From Delays to Digital: Accelerating Supplier Journeys with Cherrywork
Spanning industries as diverse as pulp and paper, agribusiness, financial services, real estate, energy, and healthcare, the organization stands among Southeast Asia’s most influential conglomerates. Its decades-long journey has been defined by innovation, sustainability, and inclusive growth—creating value not just for its businesses, but also for the communities and economies it touches. With a strong focus on long-term development and responsible practices, the company has built a legacy of resilience and trust across global markets. Its global workforce and integrated operations have positioned it as a key player in driving economic transformation across the region. Guided by a vision of continuous innovation, the organization remains committed to building a future that is both inclusive and environmentally responsible.
As the organization continued to grow in scale and complexity, its supplier ecosystem expanded rapidly across regions and business verticals. Managing these expanding relationships required agility, consistency, and transparency. To continue enabling growth at this pace, the company began exploring ways to streamline supplier management and onboarding—an essential step toward sustaining operational efficiency and ensuring strong collaboration across its global value chain.
Challenge:
Managing Scale through Manual Supplier Onboarding
With operations spanning multiple geographies and industries, the company’s supplier onboarding process relied heavily on manual coordination. Each region managed onboarding through emails, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems—creating fragmented communication and inconsistent data practices. This decentralized approach demanded significant manual effort from internal teams, often extending turnaround times and making it difficult to track progress or enforce standardized governance. Without a unified view, visibility into onboarding stages remained limited for both teams and suppliers, affecting collaboration and transparency.
As the supplier ecosystem expanded, these inefficiencies began to affect business agility. Regional variations in processes led to data duplication, inconsistent validation practices, and delayed compliance checks. The absence of automation made it challenging to engage new suppliers quickly, slowing procurement cycles and restricting the company’s ability to capitalize on emerging sourcing opportunities. Over time, manual onboarding became not just a process bottleneck—but a constraint on operational efficiency and growth.
Solution:
Digitizing Supplier Journeys for Transparency and Speed
Cherrywork Business Partner Onboarding transformed the company’s supplier onboarding process from a manual, fragmented operation into a unified, digital experience. The solution introduced a centralized supplier onboarding portal that allowed vendors to self-register, submit documents, and track their onboarding progress in real time. Automated workflows ensured that all supplier information underwent validation, verification, and compliance checks without the need for repetitive manual intervention. This streamlined communication between suppliers and internal teams, eliminating the inefficiencies of email exchanges and disconnected spreadsheets.
The platform also established governance-driven workflows, ensuring that every onboarding request followed standardized approval paths across geographies.
By integrating with backend ERP systems, the solution provided real-time visibility into onboarding status, data accuracy, and supplier risk assessments. Internal teams could monitor supplier performance and compliance with ease, while suppliers experienced faster approvals and greater transparency throughout the process. What was once a time-consuming administrative task evolved into a seamless, automated process that improved collaboration, enhanced visibility, and strengthened supplier relationships across the enterprise.
The transformation delivered measurable and lasting impact across the organization. Supplier onboarding, which once required weeks of manual coordination, became three times faster, with an average of 40 new suppliers onboarded each month. The digital platform eliminated delays caused by scattered communication and manual data entry, leading to 40% cost savings through process automation and reduced administrative overhead.
Beyond operational efficiency, the organization gained a single source of truth for supplier information, —improving visibility, compliance, and governance across regions. Teams could now make informed procurement decisions backed by accurate, real-time data, while suppliers benefited from a transparent and predictable onboarding journey. The shift from manual to digital not only accelerated supplier enablement but also strengthened collaboration, built trust, and established a scalable foundation for sustainable growth.
