Supplier Management is the strategic process of overseeing relationships and interactions with the vendors that provide goods, services, or materials to an organization. A core enabler of this process is the use of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) applications such as Conga CLM, which supports the full contract lifecycle—from creation and negotiation to execution, compliance, and renewal. Integrating Conga CLM into supplier management strengthens transparency, contract compliance, and governance, helping organizations maintain a resilient and well-managed supply chain.

Key User Personas:

• System administrators: Users responsible for configuration, feature enablement, and access management.
• Supplier manager: Internal user responsible for supplier onboarding, evaluation, and ongoing relationship management.
• Business user: Involved in supplier-related activities. This includes requesters, reviewers, and approvers.
• Supplier contact: External users in the supplier organization. They will have different roles such as sales managers, customer service agents, pricing specialists, and so on.

Supplier Management is used at key stages in the supplier lifecycle, including:

• Onboarding a new supplier (creation, qualification, validation).
• Updating supplier information or performing compliance checks.
• Initiating or managing buy-side contracts through the Conga CLM for negotiations, approvals, and renewals.
• Reviewing or monitoring supplier performance, status, or risk over time.
• Converting supplier requests into active supplier records after approvals.

Buy-Side Contracts for Suppliers: Buy-side contracts are agreements initiated by the buying organization to procure goods or services from a supplier. These contracts define the commercial, legal, and compliance terms governing the relationship. When integrated with Conga CLM, users can create, negotiate, approve, execute, and renew buy-side contracts using standardized workflows. Within Supplier Management, each supplier record displays associated buy-side contracts such as purchase agreements on the Contracts tab, with direct navigation to the Contract Details page. This integration enhances visibility, compliance, and governance across the supplier lifecycle. For more information, see Buy-side Contract for Suppliers.