An important aspect of an organization’s Quality Management System (QMS) is supplier evaluation. This system helps ensure the quality of the organization’s products and/or services. After all, if suppliers fail to meet expectations or deliver flawed products or services, it directly increases internal costs and may impact the quality of products delivered to customers.

Enhancing Supplier Management with Integrated Dashboard Documentation

Evaluating suppliers involves more than just requesting certificates, footprints, lab results, etc. Documents like evaluation questionnaires, specific procedure agreements, and product specifications often play a role in the professional relationship with a supplier. Typically, a QMS makes this documentation accessible through the system dashboard. Certifeye enhances this process by providing insights into the status of all requested documentation from a specific supplier on the same dashboard. This includes certificates and questionnaires, as well as other documents like CO2 footprint reports. When a document’s validity expires, the Quality Management System dashboard displays a notification.

Streamlining Quality Management with Certifeye API Integration

Certifeye now offers an API that supports this functionality. We have completed the first form of integration with a QMS, specifically within the ManualMaster Trevally software. Our sister organization, with over 32 years of experience in managing and sharing processes, procedures, and work instructions related to quality, safety, and the environment, supports this integration. Quality managers, procurement officers, and other quality personnel can easily access all relevant standards documents and certificates through the dashboard. They can also track the status of expiring documents that need renewal and reissue from the supplier. ManualMaster Trevally plans to introduce this integration in its next release at the end of April 2024.

Expanding Accessibility: Certifeye API Integration for Various Systems

Several customers have shown interest in implementing this feature. If you have questions about the integration or if you use a different system than ManualMaster Trevally for your internal organization, please contact us at info@certifeye.com. The API is available and we can configure it for other systems upon request.

How do organizations get started with Certifeye? We regularly ask this question to users of our platform. Today in the spotlight: Bidfood. They work with Certifeye since 2023 and were happy to share their experiences through the lens of the wholesaler for the food professional.

With Certifeye, Bidfood Gains Certainty and Quality.

‘Chain partners and auditors are increasingly asking for information that shows certain procedures include certified suppliers. We must be able to demonstrate that we have our files sorted out. We have achieved that certainty and quality with Certifeye.’

These are the words of Sander Bijlsma, Purchasing project manager at catering wholesaler Bidfood. He says that Certifeye saves the organization a lot of time. His department does business with more than 1,000 suppliers.  They supply everything needed in Dutch catering and healthcare kitchens to prepare and store food. From fresh and frozen products to kitchen equipment.

Automated Request Processing and Document Management

Requesting, checking and managing all information we got from the chain took a lot of time. Sander: ‘We then started looking at how to organize that process differently and ended up with Certifeye. This means that requesting and managing the documents is now automatic. If a certificate expires, the application immediately sends a notification to suppliers.’

Certificates at Company and Article Level

‘We expect our suppliers to meet quality requirements that apply in the field of food safety and are laid down in IFS, BRC, FSSC and ISO standards, among others. Bidfood also deals with products that have a quality mark. Together we need an estimated 3,000 certificates. These are mainly certificates at company level. I expect that certificates will also be required at article level in the future.’

The Certifeye Wallet

Bidfood offers chain partners its own certificates via the Certifeye Wallet. Anyone can use this online tool for free. Sander: ‘Customers and relations can directly access the documents that we make available through the Wallet. This leads to positive reactions.
The food industry is not yet very familiar with Certifeye. In that respect, we at Bidfood play a pioneering role. Large retailers may have their own system, but there are many parties in the country that can benefit from Certifeye.’

Questions Answered with Questionnaires

Sander experiments with questionnaires that he creates and sends to customers in Certifeye. ‘Using the lists, we check the internal guidelines of our suppliers and indicate what we expect from them. We include this information in our procedures and processes. This way we demonstrate that we work with certified suppliers who meet our requirements.’

Exchanging Information in Business Processes

Sharing information about sustainably or unsustainably produced items, product specification processes, environmental footprints, but also social conditions and supplier assessments has taken off enormously. The trend requires a vision and recalibration of business processes.

How does Bidfood deal with this?
Sander: ‘The demand for data is increasing. To keep up with this development, you need a good system that will help you ensure meeting quality requirements. A few years ago, the guideline for working with a new supplier was not so clearly formulated and we mainly looked at what other companies the supplier delivered to.’

Looking for a Long-term Solution

‘I think it is good for the chain to establish a basis for the way information can be shared and stored. Transparency is necessary to work well together throughout the chain. ‘

Our users know Certifeye inside out. How does the platform help them with recurring administrative work? Today we give the floor to Anton Heintjes, account manager, and Tom Nijhof, quality manager at Jonker & Schut. They have been working with Certifeye since 2021 and are happy to share their experiences in packaging and repackaging powdered dairy products and certificate management.

‘Certifeye makes certificate management scalable which is super important to us’

‘It doesn’t matter how many suppliers you have to request and manage certificates and documents from. If you secure them with a well-functioning system like Certifeye, numbers don’t matter. Certifeye makes certificate management scalable and that scalability is super important to us,’ says Anton Heintjes, account manager at Jonker & Schut. His colleague and quality manager Tom Nijhof adds: ‘The companies we supply products to want to know whether our suppliers and ourselves are certified. With Certifeye, we can very easily check who and what has been approved and manage our extensive certificate management.’

Strict controls

The bulk of Jonker & Schut’s production chain consists of powdered dairy products, which are subject to strict supervision by a variety of regulatory organisations. The organisation has the appropriate halal and kosher certificates and thus a well-deserved place in the associated supply chain. Added to this are ongoing audits by the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) and the Netherlands Controlling Body for Quality Affairs (COKZ). All this adds up to around 50 audits a year.

Accurate and careful chain registration

Certification bodies from all over the world visit the company to check whether the products they work with consist of kosher and halal-certified raw materials. Every year, hundreds of certificates and documents are requested for this purpose and managed with the online platform. After all, many foods we consume every day contain dairy components: from baking products, bread, soft drinks and chocolate to beer, sports nutrition and even medicine. This is a wide range of products. Upon delivery of the products, Jonker & Schut must also be able to present its own certifications.

Gatekeeper function to safeguard the chain

The processes require accurate and careful chain registration. ‘Jonker & Schut fulfils a gatekeeper function in the chain,’ says Anton. ‘We are a service company, not a product owner. Customers buy powders and then sell them. We pack and transport. Upon delivery, we have to be able to prove that the products we transport have actually been produced kosher and halal. Someone has to secure the chain. To manage that process, we use Certifeye.’

Hours spent on mail traffic

Previously, required certificates were stored in folders on a computer. If anything changed, Jonker & Smit’s quality controllers spent hours sending e-mails around. Tom: ‘We did not get alerted when a certificate expired. Every year, hundreds of e-mails went out asking departments, customers and suppliers whether documents needed replacing or updating. You often got back incomplete information, or the message that the rest would follow or come a bit later. Of course, that didn’t happen and you had to continue the hassle’.

Smooth certificate management

‘This process now runs much more smoothly with Certifeye. The platform takes a burden off of our shuolders and keeps our certificate management up to date. Mails are automatically sent out when a new certificate is needed or an update is due.’ Ton and Anton foresee that certificate delivery and management will only increase in the future. ‘Customers, suppliers and manufacturers increasingly want to know exactly what products consist of and where they come from.’

Certificate management as an integral part of QMS

Good certificate and document management requires good organisation and record-keeping. ‘Laws and regulations are changing by the day. There is more and more supervision coming our way, as we sail along with the customer’s requirements. For us, Certifeye is the only means by which we can secure these processes.’ This is why certificate management is an integral part of Jonker & Schut’s QMS. ‘Certifeye will be integrated deeper and deeper into our quality management, so we will use the platform more and more.’

Creating surveys and questionnaires with Certifeye

Anton and Tom are already preparing to use Certifeye for surveys and questionnaires towards suppliers. Quality-oriented questionnaires and customer satisfaction tests are being considered for this purpose. ‘We are CSR certified and are considering sending out questionnaires about this. But that is something for the future. Right now, we are mainly concerned with making sure that halal and kosher products are properly secured.’

Certifeye the solution in terms of convenience and time saving

Good examples lead to action. Relations at Jonker & Schut have had their eye on Certifeye and started using it. Anton: ‘I think many companies would be jealous of us if they saw how little time we spend on certificate management, because everything happens automatically here. If you want to incorporate certificate management in your quality system, Certifeye is the best solution given the convenience and time savings.’

Our users know Certifeye like the back of their hand. How does the platform help them with recurring administrative work? Today we give the floor to Paul Broersen and Eefje Peters- Elfering, respectively the Quality Manager and ICT Manager at Royal De Ree Holland B.V. They have been working with Certifeye since 2020 and are happy to share their story.

Royal De Ree Holland BV was looking for a simple tool to properly manage and control supplier certificates in one central location. The flower bulb specialist joined Certifeye in 2020, and developments in sustainability with the goal of purchasing 100% certified products by 2024 played an important role in this. 

Royal De Ree Holland has specialized in the development, packaging and transport of top quality flower bulbs and related products for over 100 years. The company supplies various markets in more than 40 countries and is preparing for the legislation surrounding the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The introduction of Directive means that from 2024 companies will be required to report on their impact on people and the climate . The Directive should ensure more transparency and better quality of information on sustainability. 

Grip on certification 

In Certifeye, Royal De Ree Holland manages various certificates: Global GAP, Global GAP IDA, MPS-GAP, MPS ABC and MPS SQ, FSC, PEFC, SEDEX, Skal, and the GRASP assessment. They come from suppliers of flower bulbs, plants, paper, cardboard, wood and plastic.
Paul Broersen, Quality Manager at Royal De Ree Holland: ‘ CSRD demands reliable data from the chain and flower bulb sector. With the number of certificates we process, we want to get a grip on this as much as possible through the certificate exchange and, in the future, perhaps also through writing out questionnaires to chain partners. Currently we are working on a data inventory for the CSRD: what information do we already have in-house and what information do we need to distribute?’ 

Manage and share certificates 

Royal De Ree Holland used to collect information from its chain partners directly from MPS. ICT Manager, Eefje Peters: ‘The disadvantage was that we could not check on the day whether suppliers were still certified. The delivery on information was triggered in response to the products delivery once a year. That information wasn’t enough for us.’ 

‘With Certifeye we manage certificates in one central place. Growers can manage their certificates themselves via their Certifeye Wallet and share them with us. The system processes these automatic requests from growers who do not use it. This way we create a total overview and we can properly manage the end dates of certificates. When they expire, we automatically receive a signal and can therefore sound the alarm with our suppliers in time.’ 

Reducing administrative pressure 

According to Eefje, suppliers’ reactions to the platform are mixed: ‘You have suppliers who join in immediately and you have suppliers who are reluctant to have any certificate information and related data recorded.’ ‘It is therefore not due to Certifeye, but rather to the entire certification process. Some growers still see it as an additional administrative burden. Paul: ‘Ultimately, Certifeye helps us keep an overview of where we are in the chain. This also makes it a good indicator of our goal to be able to purchase a 100% certified product by 2024. ‘ 

Eefje: ‘We hope that in the future Certifeye will become the platform where all growers in the flower bulb sector store their certificates and which will be used by everyone in th4e industry.’ 

Paul sees that more and more fellow exporters are joining the platform. ‘Because many growers have joined Certifeye at our request, other exporters can benefit from this and use the platform more easily. Certification simply requires registration and administration. We can’t take that away. But the more chain partners and sector peers join, the less administrative pressure for growers surrounding certification and the lower the threshold for sharing certificates is.’ 

CO2 Footprint Information Exchange 

The demand to share information is becoming increasingly urgent for the floriculture sector, which means that the challenge of getting the right data to the right customer is increasing. Paul: ‘Each customer has specific wishes in the field of sustainability, the environment and certification. That makes it complex to pass on the right information to the next link in the chain.’
The number of requests to share information about matters such as crop protection and packaging is still not too bad at Royal De Ree Holland. ‘We know that those questions will come and Certifeye can also help to collect, manage and share that data. Royal De Ree Holland has been CO2 neutral certified for scope 1&2 since 2021 and is now also mapping the impact of the entire chain (scope 3). With the help of Certifeye we can extract this information from the chain.’
 

Paul: ‘The CSRD obliges us to do so. In the field of environmental and social affairs, customers are beginning to cautiously ask where we stand as a company and what information we do and do not have. We are already being asked to share information in a number of areas and that will only increase. 

In the long run, we will therefore need more and more data. We already have a lot of general information with which we can fulfill part of our CSRD obligations. But the CSRD also asks for more and more specific and reliable data. We have been ISO 14001 certified since 1998 and we ensure that laws and regulations are implemented in our QMS. We are not surprised by the CSRD. Reporting on environmental matters is already in our system. The CSRD is an extension of that.’

Certification as an important indicator 

‘Everywhere around you hear what society thinks about environmental and social matters. We give substance to those things. Certification is an important indicator for us to see where we stand in the flower bulb sector. We are also a Sedex member, which looks at the social conditions within our company and our chain.
From an entrepreneurial perspective, I say that there are too many laws and regulations on the table for these kinds of things. On the other hand, the CSRD is a good step towards being able to report transparently within Europe on environmental matters and social conditions within the chain.’