This Guide Covers:

• Receiving a Specification Request
• Accepting/Rejecting a Specification
• Completing & Returning a Specification
• Corrective Actions
• Approved Specifications
• Making Changes to an Approved Specification

Introduction

The Authenticate Platform has a specification module designed to help customers and suppliers exchange agreed production information.  

Customers setup a template within the platform, indicating what information they require and then issue “Specification requests” to suppliers.  

Suppliers receive these requests as a notification email and a task within Platform. As a supplier, you can see all the specification requests as part of your home page feed, and they can be responded to by simply clicking on the task and completing all the relevant product  details.

If you supply the same product to multiple customers, you only need complete the data once and you can simply copy it into each subsequent specification request. This document sets out for suppliers how you access and respond to specification requests and complete any corrective actions requested by the customer.  

This document does not detail what information should be provided in each of the technical specification fields as this will be agreed by you and the customer outside of Authenticate.

Receiving a Specification Request

You (or the contact selected from your company by your customer) will receive  an email with the product specification request and the due date.

If you are already a member of the Platform, log in and you will see a task on  your homepage. You will be asked initially to accept the product link that your  customer has sent you if you have not already done so.  If you are not already a member of the Authenticate platform, please register to receive your user credentials and access your company profile.

Accepting/Rejecting a Specification

You will receive a separate specification request for each product you supply to a  customer, where they want to record a specification.  

Click on “View Request” to see the details of the request.

You can then preview  the specification data, before you select “accept” - to start completing the data  or “reject” if you are unable to accept the request.

If you select “reject” the  customer will receive a notification saying you have declined to complete the  request. 

Completing & Returning a Specification

Now that you have confirmed that you are happy to provide this data, you can  begin completing the specification. (Your customer will only see the data once  you have submitted it back for review).

Your first option is to choose whether you want to start a new specification, or, if you have previously saved specification information, this can be copied over from a previous specification. 

You can simply select which previous specification you want to copy the information over from.

If, however, you choose to fill out a new specification, simply click ‘Start new specification’. Work down each section, using the navigation menu on the left (Production Information, Contact details, Ingredients etc.)

(At any point whilst filling out the specification, you have the option of copying and pasting information from a previously filled out specification, this can be added in by clicking on the 'Copy data from a previous specification' button).

For each section, select the ‘edit’  icon to fill in the details. There may be several ‘mandatory’ fields that are required from you. These are  indicated by the Asterix symbol (*).  Your customer may have requested specific data capture points on some sections  (for example contacts).

These are shown within the section prepopulated with the  requested rows for you to provide the outstanding data. When you have finished editing each section, select “Save”, this will return you to  the main navigation area where you can see which sections still require data.

Some fields allow multiple entries for example in claims on pack, you can pick  multiple items for “suitable for”, or “does not contain”.

Once you have entered all the required data, select to ‘submit for review’.

**Please  note that if you have not entered all the mandatory fields, it will ask you to  complete these before submitting back to the customer**

Once you have confirmed the information is correct and submitted for review,  your customer will receive a task to review the specification and either request further information (corrective actions) or approve. Your specification will then be in a state of ‘in review’.

Corrective Actions

When your customer reviews the data provided for your product specification,  there may be some missing data/change requests/further information required from  you. These are created by your customer as ‘corrective actions’.

Each corrective action is associated to a section. Corrective actions have their own due date  separate to that of the initial specification request received. You will receive a task on your homepage for the specification with corrective actions outstanding. Clicking on the task will show the details of the corrective actions.

Each corrective action requires a response before this can be submitted back to your customer – you need to change the data in the specification and against the corrective action indicate what you have changed. 

Once you have corrected/added the required information and responded to the corrective actions, you can then submit this back to your customer for further review.

Approved Specifications

When your customer is happy with the data against the product specification, they  will ‘approve’ your specification. This will trigger a notification on your homepage. You can access your approved specification at any time by navigating from your  product catalogue to the specific product supplied. The specification can be found  on the tab named ‘requested specification(s)’.

Where you provide multiple specification against one product to multiple customers, these will live against the same product.

Making Changes to an Approved Specification

Once your customer has approved the product specification, there may be changes required, by you or the customer. This could occur where new facilities are purchased and/or changes to sourcing of an existing product. Once changes are made, you can submit this back to your customer for approval. This will follow the same process as documented above. You can make changes to your product data at any point.