Provider Management

Summary

The following is a summary of the general workflow that should be followed to take advantage of the Provider Management functionality.

1. Load Vendors in the Vendors tab.

2. Load Hotels in the Hotels tab.

3. Link Providers (Vendors and Hotels) to products in the Content Library by adding or modifying price schedules. As you link products to Providers in the Content Library, you can view linked products for each Vendor or Hotel in the Products tab in each Vendor or Hotel profile.

4. As you add products to Costings, any linked Providers will be available to manage using the Providers Popup, which can be accessed from the Costing tab or the Providers tab.

5. Within any program, use the Providers tab to view all products, grouped by Provider, and confirm availability, pricing, and quantity for each Provider.

Vendors + Hotels = Providers

Viper allows you to create and manage a database of your vendors and a database of your hotels. Collectively, vendors and hotels are considered Providers in Viper. For both vendors and hotels, Viper provides purpose built tools specific to each and allows you to link any product in the Content Library to one or more vendors or hotels. By linking providers to products in the Content Library, you can manage comprehensive pricing for each product AND manage specific vendors for each program as you add products to a program costing.

To take full advantage of provider management within a specific program, you must first add providers to the Vendors and Hotels databases, then link providers to products in the Content Library.

 

Adding Your Providers

Start by making sure you have added your vendors and hotels to Viper via the Vendors tab and the Hotels tab. Please contact us if you need help loading your vendors and/or hotels.

Within the Vendors database, you can:

• Add new vendors and edit existing ones
• Manage contact info such as contacts, email addresses, phone numbers, websites, etc.
• Manage Insurance Documents for each vendor
• Store time-stamped notes for each vendor
• View linked products from the Content Library

Within the Hotels database, you can:

• Add new hotels and edit existing ones
• Organize hotels in a hierarchy using Corporate Parents, Hotel Brands, and Hotels
• Manage contact info such as contacts, email addresses, phone numbers, websites, etc.
• Store hotel specific data for each hotel, such as number of rooms and meeting space
• Search for specific hotels based on several search criteria
• View linked products from the Content Library

 

Linking Providers to Products in the Content Library

After you have built out your databases of Vendors and Hotels, you can begin linking providers to products in the Content Library. Each product can be linked to one or more providers through a price schedule. You can also set a provider priority if multiple providers are linked to a single product. For instance, in the case of a 50 passenger bus, you may have three providers from which you source the bus so you can link all three providers to the product, each with their own price. When a product is added to a costing, the system will automatically set the pricing of the line item equal to the top listed price schedule, whether it is a specific provider or the Default Pricing.

You can link providers to products through a price schedule. Create a new price schedule or edit an existing one.

Use the typeahead Provider field to link a single provider to the price schedule.

Use the Up and Down arrows to set provider priority. You can also set a "default price" for each product that is not tied to a specific provider.

Provider Pricing in the Costing

As you add products to a Costing, you can manage providers for each Costing Line Item using the Providers Popup. From within the Providers Popup, you can set quantities for each provider as well as specific pricing. For instance, you need 5 buses, you may opt to source 3 buses from Vendor A and 2 buses from Vendor B. When saving changes in the Provider Popup, you have the option to save just the changes you made to Provider pricing or you can also choose to update the client-facing Costing Line Item based on your changes. The Providers Popup allows you to track quantities and pricing for specific providers of each product internally and the system will simultaneously calculate a single Costing Line Item to present to the client. Note that provider data is NEVER shown to clients.

To access the Providers Popup in the Costing, click the gear icon in the left column for a given product line item and select the "Providers" menu item.

Manage Provider-specific quantities and pricing for each product line item in a Costing.

Provider Management in a Program

Using the Providers tab within a Program, you can quickly manage Provider pricing, quantities, statuses, shortages and more. As you add various products to a program, any linked Providers will show up in the Providers tab. Unlike the Costing, where products are grouped by Event, products in the Providers tab are grouped by Provider. You can use the Providers Popup in the Providers tab, just like you can in the Costing.

Use the Providers tab to ensure all applicable product line items are assigned to Providers and there are no shortages.