One central place where your procurement team manages all suppliers — from onboarding and contracts to performance, risk and sustainability data. Custom supplier relationship management that fits your sector, your ERP and the compliance requirements of DORA, CSRD and the Dutch Public Procurement Act (Aanbestedingswet).
A supplier management platform — internationally often called supplier relationship management (SRM) — brings together all processes relating to your suppliers in one system. Onboarding, master data, contracts, performance monitoring, risk checks, sustainability reporting and communication with suppliers themselves all come together in one place.
The difference from a simpler vendor portal is that an SRM serves both the internal side (procurement, finance, legal, compliance) and the external side (supplier self-service). A vendor portal is usually a subset: the self-service layer for suppliers. An SRM platform is broader and integrates with your ERP, accounting system and ESG reporting tools. An order management system, by contrast, manages the order flow itself (orders, fulfilment, stock), whereas an SRM focuses on the relationship with the supplier behind those orders. In practice, both systems sit side by side and exchange master data.
We don't build a copy of Ariba or Coupa; those products do what they do. We build custom solutions where off-the-shelf packages don't fit: for mid-market organisations that are too large for Excel but too small for enterprise procurement, for sectors with their own contract law or qualification requirements, or for multi-system integrations where the package runs out and the real work begins. Often a SRM isn't a standalone product either, but part of a broader enterprise software landscape in which ERP, finance, project administration and compliance tooling work together.
Good supplier management is also not a static project. Legislation on third parties is constantly changing: DORA in 2025, CSRD reporting with scope 3 data, EU CSDDD due diligence, the digital product passport for batteries. An SRM platform that you build needs to keep pace with this, rather than requiring an external consultant for every change in the law. That maintenance perspective is an important argument for going custom when standard packages lock you in or are slow to respond to new requirements.
Hundreds to thousands of suppliers, not the tens of thousands for which SAP Ariba or Coupa are designed. The annual licence of an enterprise package doesn't justify the volume.
Construction with RAW and UAV context, pharma with MDR validation, government under the Aanbestedingswet (Dutch Public Procurement Act), or energy with multi-supplier capex projects. Off-the-shelf packages rarely cover these.
When SAP or Exact, an accounting package, a CSRD reporting tool and a DORA register must work together seamlessly, a single package alone falls short. The integration work is the heart of the project.
In construction, you often work with subcontractors who in turn hire subcontractors of their own. Standard SRM tools model that cascade poorly. Custom software records the chain transparently, which is relevant for the Dutch Act to Combat Sham Arrangements (Wet Aanpak Schijnconstructies) and CSDDD due diligence.
Suppliers register themselves via an onboarding form. KvK, VAT and IBAN validation, KYB/KYC checks, sanctions list screening (OFAC, EU, UN) and compliance questionnaires run automatically. The result is a clean supplier record with certificates, qualifications and contact persons, ready for procurement, finance and legal to work with, without one department having to fill in missing fields halfway through.
Contracts, framework agreements and price agreements in one place with expiry alerts. Performance scorecards for OTIF (on-time-in-full), quality and response time. Financial health signals via Dun & Bradstreet or Graydon, visible to your procurement team daily. In this way supplier management moves from a reactive process (something happens, we respond) to a proactive one (we see it coming).
The DORA register for ICT third parties, scope 3 emissions for CSRD, conflict minerals due diligence, modern slavery audits and the usual spend analytics roll straight out of the platform. No more exporting to Excel and merging by hand, and no versions that differ between procurement and compliance. Audit trails and signed documents are kept together, so that an ESMA or DNB query can be answered within a day.
An SRM is not a monolith but a collection of interrelated modules. Which you need depends on your sector, size and compliance context. We establish the scope together with your procurement, finance and legal teams.
Self-service application form with KYB/KYC checks, sanctions lists and automatic GDPR screening.
Name, address, KvK, VAT, IBAN, certificates and qualifications as a single source of truth for all systems.
Framework agreements and MSAs with versioning, expiry alerts and price list integration.
OTIF scorecards, quality metrics, complaint handling and regular supplier reviews.
DORA register, financial health via Graydon, sanctions list screening and conflict minerals (3TG).
CSRD scope 3 data, supplier CO₂ reporting, modern slavery audits and the EU Battery Regulation.
RFI, RFQ and RFP platforms with supplier invitations, bid comparison and e-auctions.
Insight into purchasing volumes, duplicate suppliers and category management by department.
Purchase orders, goods receipt notes and invoices are matched automatically and linked to your accounting.
Issue tracking with suppliers, structured communication and escalation routes.
Contract renewals, category strategy and regular market re-tendering per purchasing category.
Self-service for suppliers: invoice status, ongoing RFx, contract overviews and documents.
For a long time, supplier management was primarily a procurement discipline. Today, it is also a compliance discipline. Legislation concerning third parties — financial, ESG, human rights and data — is growing rapidly, and the burden of proof rests with you as the client. A modern SRM platform is therefore also an audit tool.
For the financial sector, DORA is the most urgent: since January 2025, a register of all ICT third-party providers has been mandatory, including subcontracting, with a prescribed dataset per provider. For companies subject to the CSRD, something similar applies to scope 3 emissions data from the supply chain. Our KYC/AML compliance software shares much of its underlying logic with supplier screening — sanctions lists, beneficial ownership and risk scoring.
SAP Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer, Ivalua and Synertrade are market leaders in enterprise procurement. In the mid-market, Procurify and Tradeshift play a role, and in the Netherlands Onventis and ISPnext. We do not replace these packages — we build when the package does not fit.
Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer and Ivalua offer the breadth of a procurement suite with sourcing, contracts, P2P, supplier management and spend analytics. This makes sense for large organisations with thousands of suppliers, provided you can adapt to the product's logic.
Procurify, Tradeshift and, in the Netherlands, Onventis or ISPnext focus on the middle tier. Cheaper and quicker to implement, but less depth in sector-specific flows such as RAW/UAV contracts or MDR validation.
We build when mid-market packages are too limited and enterprise suites too heavy — or when integration with your existing systems landscape, sector requirements and DORA/CSRD flows make the difference. Your own IP, no licence lock-in, full integration with your ERP, accounting and reporting tools.
Custom supplier management is relevant once your supplier base grows in size and complexity beyond what Excel and loose spreadsheets can handle, but before Ariba or Coupa makes sense. These are the sectors we most often see in practice.
Procurement departments managing hundreds to a few thousand suppliers, where the head of procurement wants control over spend, contracts and risk without a suite the whole company has to adopt.
Complex supply chains with multi-tier suppliers, qualification requirements per component, batch traceability and, for pharma, MDR and GMP validation of suppliers.
Procurement across hundreds of brands and producers, seasonal collections, food safety certification and, for clothing, modern slavery and sustainability obligations within the supply chain.
RAW specifications, UAV contracts, G-account administration and cascade management of subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. The Dutch Act on Combating Sham Constructions and chain liability make transparency mandatory.
MDR and CE validation of suppliers, validated quality systems, origin due diligence for active pharmaceutical ingredients and comprehensive audit trails for inspections.
Since January 2025, a register of ICT third-party providers has been mandatory for financial institutions, covering subcontracting, critical function classification and concentration risk. Off-the-shelf packages cover this only partially; the specific ESMA dataset almost always requires custom development.
TenderNed integration, transparent award, objection deadlines, framework agreements with multiple lots, and an audit trail that stands up to a National Audit Office investigation.
Large infrastructure projects with dozens of suppliers per project, EPC contracts, performance guarantees and risk allocation. Performance monitoring per project and across total supplier spend, side by side.
A thirty-minute introductory call in which we go through the supplier processes you currently run, where the pain points lie, and whether a custom-built platform is the right investment alongside, or instead of, a standard package.
Appfront uses cookies and similar technologies to keep the website working properly, for analytics and for marketing. You choose what you allow. Read more in our privacy policy.
