Supplier Information Management Archives

Navigating Data Governance in Supply Chain Management: The Critical Role of Supplier Segmentation

by Michelle Armstrong, TYS Global VP of Value Solutions Consultant

In today’s global business environment, managing supply chain risks and ensuring compliance with both regional and global regulations is more challenging than ever. Central to this challenge is the effective governance of supplier data, which encompasses a wide range of aspects from contracts and insurance to audits and purchase orders. This blog explores the importance of utilizing supplier segmentation as a strategic tool in managing data governance and mitigating risks.

Understanding Supplier Segmentation:

Supplier segmentation is the process of categorizing suppliers based on various criteria such as spend, risk, strategic importance, and compliance. This segmentation allows organizations to apply different management techniques and resources based on the category of the supplier.

Enhancing Data Governance through Supplier Segmentation

>Revalidation of Data: Regular revalidation of supplier data is essential for maintaining its accuracy and relevance. Segmentation helps prioritize which suppliers require more frequent or detailed revalidation processes.

>Risk Assessment: Different suppliers pose different levels of risk. Segmentation allows for tailored risk assessment strategies, focusing more intensely on high-risk or high-impact suppliers.

Compliance with Global and Regional Regulations

>Understanding Regulatory Landscape: Each segment of suppliers may be subject to different regulatory requirements based on their location, size, or industry.

>Customized Compliance Strategies: Segmentation enables the development of compliance strategies that are specifically tailored to the regulatory requirements of different supplier groups.

Third-Party Risk Management

>Identifying and Monitoring Risks: Effective segmentation helps identify the various risks associated with each supplier group and setting up appropriate monitoring mechanisms.

>Proactive Risk Mitigation: By understanding the risk profile of each segment, companies can proactively develop mitigation strategies.

Contract Management and Insurance

>Tailored Contract Strategies: Different supplier segments may require different contract terms and conditions based on the level of engagement and risk involved.

>Insurance Requirements: Supplier segmentation helps in determining appropriate insurance requirements and levels of coverage for different supplier categories.

Audits and Purchase Orders

>Audit Planning: Segmentation aids in planning audits, focusing resources on high-risk or high-value suppliers.

>Streamlining Purchase Orders: By understanding the nature and requirements of each segment, companies can streamline their purchase order processes for efficiency and compliance.

Conclusion

In the complex and ever-evolving world of global supply chain management, supplier segmentation stands out as a vital tool for effective data governance. It not only ensures compliance and mitigates risks but also optimizes resources and enhances operational efficiency. As businesses continue to navigate the intricacies of global and regional regulations, the strategic use of supplier segmentation will be a key factor in their success.

Want to learn more? Let’s talk!

***

Trust Your Supplier (TYS) is a Small, Minority and Woman owned business with a global reach offering an innovative blockchain-based solution for supplier and risk management to large and mid-size enterprises. By harnessing the immutability of the blockchain, TYS ensures daily monitoring, historical, predictive, and prescriptive risk insights, enabling trusted data exchange and workflow automation beyond traditional boundaries. This distributed ledger technology fosters transparency, efficiency, and empowerment for businesses to effectively manage suppliers and mitigate risks.

April Harrison December 6, 2023 Blog, Risk & Compliance, Risk Management, Supplier Information Management, Value Engineering 0 Comments Compliance, Michelle Armstrong, Supplier Risk Management

The Evolution of Supplier Management (Part 2)

by Gary Storr, General Manager

In Part 1, I talked about how this will be the first time your AI technology capability will – through Supplier Digital Identity, “put your organization ahead of future industry demands.”

I then emphasized the importance of “laying a universally consumable digital supplier identity foundation” today to achieve an unprecedented level of “supplier trust…and a single version of the truth.”

Let’s revisit the following graphic from the first post to understand the bridge or path to getting to trust and a single version of the truth.

If you take a step back to reflect on the above, it is hard to argue with the validity of the key points or theme. In short, moving to the “future state” that is Supplier Digital Identity sounds good.

But what does it mean, e.g., the future state of Supplier Digital Identity in the here and now? How do you leverage AI to get there? And what tangible benefits will it deliver? To put it another way, what good is my telling you about Eden and how great it is and then not showing you the way to get there?

It Isn’t About The Technology

As a service provider with what I believe is the most amazing technology in the industry, you will be surprised by what I am about to say.

Getting to that single version of truth and supplier insight is about something other than the technology. It is about the expertise behind that technology. To be clear, when I say expertise, I am not just talking about a deep understanding of how the technology works. I am talking about the knowledge and anticipation of the expected and unexpected external disruptions we face in a dynamic and complex world and how to leverage said technology to determine the appropriate response.

For example, the organizations with whom we work are consistently talking about:

Concern about the supplier data they house being accurate and current to ensure they have the latest view on that, supplier’s qualifications, credentials, performance, et cetera.
The flurry of the evolution of rules, standards, and requirements – that are much more diverse than they’ve ever been.
Adoption, cycle time reduction, and administration are “hugely important.”
Increasing awareness of the importance of “authoritative data.”

The above are only a few examples of where companies want and need to go to arrive at that future state of optimal supplier management capability. To reach this state of capability, you must look beyond the technology to assess your service provider’s ability to address these points and many others.

The Right Captain For The Right Vessel

You have to have a partner who will have the same vision as you do.

For example, if a partner is “established” in older technology, or if a partner doesn’t understand the regulatory compliance landscape worldwide, or doesn’t have some insights into particular industries that you’re in, you can be guided off course.

It’s a little bit like the analogy that there’s a difference between a sailboat and an oil tanker. You have to hire the right captain for the sailboat and hire a different captain for the oil tanker.

If you prefer something a little less nautical, In Good To Great, Jim Collins said – and I paraphrase “You have to have the right people in the right seats on the right bus.” What success ultimately comes down to is having the right service provider partner with the right expertise doing the right things!

If you do, you will successfully transition from the emerging standards of today to the necessary future state of Supplier Digital Identity and its competitive edge.

April Harrison August 30, 2023 Blog, Digital Transformation, Supplier Information Management 1 Comment Gary Storr, Master Data

The Evolution of Supplier Management (Part 1)

by Gary Storr, General Manager

“How do we overlay today’s needs with tomorrow’s needs and build a bridge that organizations can invest in today and be ready for tomorrow?”

During a recent interview, I gave the above response to the question “Where is supplier management technology now, and what it will look like in the future?” It is seemingly a straightforward question. But underlying its simplicity is the complexity of building and proactively managing dynamic and interconnected supply networks in a volatile global marketplace.

Now one might think that as a solution provider, my focus would be on the technology part of the equation. Even though emerging AI technology is the main event when it comes to supplier management, you must look beyond it to the experience and expertise behind it.

Think about it for a moment. ESG investing began in the 1960s as “socially responsible investing, with investors excluding stocks or entire industries from their portfolios.” The industries on the no-investment list included tobacco companies and any businesses deemed to be supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Now ponder this fact – ESG reporting did not begin until 2004 under the UN “Who Cares Wins” banner. Here we are in 2023, and it is only recently that things like carbon emissions, ESG, and global compliance have become emerging mainstream regulatory concerns.

The above “timeline” raises two essential questions:

Why are companies now scrambling to comply with new legislative requirements and proposed future ones when we saw this train coming as far back as the 1960s?
Regarding future regulations, e.g., ESG, what will the reporting (and technology) requirements be next year or decade? By the way, if you want a glimpse into what is on the compliance horizon, check out the following ESG Regulations link.

From my standpoint and experience, we need to do two things so that we don’t continue to play catch-up with known and unknown compliance realities. In today’s post, I will tell you the two things you need to do to stop chasing compliance and start mastering (and benefiting) from it.

First, A History Timeline Review

Regarding the evolution of supplier management platforms, the old saying “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” tells a notable story.

In the above graphic, you will note how we have progressed from a “blind trust” qualification process to where we are today – somewhere between email and spreadsheets and corporate web portals.

As your service provider, you will be happy to know that we are on the leading edge of the emerging standard: enterprise supplier networks. I will get into what this emerging standard is shortly.

That said, we have also created an overlay between today’s and tomorrow’s supplier management needs. Why is this important?

It is important because instead of implementing technology to catch up with emerging requirements, we are also creating a seamless bridge to put you out front of the proverbial curve to address not yet known future requirements. If you think about it, this will be the first time that your AI technology capability will – through supplier digital identity, put your organization ahead of future industry demands.

The Here And Now

In Part 2 of this series, I will get into the specifics of supplier digital identity. However, we can’t take our eyes off the immediate challenges you face in managing your present-day supplier network, including the importance of:

Reliable supplier data
Digital supplier discovery
Minimized administration
3^rd party verifications

Through this immediate capability, you will meet today’s demands while laying a universally consumable digital supplier identity foundation that will create unprecedented supplier trust and a single version of the truth.

Up Next: The Evolution of Supplier Management (Part 2) – Winning The Tomorrow War, Today

April Harrison July 27, 2023 Blog, Digital Transformation, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments Gary Storr, Master Data

FAQ: How do questionnaires play a role in supplier compliance & risk management?

April Harrison July 24, 2023 Blog, FAQ, Risk & Compliance, Risk Management, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments Compliance, Supplier Risk Management

When It Comes To Data, Failing To Plan Is Planning To Fail

by Sai Nidamarty, TYS Cofounder & CEO

Data knowing is a significant and intimidating problem that almost all organizations face, yet they need the data culture and cycles to do something about it. Beyond focusing solely on the consequences of bad or missing supplier data, we have convened a panel of industry experts and thought leaders to closely examine the data challenge from the following three critical points: 1. Data consequence 2. Data culture 3. Centralized planning & supplier oversight data framework. – Supplier Data: What You Don’t Know Can (And Will) Hurt You

The above link is to a webinar on which I was a panel member with Tom Redman and Greg Tennyson. From its title, you can see that we were talking about the importance of data.

Of course, data being important is not a new revelation. Nor is it a subject that hasn’t received significant attention in the media. However, despite its ubiquitous presence, many organizations still need help turning their vast amount of raw data into actionable knowledge. The question is, why? Of even greater importance than the why is how do we fix it – how do we convert our data currency into tangible returns?

During this panel, we answer this latter question.

Data “Street Cred”

Tom Redman and Greg Tennyson are recognized industry thought leaders. Tom, who graduated from Florida State University in 1980 with a PhD, Statistics and worked with AT&T Bell until 1995, when he started his company “The Data Doc,” has written extensively, including a compelling article on data for the Harvard Business Review.

Greg has a procurement pedigree going back to the late 1990s with companies like Oracle, SalesForce, and Coupa. As for me, my experience dates as far back as the early 1990s in the positions of software engineering and program management with IBM.

In short, individually and collectively, we have a deep understanding of not only technology but data as well.

Based on the above, you must know that the panel discussion would be uniquely insightful because we weren’t tackling the data question from a conceptual or theoretical basis. What this means is that during the 60 minutes, we didn’t just talk about the challenges with data but what you can do “about” getting the most from your data using my 3-Point Supplier Data Plan.

The 3-Point Supplier Data Plan

“Partner, Mitigate, Comply is at the heart of the 3-Point centralized planning & supplier oversight data framework. Going forward, I will call it the 3-Point Supplier Data Plan.” – Sai Nidamarty

So, what is the 3-Point Supplier Data Plan?

During the panel, Tom, Greg, and I discussed at length the specifics of the 3-Point plan, including how you can introduce it to your organization. By the way, you can use this 3-Point link to access the on-demand recording of the session.

In the meantime, at a high level, here is a quick overview or outline of the supplier data plan:

Point #1 – Partner

Enterprise data drawn from many data sources are generally inconsistent, incomplete, and unreliable for decision-making. Partnering & investing with automated tools to onboard, manage and monitor a single source of truth for the entire supplier base
Enhance authenticity and provenance, creating a data culture with a single source of truth
Collaborating with suppliers for the exchange of information
Establish relationships with comprehensive 3rd party data providers in monitoring supplier risk in real-time; take appropriate actions to mitigate

Point #2 – Mitigate

Data and transactions MUST be transparent with an immutable audit trail
Simple, quick discovery of qualified, trusted suppliers
Nearly touchless supplier onboarding – A faster turnaround of query resolution and proactive alerts enabling better & timely strategy realignment
Monitoring risk is now at least equal to monitoring spend & margins for procurement organizations
Governance of data management throughout the supply chain
Integrate with a range of immutable ledger technologies

Point # 3 – Comply

Maintain control of authenticity throughout the supply chain – enhancing supply chain visibility and risk.
Comply with regulative reporting and compliance regulations (SCDDA, Diversity/human rights laws, insurance)
Meeting internal objectives on compliance (e.g. ESG)
The continued evolution of a globally compliant supplier base
Blockchain uses digital signatures, data encryption, and cryptographic function to protect the integrity of the data.

Once again, I invite you to use the above links to access the on-demand version of the webinar.

I would also suggest that you stay connected with us, as we are planning to do a special live – open mic Q&A session, where we will specifically discuss the 3-Point Supplier Data Plan in much greater detail. Follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter for updates.

April Harrison June 6, 2023 Blog, Digital Transformation, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments Master Data, Sai Nidamarty

The Emperor Has No Clothes: The Harsh Truth of Missing or Dirty Data

by Jon Hansen, Chief Editor, Procurement Insights

Did you know the average number of webinars a company hosts annually averages between 23 and 25? I moderate a good number of webinars, but considering how many companies there are and multiplying that by 23 to 25, the total number is beyond fathomable.

The question is, how do you sift and choose the right webinar out of an abundance of options?

For me, the webinars I get the most from are those in which there is frank, at times thought-provoking discussion between industry thought leaders that provide unique insights you can’t get anywhere else.

Of course, the challenge is that many topics have been covered ad infinitum. When I agreed to moderate a panel discussion regarding missing or dirty data, my main concern was what more could be said that still needs to be said.

Panel Power

It turns out there is a great deal left to say – especially when you have an incredible panel. I know that the panel for this upcoming webinar, “Supplier Data: What you don’t know can and will hurt you,” is one such panel.

Between Tom Redman, Greg Tennyson, and Sai Nidamarty’s collective experience and expertise, you will never see data in the same way again.

How do I know?

I record and transcribe every dry run. For those unfamiliar with a webinar dry run, besides testing the connectivity regarding picture and sound, we engage in an off-the-cuff assessment of the subject we will discuss when we go live. I have done many of these – in fact, I have lost count, but this one was a little different. I am almost tempted to use this recording in place of the live event on May 18^th. Just kidding, but you get my point.

However, I will share a small excerpt of the transcript from the session with you because when you read it, I know you will want to sit in when we go live. Below is just a small sampling of what you can expect – not only concepts but tangible insights and answers to enable you to think of data differently.

Use the following link to reserve your seat at what promises to be a most memorable session: Supplier Data: What You Don’t Know Can (And Will) Hurt You.

The “Transcript”

Do we see it beyond, let’s say, the narrow scope of, well, there’s supplier data, there’s information, but overall understand the repercussions of data?

Tom Redman ·10:32

What were the repercussions here, Jon?

Jon Hansen ·10:34

Well, to start off, let’s put this way. The customers ended up being charged $150,000 on their credit cards, even though they only had a $10,000 limit. Let’s go to the next one. Another customer charged $674,000 for airline tickets, while others are paying free travel vouchers by paying taxes, associate fees, and they were told, oh, by the way, that was a mistake. We cancel all your flights. And then there’s even in terms of this data and the reach of it struggles, in terms of suppliers, in terms of engagement, in terms of filling orders. I mean, with Peloton, that cost them dearly. And they had to revert from going their usual route of shipping product by transport. They had to go to air transport, which increased their cost challenges. There Rotax, Bombardier, and again, this goes and ripples through the supply chain.

Jon Hansen ·11:39

The Russia that bombed Ukraine, and they found out that they had the Rotax and the Bombardier parts in there. So now there’s a big investigation. There’s potential sanctions, but it’s not only that company, the companies there Rotax and bombarding, but it also what will that do in terms of relationships? I mean, this is like, do we think about it in these real.

Sai Nidamarty ·12:11

Impact?

Jon Hansen ·12:11

Do you see what I’m saying?

Tom Redman ·12:13

Not yet. Who has actually been hurt by these?

Jon Hansen ·12:21

Okay, now that’s an interesting question. That’s why I asked these. Who does get hurt by this? I mean, maybe that’s what we have to look at with data. Who gets hurt when data isn’t accurate? To what extent does it impact the marketplace? What happens if, for example, with the Rotax and the Bombardier situation, where now all of a sudden, the whole supply network, including the smaller suppliers that contributed to the building of this product, get sanctioned and fined? What impact will that have on Bombardier’s customers, employees, the business? Do you see what I’m saying? I mean, it’s not just a balance sheet consideration here.

Greg Tennyson ·13:02

I’m following.

Jon Hansen ·13:03

Go ahead.

Tom Redman ·13:04

I’m sorry, Greg.

Greg Tennyson ·13:05

Yeah. No, I’m following, Jon. It’s a reputational risk. It’s the impact to the employee for loss of jobs. It’s the supplier losing revenue because now they have sanctions, they’re disbarred from doing business, etcetera. So the implications are far and wide.

Jon Hansen ·13:21

I think that’s really the whole messaging here. It’s like the Peloton. It wasn’t a question of whether or not they had the data. Reports show that they had the data available. They just didn’t know how to read it. They didn’t know how to recognize what the data was telling them. So even if you have data and everyone does, even if you cleanse that data and the process for doing that, I mean, reading it and being able to anticipate what it means, that seems to be a struggle for a lot of companies. Am I wrong?

Tom Redman ·13:57

I don’t know. Like, still, most of this I find maddeningly abstract. So what happened? Is Peloton as a result. I mean, is Peloton out of business? Right? Have sales tanked by 30%? Have people been fired, by the way? These things happen all the time, right? Yes, there is potential things that can happen. Right. But why are you looking at these not similar ones. Why aren’t you looking at the bad counting in the census, which caused three is it three or six? number of states to be misassigned their right number of representatives, which over ten years they don’t get the money they deserve of the 1.5 trillion that the government disperses annually?

Tom Redman ·14:53

I wrote a report one time in Peer and Sloan Management Review that synthesized this and said a good starting point for the cost of bad data for a company is 20% of revenue. Right. By the way, I mean, I do appreciate the need. For example, Boeing Seven is it the seven three seven max, which the sort of angle of attack sensors failed, crashed a couple of planes, cost 430 some people their lives. Right? Think of $100 million. Delayed all those planes from coming out. Right. Whipsawed through the supply chain. Those are tangible things that have happened.

Sai Nidamarty ·15:49

So you bring good points, Tom. There is a McKenzie study that is published, and I will get the links to that. There is 1% EBITDA big organizations lose because of supplier disruptions that companies don’t even know how to really manage or calculate it. Right? And that is all happening because of a lot of supplier disruptions, not having the proper supplier data, those kinds of things. Right? 1% EBITDA is a big number to really manage their supplier data in a way that they’re actually doing their whole supply chain with a lot of proper insights and coming out with accurate data. Right? Microsoft’s CEO said that data culture is very important for us. Every decision that we make should be based on the right data that we are having, and that way we can make the right decision.

Jon Hansen ·17:23

You hit it on the head and Greg, you put in the comment about Boeing 737 was a $2.5 billion impact. And Tom, when you mentioned about Peloton yeah, the CEO got fired. They lost a huge amount of money, market share. April Harrison indicated in the chat that they had a major recall of parts. What’s interesting about this, and this is what I wanted to bring out in these discussions is to turn it from a conceptual one to drilling down. What exactly are the impact in real world circumstances? What are the impact in terms of, again, $2.5 billion impact, greg, that’s significant. That’s money, but that’s lives and all other kinds of factors in there, let alone the damage to their brand.

Greg Tennyson ·18:03

Right, right. Completely agree.

Sai Nidamarty ·18:07

Yeah. And Tom, to your point, right. How is that impacting? Are people getting fired or are companies losing money? People may not be getting fired, but companies are losing money. It is affecting their revenue, it is affecting their profit margins, but no one is able to really articulate it in a proper way. Right? Because look at it right now, we are working with a client. They are a very large client, and they have almost 100 plus ERP systems. When each ERP, a lot of things are coming from acquisitions and they don’t all have proper data management. Data culture. Right? They’re creating a lot of data inaccuracies, a lot of mismatches, and that is actually driving their inefficiencies, driving a lot of costs and all that.

They understand it, but they don’t know how to fix it because all these organizations are creating their processes and change management so complex that they’re creating the problem. It is impossible without clean data. That’s precisely what I’m trying to allude to. Right? That change management makes it so difficult because it is all done by people and the processes are becoming so complex that this is becoming a very big problem.

Jon Hansen ·19:56

And what’s interesting, and you see this is the whole thing of what I want to do with this first step, and this is very much what it’s going to be like, the discussion. I’m not looking for consensus or Q and A answers. I’m looking at this from the standpoint of this kind of roundtable type of discussion where, Tom, you sit there and say, yeah, but what does that mean? What about this? Because I think there’s not enough clarity here. And when it comes down to the data culture statute, we got to create a data culture that everyone can make better decisions. Well, what’s a data culture? And I mean, even in a Harvard Business Review article, they’re talking about, yes, it’s a cornerstone creating a solid data practice foundation.

April Harrison May 15, 2023 Blog, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments Sai Nidamarty

What Is The Real Cost Of Missing Or Inaccurate Data?

by Sai Nidamarty, Trust Your Supplier Co-Founder & CEO

Let’s get the cursory narrative regarding the cost of missing data out of the way first.

We have all heard Peter Drucker’s business maxim, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,”. It is a timeless guidepost of how we run our businesses. By the way, Peter never actually said that, but that is a story for another day.

Then we can turn to the various articles and studies over the past few years reporting that bad or poor-quality data costs the U.S. economy $31 trillion annually. That’s a big number, and so is the finding that 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years.

The above are all facts and verifiable. But what do they really mean? What does missing or inaccurate data really cost on a practical, everyday level?

There are better venues for a deep analysis than the limitations of an article or blog post. My focus today is to start a dialogue enabling you to transition data strategy from a broad horizon concept to an actionable on-the-ground understanding. In other words, you already know that data is important and that there are consequences for missing or inaccurate data. What’s needed now is to answer the question, what will you do about it?

Data Challenges

In an upcoming webinar, we will convene a panel of industry experts and thought leaders to closely examine data challenges from the following three critical points:

Data consequence
Data culture
3-Point centralized planning & supplier oversight data framework

When we talk about “data consequence,” we are not talking about broad-stroke generalizations but a fundamental and accessible understanding of impact.

For example, a news article reported that due to a data glitch, Hawaiian Airlines charged dozens of customers “hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card fees.”

One customer reported being “mistakenly charged more than $150,000,” even though they have a “$10,000 limit on their Hawaiian Miles credit card.”

While another customer was charged $674,000 for airline tickets, others obtained free travel vouchers by paying taxes and associated fees. You can imagine the frustration when the airline canceled their flights.

Beyond a financial mess, the airline’s reputation also took a significant hit. How do you measure that in dollars?

Unfortunately, examples like the one above are not rare or isolated incidences limited to the travel industry. Nor do most cases present themselves in such a prominent and noticeable way. Data quality erosion is an even bigger problem because you may only recognize it once its impact is evident on a larger, less manageable scale.

Creating The Right Culture

Given the volatility of supply networks in the post-pandemic world, it isn’t surprising to hear the C-Suite talk about supply chain visibility, resilience, and risk management.

A recent post by Nick Picone regarding a contentious issue about inflationary price increases between a large, national grocery chain and Frito-Lay underscores the importance of data visibility and transparency.

But how do you get to the point of leveraging tools and technology to move from data darkness to data insight and understanding?

A May 2021 article in Procurement Insights highlighted the importance of creating a data culture starting at the C-Suite level. According to the author, CEOs must “recognize the importance of data beyond a conceptual perspective and see it in a practical bottom-line context.” Citing everything from “customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance” to employee empowerment, they make a strong case for “becoming a data-driven organization.”

The 3-Point Supplier Data Plan

Partner, Mitigate, Comply is at the heart of the 3-Point centralized planning & supplier oversight data framework. Going forward, I will call it the 3-Point supplier data plan.

The 3-Point supplier data plan focuses on providing tools and data for organizations to efficiently partner with trusted suppliers, mitigate risk, and ensure ongoing compliance.

In addition to data consequence and culture, during the upcoming webinar, the panel will get into the specifics of the above 3-Point plan highlighting how you can introduce it to your organization. Register to save your seat.

April Harrison April 14, 2023 Blog, Risk Management, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments Sai Nidamarty

The “Q” Word – Questionnaires

A favorite character in the James Bond series (other than James himself) is Q. Q always has these amazing hi-tech gadgets that save James from a certain demise at just the right time. Explosive alarm clocks, the Knife Shoe, exploding pens, a submarine Lotus Esprit, and of course the attacking sofa. He also has little patience for James and his laissez-faire attitude. Q is cool.

For your suppliers, what’s not cool is the “Q” word: Questionnaires.

Suppliers receive and return countless questionnaires containing dozens to hundreds of questions from each customer. Many of these questions are similar from customer to customer with slight variations and various formats. Just google “supplier questionnaires” and you’ll be overwhelmed with many template options and suggestions of what to include in your questionnaires.

So as a procurement organization, what should you include in your questionnaires? And how do you keep them up to date? Key global risks, evolving market conditions, geopolitical issues, and new compliance mandates require revisions to your questionnaires to collect crucial pieces of information from your suppliers. This is necessary to mitigate any risk to your organization.

Each time a company sends out a questionnaire or sends an updated questionnaire, the supplier must respond to each customer separately. The queue for having your specific questionnaire updated and returned can be quite lengthy, therefore creating a lag in the transfer of information. This lag leads to stale data and a lack of visibility to manage your company’s risk in current market conditions.

So, what’s the solution? The “S” word: Standardization. Trust Your Supplier (TYS) has pulled together a conglomerate of major buying organizations to develop a set of questionnaires that are standardized. These questionnaires cover industry, location, and buyer-specific issues that allow each organization to assign the relevant questionnaires to their suppliers. And these questionnaires are kept updated to reflect new requirements and regulations.

Here’s an example of how it works:

A set of questionnaires can be assigned to a supplier by a customer. Once those questionnaires have been completed and published by the supplier, the procurement team can review the answers. But there’s more! Suppliers can then share the same completed questionnaires with other customers…with just a click of a button. So instead of sending the same 200 answers separately to each customer, the supplier now just needs to focus on any unique questions a customer may have. This dramatically reduces the supplier’s administrative burden as well as the onboarding time and keeps their information current and accurate.

Let’s suppose this supplier has added a new product and now they are working with conflict minerals. No problem. The supplier can update the Conflict Minerals questionnaire and once published, the system will automatically notify every connected customer. The supplier’s new motto is now: “Do Once, Share with Many.”

These standardized questionnaires offer additional benefits to buyer teams. The TYS approvals workflow can be customized and automated with each questionnaire. Each answer can be “scored” based on your internal risk threshold. Any answer that does not align with your company’s preferred score will then be directed to the appropriate team role for further review and approval. This allows your team to focus on undesirable answers rather than spending time reviewing all answers.

Another TYS feature that softens the blow of the Q word is Questionnaire Groups. Depending on the supplier segmentation strategy, buyer organizations can use a targeted approach to send relevant questionnaires to a configured group of suppliers. These groups are customized by the buyer team and then assigned as a group to suppliers that fit into that category (i.e., location). This simplifies the questionnaire assignment process for the buyer team.

And the newest TYS feature is Predictive Questionnaires. Buyer teams can create a set of rules that will predict which questionnaires should be assigned to a particular supplier. This is tremendously valuable as new compliance regulations and laws come into play throughout the world, and provides the opportunity to reach more of your supplier base without further manual outreach.

Ultimately, standardization and automation result in benefits for both supplier and buyer organizations. The reduction in the onboarding cycle time allows transactions to occur faster and there is reduced administrative effort on both sides. Buyer organizations can also then benefit from having full visibility into their supplier base for strategic decision-making and risk management.

Check out a real example of how quickly suppliers can complete their profiles and questionnaires on the TYS system.

April Harrison January 24, 2023 Blog, Risk & Compliance, Risk Management, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments April Harrison, Compliance, Questionnaires, Supplier Onboarding, Supplier Risk Management

TYS Implementation Case Study

April Harrison November 15, 2022 Blog, Supplier Information Management, Telecom 0 Comments Supplier Adoption, Supplier Onboarding, System Integrations

FAQ: What is the Importance of Standardization?

Frequently Asked Question: What is the importance of standardization?

Trust Your Supplier has endeavored to bring together buyer organizations across and within industries to determine the best practices and key questions needed to ensure supplier questionnaires address compliance and risk perspectives. Our questionnaires were built with key regulatory questions that address global, local and industry specific requirements.

These standardized questionnaires and workflows reduce onboarding time by allowing suppliers to focus on any unique questions without having to readdress shared questions. This gives suppliers a better experience overall, while reducing time, effort and costs for both parties. Internally, organizations can move in an agile way to get the suppliers they need and meet their goals & deadlines.

Watch this short video to learn more. https://trustyoursupplier.com/resources/cycle-time/

April Harrison July 20, 2022 Blog, FAQ, Risk Management, Supplier Information Management 0 Comments Supplier Adoption, Supplier Onboarding

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