Spitfire Solution Snapshot: Vendor & Subcontractor Management

Challenge

“We've worked with many vendors and subcontractors over the years, some better than others. Individual Project Managers have opinions about certain subcontractors, but this information is not available to all. We'd like a system that will let us rate our vendors and subcontractors and prevent us from working again with the lowest rated ones. We'd also like to easily find all the vendors and subcontractors in our system according to city/state, rating, times used, or CSI specialty and then be able to select them all at once.”

Solution

Spitfire Project Management System (sfPMS) combines vendor/subcontractor management with its document control and project accounting functionalities. Vendors/subs are identified as such in the system contact list and detailed information can be entered for each, including phone numbers, address, when last used, controls for payment, rating, CSI codes, notes, classifications, and other attributes. In addition, pre-vendors and pre-subcontractors can be entered for use in lookups and routing before being fully qualified in the system.

How It Works

Existing vendors/subs are imported into sfPMS and others are added as needed. Each vendor/sub is given no or partial access to sfPMS, depending on business practices and configurations.
Pre-vendors and pre-subcontractors are added on-the-fly. They are then easily converted to full contacts if appropriate.
sfPMS provides many ways to categorize and describe your vendors/subs. Your controls then prevent certain vendors/subs from being paid (for example, if they are out of compliance) or being used on new subcontracts.
Multiple filters in vendor/sub lookups allow you to easily find one or more vendors/subs based on a variety of criteria.
Vendors/subs with limited access to sfPMS can update documents such as RFQs and Pay Requests directly, diminishing the need for email/fax communications.
Projects identify all related vendosr/subs at-a-glance, but only to those authorized to see this information.

Benefits

Shared information and performance metrics help project managers make better hiring decisions.
Communicating to all vendors/subs through one system standardizes procedures.
No time is wasted looking for all vendors/subs that match certain criteria.
The ease of routing appropriate project documents to vendors/subs means that vendors/subs stay in the loop, fostering better relationships.