows members to streamline their tender information gathering processes, to be more efficient with less duplication of effort.
With all potential suppliers able to register their interest in supplying products and services, the SMS is a transparent, open and fair system, allowing buyer members to comply with best-practice procurement processes, including government procurement requirements.
Being able to access more potential suppliers and include them in tenders with confidence that Achilles has quality-checked important capabilities, allows subscribers to improve their tender dynamics and improve buying outcomes.
By adopting the Registration option (Total Supplier Management System), members can be confident that the supplier information in their ERP system is clean, up to date, and accurate. Procure to pay processes are therefore more timely and cost effective.
The APU SMS also allows members to monitor and track supplier attributes such as insurance coverages, by using Achilles as an outsource partner to ensure that this vital information is up to date and accurate, and meets contract terms and conditions. (see Insurance Monitoring Service)
Achilles also provides assessments of factory production procedures and processes, including quality, materials, packaging, and logistics capability, to mention just a few aspects of the audit coverage. Buyers can then access supplier information plus detailed factory audit reports before deciding tender lists. In-house engineers and technical experts can then focus on technical specification questions at the shortlisted, high performance factories. (see Factory Assessment Service)
Members wishing to adopt carbon measurement through their supply chain (Scope 3), can utilize the Achilles carbonReduction service, which also adopts the community, shared information model of carbon footprint information. (see Carbon Management Service)
For suppliers, subscription to the APU SMS means their information is available to all buyer organizations and does not have to be provided separately each time. This is a very substantial time and cost saving.