Supplier integration
SUPPLIER INTEGRATION
Trusted by engineering teams worldwide
At Scandinavian Digital, Supplier Integration is one of our core service pillars, delivered with our platform CONFIG 2 that allows to automate product specifications, streamline supplier collaboration, and eliminate manual bottlenecks. Our method ensures seamless collaboration between manufacturers and suppliers, optimizing digital workflows to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness.
Supplier integration works best when the product itself is already structured for it. Most of our customers combine it with design automation, so the models, drawings and bills of materials that suppliers receive are generated rather than assembled by hand, and with CPQ, so what sales promises and what suppliers quote come from the same set of rules. See how we connect the surrounding systems, or read more about the team behind it.
What supplier integration actually means
Supplier integration means giving your suppliers, your purchasing department and your sales organisation the same configured truth at the same moment. When a customer configures a product, part of what they have just configured is not made by you. It is bought. Supplier integration is the part of the digital thread that reaches outside your own four walls.
It is also where the cost of a manual process is easiest to see. A specification retyped into a supplier’s form is a specification that can be wrong, and an error found at the supplier is found weeks later than the same error found in the configurator. The later it is found, the more of the order has already been planned around it.
The same logic applies in both directions. If you buy configured components, integration removes the waiting. If you sell them, it is a reason customers choose you over a competitor who needs three days to answer a question about a price.
What a lack of supplier integration causes
How CONFIG2 platform solves this
Product specification
Time-consuming product specification processes
Repetitive manual work
Repetitive manual work in supplier sales and quoting
Outdated data
Incorrect or outdated configuration data shared across teams
Engineering bottleneck
Engineering becoming a bottleneck for supplier request
Delays
Delays caused by emails, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems
CONFIG2 connects suppliers directly to your configuration and engineering flow through one shared platform.
By giving suppliers access to correct configuration data, documentation, and specifications, collaboration becomes faster, more consistent, and less dependent on manual communoication.
The three flows between you and your suppliers
Three flows have to work before supplier integration is real, and they usually mature in this order.
1. Specification out. Dimensions, materials, tolerances, interfaces and quantities, derived from the configuration rather than written by hand. When the configurator owns the specification, a changed option changes the supplier specification automatically, and nobody has to remember which version was sent.
2. Price and lead time back. A supplier price is rarely one number. It is a price for a quantity, at a date, under conditions. Bringing it back into the configuration is what lets a salesperson quote a product with bought-in content without waiting for purchasing to come back with an answer.
3. Order and documentation. The purchase order, the drawings the supplier produces from, and the certificates and test documents that come back and have to be attached to the right serial number. This flow is the one most often left manual, and the one that costs most at delivery and in the years of service that follow.
| Flow | What moves | Handled by hand | Handled through the configurator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Specification out | Dimensions, materials, tolerances, interfaces, quantities | Retyped into a form or an email, version unclear | Derived from the configuration, regenerated when an option changes |
| Price and lead time back | Price per quantity, validity, delivery date, conditions | Sales waits for purchasing, purchasing waits for the supplier | Available in the quote while the customer is still on the call |
| Order and documentation | Purchase order, production drawings, certificates, test reports | Collected in email folders, matched to serial numbers afterwards | Attached to the configured item from the start |
Project case
Custom-made fans: From 4 hours to under 4 minutes
A customer case from 2025: BarkerBille
Here, you can watch an interview with Flemming Bille, CEO of BarkerBille, and Christian Andersen, CFO and Senior Partner at Scandinavian Digital. They discuss the technology, benefits, and results of this project, which was carried out under the MADE initiative.
A new product configurator made by the Scandinavian Digital team ensures that customers can easily order unique fans directly from BarkerBille’s production. Before, it took 4 hours to prepare an offer – now it takes less than 4 minutes, according to experience from a MADE demonstration project. BarkerBille, a Danish company specialized in the design, manufacture, and supply of high-quality industrial fans expects to implement the product configurator during the first half of 2025 starting the year ahead of competition.
BarkerBille faced an engineering bottleneck that made ordering customized fans directly from production more complex than it needed to be.To overcome this challenge, they participated in a MADE demonstration project, where they were matched with Scandinavian Digital, the right technology partner for the job. As a fellow member of MADE, Scandinavian Digital specializes in digital solutions that eliminate engineering bottlenecks, helping companies like BarkerBille streamline workflows and enhance efficiency. Through this collaboration, BarkerBille was able to optimize its processes and move closer to a more seamless and efficient production setup.
Being the supplier that is easy to buy from
If you are the supplier rather than the buyer, the same integration runs in the other direction, and it stops being an IT project and becomes a sales argument. A customer who can configure your product, see a price and a lead time, and receive a drawing without waiting for your engineering department has very little reason to go elsewhere.
The project case further up this page is exactly that. Custom-made fans that took four hours to specify and quote now take under four minutes, because the configuration, the price and the drawing all come out of the same model. The engineering work did not disappear. It was captured once, in design automation rules, instead of being repeated for every enquiry.
That is also the most common first step we see. A company starts with its own quoting speed, because the benefit is immediate and measurable, and extends the same model outwards to its own suppliers once the internal flow is running.
The six value areas
1. Lead Time
Ensure accurate product specifications for complex products, reducing rework and delays in response time.
2. Cost Transparency
Optimize sizing rules, compare supplier offerings, and reduce procurement cost.
3. Cost of quality
Enable early defect detection, supplier performance, and data analytics.
4. Cost of hours
Reduce time with automated product specifications, project documentation, and order processing procedures.
5. Project time
Reduce manual tasks throughout the project lifecycle, update cost data, eliminate errors, and accelerate the overall purchasing cycle.
6. Partnerships
Promote better communication between parties, resolve issues faster, and understand requirements immediately.
Where supplier integration meets CPQ and design automation
Supplier integration is not a separate product. It is CPQ and design automation extended past your own company boundary, running on the same rules and the same product model in CONFIG2 or Tacton.
Which means the sequence matters. A supplier portal built on top of a product model nobody trusts will simply distribute the mistrust. We start with the configuration rules, then the internal systems through IT integration, and then the suppliers. The demo library shows the internal flow, and we are happy to walk through where your own supplier flow would start.
Supplier integration: frequently asked questions
No. Suppliers reach the configuration through a browser, with access to what concerns them and nothing else. The point of integration is to remove work from the supplier relationship, not to add a licence to it.
That is the normal case for smaller suppliers, and it is fine. They receive a generated specification and drawing set and reply in a structured form. The value is that the specification was generated rather than typed, even when the reply still arrives by email.
Yes, and that is usually where the time is won. Once price, quantity and lead time come back in a structured form, a salesperson can quote a product containing bought-in content without waiting for purchasing to answer.
No. It removes the retyping and the chasing, and leaves purchasing with the work that actually needs judgement: supplier selection, negotiation, capacity and risk.
Start where the measurement is easiest, which is almost always your own quoting speed. A working internal configuration is the foundation the supplier flow is built on, so the order is rarely worth reversing.
They are the same digital thread at different distances from the customer. CPQ captures what is being sold, design automation produces what has to be made, and supplier integration carries the part of it that someone else makes.