Supplier approvals across legacy systems

A maritime business with a headquarters in Singapore kept supplier information in several legacy systems across its offices. The supplier management team handled communications and billing matters for suppliers around the world. Before a business unit could transact with a new supplier, the supplier entry needed approval and creation in the ERP.

Staff obtained approvals by email, then manually entered the approved details into the relevant systems. The supplier team and IT department had tried to improve this process, but other departments owned the legacy applications and had competing priorities for changes. The business needed a way to manage approvals while those systems remained in use.

Zolution built a supplier-management application on Zoho Creator. Its scope included multiple approval levels and notifications, with existing supplier details brought into Creator through a REST API. The design also called for periodic updates to the supplier lists held in the legacy systems.

Single sign-on through Azure AD was part of the requirements. The application also needed to accommodate a future connection to an internal database that was not yet online. That future connection was a design provision; the published account does not establish when it went live.

Users could update supplier information from computers and mobile phones. The application recorded activities and changes for audit review, giving the team a record of work previously spread across email and manual updates.

James Yang’s project account, published by Zoho Decode and last updated in September 2023, reports that processing time fell from one week to one day. This is a reported project result, not a benchmark for other implementations. The public account does not specify the measurement period or whether these were working days.

The account also describes a decision to extend the system to banking-information management. That was the next phase described at publication; it is not presented here as confirmed completed work. Zolution republished the original case on 24 March 2025.

For a new project, start with one supplier request and trace who reviews it, where the approved details must be stored, and which system owns each field. The following are scoping questions for your organisation, rather than claims about additional features delivered in this case:

• Which changes need another approval, and who may return a request for correction?
• How will the team detect a duplicate supplier across different databases?
• Who investigates a failed update, and how will staff know the ERP has received it?
• Which records must be available during an audit?

Bring an anonymised request, the approval rules and the list of systems that currently hold supplier data to the first discussion.