We are excited to announce that the version 15.0 release of MeRLIN is now live! The updates have been compiled into release notes below, providing an overview of the enhancements and updates in our product that the users anticipated.
Supplier Management
Supplier Onboarding
When the responsible buyer recalls or withdraws a supplier invitation, the supplier’s details are removed from the database, keeping it clean and up-to-date. A user with Vendor Master role has full access to manage actions related to suppliers including onboarding, evaluation, and archiving, regardless of the Responsible Buyer.
Suppliers who haven’t completed their registration will now receive weekly reminder emails until the process is finished. Buyers can update a supplier’s email address when resending an invite, ensuring the invitation reaches the correct contact.
Supplier Information
A new Supplier Contact who doesn’t yet have portal access will now receive an email with details about their responsibilities.
Suppliers can now search for their Creditreform number in the portal using their name and primary location, making it easier for those who don’t already know their number.
Users can now download all registration information of both approved and unapproved suppliers in Excel format.
The Responsible Buyer can update a supplier’s Creditreform number in the Buyer portal by searching for the supplier’s name and location to correct any errors or missing information.
The Buyer can now make confidential changes to supplier-related data in the “Our Information” tab without notifying the supplier.
Supplier Management
A Vendor Master can now conduct supplier evaluations using Voice of Buyer Surveys by creating templates and submitting them to Buyers for supplier assessment.
The system allows storing and displaying PDF reports from Creditreform in the supplier document repository within MeRLIN.
When a supplier approval process begins, manually added approvers receive notifications.
After a supplier is approved, any manually added approvers are CC’d on the approval email sent to the supplier, keeping them informed.
Once a supplier’s registration is complete, the responsible buyer can link the supplier to specific sub-categories within the broader categories.
Feedback Survey
In compliance surveys or in-person audit templates, you can now manually set the weightage for each question, applicable to single-choice questions with more than two possible answers.
Analytics
A new dashboard card shows how many suppliers meet compliance requirements assessed through surveys and audits, providing an overview of supplier compliance status.
Supplier Scorecard
A special scorecard now aggregates various metrics related to supplier performance, including compliance, risk, audit, supply, and Voice of Buyer.
Reporting
Users can access and view a summary of suppliers meeting compliance criteria, either through a detailed report or a visual widget on a dashboard for quick reference.
Notifications
When sending email reminders for pending invitations, any attachments from the original email will now be included, ensuring recipients have all necessary documents to complete the process.
Sourcing
RFQ
The update now has pre-defined templates for the Terms & Conditions that can be included in a Request for Quotation (RFQ). These templates ensure that standard legal and contractual terms are consistently applied across RFQs.
Contract Management
Contract Authoring
The legal user can attach additional documents to a Contract Authoring request. This allows them to include appendices, additional terms and conditions or other relevant documents that need to be shared with suppliers during the process.
Contract Management
Users can upload a price list for non-catalogue items into a contract. This functionality would enable users to include prices for items not listed in the standard catalogue, ensuring that all relevant pricing information is incorporated into the contract.
Compliance
Audit
Auditors conducting an in-person audit will now receive both bell and email notifications for action items or updates related to the audit, ensuring timely response. An additional Email notification notifies the Auditor to perform audit even if the Auditor does not log into MeRLIN frequently.
The Buyer can now invite unapproved suppliers for in-person audits (similar to Compliance Surveys) so that the Supplier can be evaluated and submitted for approval after audit completion.
The System can create Risks automatically (similar to the Compliance Survey) when a Supplier is found to be non-compliant as a result of an audit.
The Responsible Buyer who invited the Supplier will get a Bell and Email Notification when the Invited Supplier submits the Supplier Registration Information form.
Compliance
The Compliance User can now change the order of questions in the Compliance Survey Template both during creation and editing, even after the questions have been added.
There is now an option to display the vendor code from an external system within the Supplier Information view, allowing users to access this code directly in the supplier’s profile.
Analytics
MeRLIN now has a revamped Compliance Dashboard, with a feature where widgets display information about open or published surveys and audits, including their due response dates.
Risk Management
The risk manager will now have the ability to edit the resolution description of a risk even after it has been approved and published but before it is officially closed.
The Business Administrator now can set up or adjust the thresholds for Risk Scores. These thresholds determine the level at which a supplier will be automatically blacklisted based on their risk assessment.
After a risk has been closed by the risk manager, additional approval is required to confirm that the risk has been properly resolved. This approval will occur after the risk manager has completed their work.
Surveys
When conducting a new survey, MeRLIN will now automatically populate or prefill responses based on answers provided in previous surveys. This feature helps streamline the survey process, reducing the need for repetitive data entry.
The compliance owner will now have the ability to add new suppliers to a compliance survey (both ad-hoc and scheduled) even after the survey has been published but before it has been completed. This feature allows additional suppliers to the survey.
Platform
Emails
The system has been updated to organize email templates according to the available modules mapped for each Organizational Unit (OU). Additionally, users can now bulk download data related to these email templates in Excel format.
Implementation
Phase 1 of the Partner Implementation functionality has been released that facilitates seamless configuration and deployment of MeRLIN by partners. This will enable the partners to configure new fields in the Supplier Registration Information form as per customer specifications using configuration management.
Delegation and Transfers
Users can delegate tasks or responsibilities related to supplier management to other users and to transfer supplier-related information or duties between different users.
Multilingual
Users can now generate and send standardized email communications in different languages, ensuring that messages can be tailored to users’ language preferences.
