FlowDezk’s interactive vendor portal is accessible both to you and to your vendor (with some areas only available to you of course) and allows your resources to keep you informed about on their skills and availability in real-time. If vendors modify their language skills, domain expertise or CAT tool expertise, the updated information will immediately be available to your project managers.

The portal also includes a smart rate negotiating mechanism, which allows both vendors and admin users to propose, approve or reject rates. Your project managers will be able to see the rates and their status when they select a vendor, so they can make an informed decision.

Vendor companies that offer a wide range of languages, CAT tools and rates can simply upload a PDF and will pop up in all language combination searches.

To meet ISO 17100 and other standards, you will need to keep track of the required documentation. FlowDezk allows you to define which ISO documents you need from each vendor and automatically ticks them off the list in the vendor’s profile as soon as they’ve been uploaded (by you or by the vendor). The calendar feature will allow you to check if vendors that meet all of the requirements are available, so your project managers can make the right resourcing decisions.

Another great asset of FlowDezk’s interactive vendor portal is the My Projects dashboard, which displays an overview of all the projects that a vendor is working on or that have been proposed. This smart summary alerts vendors to upcoming deadlines and allows them to display and download delivery schedules, project instructions and purchase orders. E-mail alerts are generated when a vendor accepts, rejects or delivers a file or when a project manager sends a project heads-up or confirmation.

If you switch on the feature that allows vendors to upload their invoices, they will even be able to manage their billing on this same tab. Uploaded invoices will immediately be available in the project manager view of the same project and can be updated with a payment status. Combined with the other features of FlowDezk’s billing module this will provide you with a 360 degrees overview of your project financials.