Supplier substitution approvals referral brief template: nine blanks for procurement systems consultants, plus a filled-in example

This template sits under the supplier substitution approvals hub, which shows the field map behind a substitution decision.

Nine blanks to copy

Fill each blank in plain words with the procurement director. Write "unknown" when nobody can answer without opening files.

1. Company: full-time headcount at peak, country, year founded, number of plants.
2. Substitution task: one sentence on how substitute parts are approved when the specified supplier cannot deliver.
3. Record classes: substitution requests, alternative quotes, deviation records, engineering sign-offs, purchase orders, receiving inspection results, and any PPAP files.
4. Systems: the product type holding each class: source-to-pay suite, QMS, PLM or engineering share, ERP, shared mailbox.
5. Coverage: first and last year per system, and a rounded count of substitutions, labelled as an estimate.
6. Owners: the function behind each class: procurement, quality, engineering.
7. Event: a dated supplier consolidation, vendor master cleanup or QMS cutover, with the document it comes from, or "none".
8. Approver: the CEO, who can authorize licensing of procurement, quality and engineering records together, plus the sponsor and whether counsel joins.
9. Open question: one neutral question only a review could answer.

Close the brief with one line: "Not attached: drawings, quotes, certificates, deviation records, exports or logins."

Notes on the blanks consultants find hardest

Blank 3, record classes. Consultants who know the source-to-pay suite tend to list only its documents. The acceptance of a substitute usually sits in the QMS deviation and in engineering's sign-off. In automotive supply chains, a substitution may also leave a PPAP submission, since PPAP sets the minimum a supplier documents for a customer's approval to ship production parts. Listing every class, wherever it lives, tells the reader whether the history explains decisions or only purchases.

Blank 4, systems. Be concrete about approval capture. In SAP Ariba, the Approvals reporting fact records actions such as approving or denying documents and delegating approval authority, so a sentence like "approvals captured in the suite since 2019, by email before that" tells the reader exactly where the trail changes.

Blank 5, coverage. Ask for counts that already exist, such as deviations raised against purchased parts per year. Do not ask anyone to run a report or pull samples.

Blank 8, approver. A procurement director rarely has authority over quality and engineering records; the CEO can authorize a discussion that covers all three. To see who else should be named, work through the who-can-say-yes tree for substitution records before sending.

Blank 9, open question. Good questions are checkable. "Were deviation numbers always written onto purchase orders, or only sometimes?" is good. Under ISO 9001, purchase requirements should be confirmed as correct before they reach the supplier, so another fair question is whether the requirement as sent was kept alongside the drawing.

The brief filled in for a 430-person valve maker (Illustrative)

Fictional, written for this page. No real manufacturer, supplier or customer is described.

The German plant location matters for one reason only: EU companies qualify without the English-language condition that applies in some other regions. Everything else in the brief is about the records, not the company's prospects.

Keep these out of the handoff

• Drawings, specifications or part numbers that point to a customer.
• Supplier names, quotes, price breaks or certificates.
• Sample deviation records or inspection results, redacted or not.
• Screenshots of the QMS or source-to-pay suite.
• Statements about value, buyer interest or likely offers.

If a reviewer later needs to understand inspection records in depth, the company introduction checklist for quality inspection records covers them without anything leaving the company.

Before the procurement director sends it

• The director has read and agreed every value.
• The company appears to meet the baseline: 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), documented operating history, rights to license and an authorized contact. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 90% of the data is in English.
• You have signed the Channel Partner Agreement; the first valid introduction within the 90-day window is credited when the company submits a verified application.
• Supplier terms, customer-owned drawings, buyer interest and any offer are listed as open; they stay unknown until SourceX reviews the opportunity.
• If consolidation is close, the preservation timeline for substitution records has been checked so the event date in blank 7 is documented.

SourceX licenses approved business data directly from companies for AI training and evaluation and manages the agreement, rights review, data preparation, delivery and payout. The client opportunity brief generator can format the nine blanks into a note, and the warm introduction brief helps frame the covering message. Neighboring records are described in procurement and vendor workflows and procurement approvals and exception workflows.

Next step

Refer a company. Earn up to $100,000. Default reward: 25% of Actual Supplier Payout, capped at $100,000 cumulatively per referred company. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.

When all nine blanks are filled and the CEO has agreed to talk, register as a partner, check the company against who qualifies and read the program terms before you send the brief.