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Assessing the Risk of a New Supplier Relationship

Supplier Relationship Management isn’t necessarily a new concept, but in today’s COVID-related, digital climate, its scope and structure should be formalized and followed diligently. Instead of a transactional interaction and a contract that gets shoved in a filing cabinet until renewal, GEP states that the nature of the vendor/supplier relationships is shifting to just that: relational. Long-term.  A constant conversation that lasts throughout the contract – not just at the endpoints.  Now, of course in any relationship there is risk. 

Without diligence or with diligence only executed at the endpoints, it is much harder to figure out where the relationship went wrong if problems occur. CNN reported that the HHS’ Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response misappropriated the millions of dollars allocated to the Biomedical Advanced Research for administrative and office expenses, dubbing it the Bank of BARDA. If misappropriation and mistakes can happen in an organization with that degree of oversight, they can happen anywhere.   

Gaps in normalcy like shipping delays, business shutdowns, limited manufacturing capabilities, and a higher-than-average online population gives a fraudster the perfect opportunity to slide in. So how can you identify whether your supplier is one you can count on?  

GDC agrees with the PWC categorization risks in a supplier relationship.  The risks are broken up into five segments:  

Reputational Risk 
A reputational risk means your business’ brand is affected. This can happen when the end-user experiences a product failure or substandard quality as a result of a bad supplier.  

Resilience Risk 
Resilience risks affect the customer’s access to the product because of a bad supplier. This can happen if a crucial part of your product is missing, and you must deem it out of stock. 

Data Security and Privacy Risk  
63% of data breaches happen from third party access, so strict security measures should be enforced in order to prevent stolen customer, employee, or partner data.   

Regulatory Risk 
Regulatory risks happen when a business violates the country- or jurisdiction-specific compliance requirements for outsourcing or signing with a supplier.  

Commercial risk
Commercial risk can happen when supplier failure results in inaccurate or over billing, or when the costs of the supplier partnership is larger than the profit.  

Now that you know your risks, it is time to think about how to solidify your process for supplier management and risk prevention.  

Luckily, there are a few best practices and guidelines out there to lay the groundwork.  

Vendor Selection 
This is where we come in. Global Data Consortium is a data-as-a-service company that delivers real-time, locally sourced business verification for financial institutions around the globe to combat reputational, regulatory, and commercial risks. When you use GDC’s Know Your Business solution, you can choose from three types of checks with varying levels of verification and customizable match rules to meet whatever level of compliance your organization requires.  

The key to a successful supplier relationship is to never let the bad ones get to you in the first place.  Whether you’re seeking to verify the legitimacy of a potential supplier, conduct a risk analysis, or confirm the beneficial owners and directors, GDC’s KYB solution helps you kick your supplier relationship management process off with a head start.  

Contract  
Setting a contract up with your supplier means setting expectations up with your supplier. Make sure both parties are aware of the duration of the partnership, quantity of work, and quality of service expected.  

Vendor Management 
As stated above, the nature of a supplier relationship is shifting. Monitor your partnership throughout the life of it and keep an open line of communication.  

Contingency Planning 
Even with all the precautions listed above, things can still go wrong. If a supplier falls through, have a backup plan so you can still avoid a resilience risk.  

And there you have it! Although every organization has its own structure, these best practices should set the groundwork for what will be an exceptional supplier relationship management process.  

Want to start your supplier relationship management process off on the right foot? Check out our page to learn more about how GDC’s Know Your Business solution can help you minimize Regulatory, Reputational, and Commercial risks for a supplier relationship you can be confident in.  

April Harrison Blog, Risk Management, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments , , ,

RapidRatings for Supply Chain Risk Managers: This Moment is Yours (and The Next One Too)

by RapidRatings

In painting, there is an oft-used technique where colors, lines, and shapes are applied with increasing or decreasing intensity to create atmospheric distance. This technique obscures images by imitating the conditions produced in the atmosphere: fog, clouds, mist, and even gloom.

In Supply Chain (writ large), there is also a type of atmospheric perspective.

More so than just the snapshots of cargo moving through air, land, or sea—risk management views can be obscured by great time-distances or (potentially) illusory information that underpins a given outlook.

But in your role, you can’t have that. You need an unobstructed view; one dependent on clear, reliable information to manage risk in its many forms. Real data matters.

Even pre-pandemic, the world was getting riskier. And the decisions that supply chain risk managers made on any given day, were made more complex by changing weather patterns, natural disasters, new cybersecurity threats, and dynamic changes in international trade.

With the pandemic, that complexity has multiplied; and your role made even tougher. And “Supply chain” is now at the tip of everyone’s tongues (even consumers).

Your perspective (the supply-chain-risk-management one), has never been more important.

But to meet this moment (and inevitably the next), you’ll need accurate data, unblurred by false flags like share price or payment statements; not to mention, a standard scale to compare the financial health of your suppliers across your portfolio; and finally, a discreet, secure network of supplier information that allows suppliers to proactively, and objectively, communicate with you and your team.

Because—for most enterprises—supply chain resiliency starts and stops with you. And you should have the data and analytics tools that support all of those (ever-more-public) responsibilities, regardless of industry or geography, and beyond the day-to-day of on time/on spec fulfillment.

This is your moment. How will you make your mark?

Save time and resources by outsourcing your private company supplier financials to a company that has a track record of discretion and success—in over 150 countries.

Conduct accurate, comparable (and sharable) assessments with accurate scoring based on 73 efficiency and resilience ratios, 24 industry models, and decades of data from companies that have not only defaulted or filed for bankruptcy—but those that have survived and thrived.

Have meaningful conversations (internally and externally) with automated reporting that includes talking points in a relationship-centric dialogue, so you can ask the right questions—with or without financial expertise.

Connect the dots of supplier information management with an advanced data and analytics platform,  Trust Your Supplier, that integrates validated risk information into supplier profiles for advanced insights, accelerated onboarding, and trusted exchange of information.  

And dissipate the fog; get an early warning on public and private suppliers, alike, through predictive technology that’s purpose-built to have more meaningful business relationships—by mitigating and solving challenges before they turn into disruptions and dramatically impact or break the bottom line.

To learn more about how RapidRatings with Trust Your Supplier can help support supply chain risk management in the pandemic era, please click here.   

April Harrison Blog, Risk Management, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments

Trust is Built in Drops and Lost in Buckets

by Gary Storr

Today in the world of Supplier Information Management speed and risk mitigation are tremendously important in establishing the partnerships so critical to business growth and success. Unfortunately, most organizations have been unable to address these challenges. Did you know that the typical timeframe to onboard a new supplier within many enterprise organizations is more than 30 days? In a world where speed is currency, that can have a huge impact on a business’s ability to pivot, grow, and innovate. A lot of that has to do with the information required to vet a new supplier, and the work required to do that vetting. Numerous spreadsheets, portals, systems, and unsecured document exchanges make this a very cumbersome process. And on the supplier side, each customer demands this same information, creating an incredibly repetitive and non-value added work effort. In summary, it’s a lot of inefficiencies and unnecessary attracted cost for everyone.

Trust Your Supplier (or TYS), addresses these pain points and more. Built on IBM Blockchain, TYS is a strategic collaboration between Chainyard and IBM and a revolutionary solution that brings efficiency and optimization to address these challenges. It’s compellingly different than any supplier management network in operation today. Simply put, TYS creates a Trusted Source of Supplier Information and Digital Identity that simplifies and accelerates Supplier Onboarding and Lifecycle Management. Supplier-provided trusted data, their identity, is used by buyers to validate and manage the partnership. It’s immediate access to real-time data that generates massive savings and reduction of risk. The value proposition is compelling for suppliers too. The single blockchain-based profile eliminates redundant submission of the same information multiple times to different buyers and reduces time to the first transaction and ultimately when they get paid. They are also discoverable on the network, creating opportunities for new business with other buyers on the network.

And the game-changer is the TYS Data Marketplace. Similar to an App Store on your mobile device, this marketplace is a collection of gold-standard services available from firms that are the world’s leading authorities on financial health, sustainability, risk & resilience, and a host of other capacities that help evaluate the performance of your partners. Renowned firms like Dun & Bradstreet, Rapid Ratings, Ecovadis, and many others offer their services directly on the network where their ratings, scores, and evaluations are aggregated into a single, seamless view for the user. This dramatically reduces the time required to conduct due diligence and qualify a partner, saving time and cost. Best of all, free content is available from practically all of these providers, while advanced premium services are can be purchased ala carte to meet your specific needs.  

To ensure state of the art, enterprise-grade trust, TYS is built on Blockchain, creating a decentralized system that is not controlled by a single company. It can quickly become a global standard for supplier and buyer collaboration as well as increasing the participation of third parties who can provide services into this neutral environment.

It’s clear the new normal in supplier management centers on trust. Knowing and trusting your suppliers, in corporate responsibility, sustainability, diversity, financial stability, and a host of other areas are key to ensuring enterprises can responsibly conduct business. Suppliers need to build that trust and continually demonstrate this commitment to their partners. The partnership has never been so important.

April Harrison Blockchain, Blog, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments

How to Reduce Workload & Shorten Onboarding Time for Procurement teams and Their Suppliers

by April Harrison

Buyers and Suppliers have a common goal: to transact. Often standing in their way is an intensive administrative workload to provide and maintain critical business information.

The traditional process of validation & qualification is slow and cumbersome for both purchasing teams and suppliers.

Suppliers must submit their information to each buyer in different formats. Buyers must review supplier information and ratings to meet compliance regulations. These highly manual and repetitive steps result in long lead times to their first transaction.

Trust Your Supplier frees both buyers and suppliers from redundant administrative work with a seamless exchange of information, increased visibility, and embedded third-party risk management. In this short video, hear how TYS works for Glaxo-Smith-Kline managing their supplier relationships. 

Reduce supplier effort to share information with customers
With TYS, suppliers can update once, share with many.

Reduce procurement team effort to collect and validate supplier information Procurement teams automatically receive updated and accurate supplier information along with market, media, and other external commentaries to constantly monitor news regarding suppliers.

In this video,  Lenovo’s COO, Renee Ure, describes how TYS streamlines onboarding. This simplified process gives time back to your team, so they can focus on their core competencies and shortens the runway to the first transaction.

Learn more at www.TrustYourSupplier.com

qa qa Blog 0 Comments

A Platform for Procurement Innovation

by April Harrison

Supply Chains are an intricate interchange of information between buyers and suppliers that result in an exchange of goods or services and payment. If all goes well, this can result in lasting partnerships.

One cumbersome aspect of the supply chain process is collecting and maintaining accurate and validated supplier information. Intensive administrative work is required from both suppliers and buyers to ensure accurate data to minimize risk.

The traditional qualification, validation. and onboarding processes require suppliers to submit their information to each buyer in different formats. For or buyers, compliance regulations demand reviews of supplier information and ratings. Because these steps are highly manual and repetitive, they often result in unnecessary time delays to the first transaction. 

Trust Your Supplier (TYS) solves this challenge to the first transaction and in the upkeep of accurate & current information. 

Built on blockchain technology, TYS provides a single, trusted digital identity for suppliers to share with multiple buyers and across business networks

By a supplier building a singular profile in TYS, they can establish a neutral, cross-industry identity layer that offers seamless integrations with multiple buyer vertical industries, business networks, and procure-to-pay solutions.

Trust Your Supplier brings together the technology and a network that transforms the supplier information experience, leading to reduced cost, risk, and administrative effort. 

Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the impact TYS has on each of these areas with the potential for amazing outcomes. Stay tuned!

tysprodwpmaster Blog 0 Comments

The Trust Your Supplier Podcast has Officially Launched!

Focusing on insights about supplier information management, we’ll have conversations with key stakeholders to discuss how to break the cycle of redundant administrative work and how to increase supply chain agility.

In our first episode, GSK’s Director of Policy, Risk & Compliance in Procurement, Ashna Amarshi, chats with TYS’s Michelle Armstrong & Mohit Bothra. They discuss GSK’s journey with Trust Your Supplier, why it’s more important than ever to speed the onboarding process, and how her team will benefit.

TYS will allow her team to focus on GSK’s overall mission, to help people Do More, Feel Better, Live Longer.

Listen to the full conversation here.

April Harrison Blog, Pharmaceutical 0 Comments

TYS @BiTA Symposium – June 10th

Chainyard will be highlighting Trust Your Supplier as an important and timely use of blockchain.  Register for this free, virtual event.

BiTA is a leading member-driven community comprising stakeholders across the transportation, logistics, supply chain, freight, technology, and blockchain arenas.

Join us on June 10th as BiTA members highlight real-world learnings from their use of cutting-edge technology. Projects to be discussed include: 

  • An update on the DLT Labs + Walmart Canada project, the largest industrial blockchain application in the world
  • How Specright empowers Salesforce Blockchain customers to create a trusted supply chain network
  • Trust Your Product & Trust Your Supplier: why Chainyard’s work is more important than ever
  • Ubirch’s COVID-19 testing solutions for transportation companies
  • Pitney Bowes’ blockchain-enabled tracking and chain-of-custody eCommerce PoC
  • Polaris Transportation Group’s FreightLens product using Hyperledger
  • How Routeique is using RECAST to reframe supply chain strategies
  • Why interoperability is essential and what it means for supply chains with the CEO of Agoric
April Harrison Blog 0 Comments