Why Blockchain is Essential to Support ESG Initiatives

by Mohan Venkataraman, Trust Your Supplier CTO

Recently, I was on a panel at Wake Forest University, School of Law, NC on this subject, and it triggered my interest in digging deeper into this space. Chainyard has been involved in ESG via its SaaS platform, Trust Your Supplier, since 2020. I occasionally participate in the Hyperledger SIG on Climate Change where many different topics are discussed. The goal of this article is to share my thoughts as I continue to expand upon that knowledge in the coming months.

What is ESG?

ESG expands to Environment, Social, and Governance. There have been many subsets of it in the past, but the current incarnation is a result of concerns about the climate, environment, and social justice. ESG is complemented by DEI which looks at diversity, equity, and inclusion in society and at the workplace.

Businesses have an impact on our Earth. It includes human and machine activity, and the use of natural resources including water, fossil fuels, raw materials, and minerals. These can result in greenhouse gas emissions like CO2, pollution of the air we breathe or water we drink, deplete natural resources, generating vast amounts of waste, etc. The ESG framework measures the degree to which a corporation adheres to sustainable and environmentally responsible practices.

Organizations have relationships with customers, partners, people, and communities.  ESG measures the social impact on people both internal to the company and customers and supply chain partners. Many questions arise such as how workers are treated, do they get living wages and good healthcare, are the labor practices acceptable, are the communities they serve benefitting, etc.

Governance refers to a corporation’s management practices related to ethics, regulatory and legal compliance, and transparency in reporting. Companies have to establish policies, procedures, guidelines, and measurement frameworks to achieve these goals. “DEI” or diversity at the workplace, equity in opportunities and wages, and inclusion are all part of governance activities.

According to Moody’s, a 2022 survey of their customers found among other insights,

“Customers also indicated that rising customer expectations, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and future of work, are the trends expected to affect their business the most”

Saving the Planet

Fixing the damages caused to the environment by human activity requires a multi-pronged approach. Though it is generally accepted that the main contributor to the climate crisis is CO2 emissions, the environment has been seriously injured by many factors; key among them being the disposal of plastics, which is now the major cause of ocean pollution and the extinction of many species.

To address the crisis, there are several projects put in motion by NGOs, governments, and global institutions. Some of them are voluntary and others are imposed by regulation. These projects fall under several categories such as:

Emission Reduction

  • Carbon Farming and Sequestering
  • Migration to electrical energy
  • Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewable sources
  • Carbon Offsets and Credits to compensate for emissions
  • Carbon Insetting through corporate self-improvement initiatives

Plastics Management

  • Plastic Waste collection, sorting, recycling, and disposal
  • Discontinue single-use plastic items.
  • Measuring the impact of micro-plastic pollution

Land and Water Management

  • Forest management  (re-forestation, conservation, and afforestation)
  • Restoration and protection of coastal wetlands and marine life
  • Carbon-Friendly Agriculture

Waste Management

  • Efficient and effective collection, sorting, and recycling of industrial and household waste.
  • Reprocessing electronic waste to extract valuable metals and reduce the discharge of toxic chemicals into the environment.
  • Excess inventory sharing by enterprises with others.
  • Manufacturing products using sustainable processes and raw materials.

We are all familiar with how our government is pushing for a rapid transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy from wind and solar power.

Carbon Offsetting, Credits, and Insetting

We need to understand what strategies corporations are using to achieve net-zero goals. Corporations make commitments to the industry or the government about becoming carbon neutral or reducing their emissions. In order to meet those targets, they invest in projects that address in part or full those commitments. These projects can be internally triggered, or the corporation can fund third-party projects.

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A generic approach followed in the industry

It is generally agreed that 1 offset or credit is equal to 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide emission (CO2e). A typical tree planted in a reforestation program takes about 40 years to sequester 1 metric ton of carbon. The same amount is roughly emitted by an automobile in about 3 to 12 weeks.

Carbon Offsetting

Carbon offsetting is a mechanism by which a company that has been emitting CO2 and is not yet ready to fix its process, technology, and operations, funds offsetting projects in the voluntary carbon market (VCM). For example, ACME Corp. which has been emitting 100 metric tons of CO2 could invest in the MOSS Project which supports the preservation of the Amazon rain forests to offset its emissions. For a novice, offsetting works as shown.

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Carbon Offsetting – High-Level Flow

Some typical projects include:

  • Forest conservation
  • Wind farms, hydropower projects, solar power plants
  • Other renewable energy projects such as fusion
  • Landfill gas capture and management
  • Providing energy-efficient appliances to local communities such as the recent push in NY To ban gas stoves.
  • Farm power, methane capture, and biogas production, something very common in Asia and Africa
  • Waste management

Carbon Credits

These are regulated credits also referred to as Cap-n-Trade. The Government or the Regulatory Body sets caps on carbon emissions which translate into “Emission Allowances”. These allowances are available for purchase as “Carbon CreditsBusiness entities purchase “Carbon Credits based on assigned emission allowances. These allowances are gradually reduced over time to realize tangible emission reductions.

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Carbon Credits Model

Carbon Insetting

Insetting refers to a Business Entity reducing its own emissions through the adoption of new technology, optimizing supply-chain processes and practices, and improving efficiency. Insetting is more important as it enables a company to take ownership and responsibility for its emissions.

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Insetting

Actions a company may take include deriving more of its energy from renewable sources, management of resources such as water and raw materials, and enforcing ESG across their upstream and downstream partners.

Key issues in the Measurement and Reporting of ESG initiatives

Currently, there are many projects by various organizations in the voluntary carbon market. There is no consistent way to verify if these projects are genuine and truly deliver the benefits they promise. Some of the issues are:

  • Consistency in the application of policies and regulations
  • No single or integrated verifiable and trusted project registry
  • Too much focus on CO2 emissions though the environment is harmed by various other activities.
  • Potential Double Spend problem (accounting of credits and offsets)
  • Traceability of Offsets & Credits throughout their lifecycle from issuance to retirement
  • Transparency of project status and benefits
  • Consistent and verifiable (regulatory) reporting

Why Blockchain?

Blockchains have a bad reputation for being energy-intensive, and thus not climate or carbon friendly. Well, that comes from Bitcoin mining and other public blockchains that supported the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocol. PoW is very CPU intensive and consumes a lot of energy to solve a mathematical challenge essential for block verification and earning crypto. However, most other blockchains support better protocols such as proof-of-stake, BFT, or proof-of-authority which are much more energy friendly.

A blockchain is a valuable tool that can help address many issues. It extends enterprise solutions and can work cohesively with IOT and AI/ML technologies.

  • An immutable record of data enables “track and trace” of projects, the provenance of lifecycle events, and transparency. All this depends on stakeholders including applications and things recording data into the ledgers.
  • Smart Contracts can help with governance, enforcing policies and business rules, and managing tokens issued as offsets, credits, and incentives.
  • Decentralized Identity is a relatively new concept and can be applied to projects, people, organizations, and things. Every project can be assigned a DID and tagged with verifiable credentials by bodies such as Carbon Action Reserve, Verra, and the like. DIDs are cryptographically verifiable, universally resolvable, and enable Proof-of-Existence and Proof-of-Verification
  • Consensus protocols such as Proof-of-Stake allow validators to verify transactions and maintain consistency and integrity of the ledger
  • Privacy and Anonymity are very important for organizations. Using encryption and secrets, organizations can be transparent about their commitments and actions, yet implement privacy and confidentiality to avoid exposing their business secrets and intellectual property.

Three use case patterns where blockchain can augment ESG initiatives are:

  1. Provenance, and Track & Trace of ESG Projects
  2. Facilitating the trading and trustable record-keeping of Carbon offsets and credits (tokens)
  3. Supporting risk, audit, and compliance reporting

These patterns cut across many domains such as supply chain, health care, real estate, and energy,

Organizations and Bodies involved with Sustainability Initiatives

It was enlightening to see the number of organizations and companies involved with climate initiatives and ESG.

Some of the notable ones are:

  • Verra is one of the most recognized and trusted providers of standards and guidelines for sustainable development. The Verra registry is a repository of certified and verified projects.
  • Climate Action Reserve is approved to serve as an Offset Project Registry (OPR) for the Compliance Offset Program under California’s Cap-and-Trade Program. They also maintain project registries and support various carbon offset programs.
  • GHG Protocol According to their website they provide standards, guidance, tools, and training for businesses and governments to measure and manage climate-warming emissions. One can download worksheets and tools to measure and record carbon emissions footprint.
  • The Gold Standard is another reputed and recognized organization that provides standards, verifies and certifies carbon projects, and maintains project registries.

Other organizations include

  • American Carbon Registry
  • CSA Group Registries
  • Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards: Certification to the Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards demonstrates that a project simultaneously addresses climate change, supports local communities and smallholders, and conserves biodiversity
  • Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) – Increased reporting of climate-related financial information.
  • Verra – SD-VISta The Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SD VISta) – Premier standard for certifying the real-world benefits of social and environmental projects, from gender equity and economic development to affordable clean energy and restoration of wildlife.
  • The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) focuses on reliable and clean energy modern energy services, as defined in its Target 7.1
  • Paris Accord on Scope 1/2/3 reporting
  • United States – Environmental Protection Agency
  • European Commission (2020) Circular Economy Action Plan
  • Open Earth Foundation
  • Hyperledger Foundation – Climate SIG

Many projects support ESG such as the MOSS Project, Toucan, Plastic Bank, Save The Planet, Klim DAO, and Greenly. The notable ones that need mentioning are:

Trust Your Supplier – Chainyard is a SaaS blockchain network focused on supplier risk and qualification. Workflows help customers capture supplier ESG initiatives and actions and get them verified through third-party verifiers who provide ESG rating scores.

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TYS Captured ESG Information

TYS has standardized the information capture to gather ESG information that can be used by organizations to support Scope 1 & 2 reporting today, and a goal of Scope 3 in the future.

Title Chain – Borsetta is an evolving network that enables asset track and tracing of energy micro-grids, helps secure their title, and tokenizes the grid and energy production among other functions. Though it is not directly related to ESG, it mainly targets microgrids that support renewable energy ecosystems, including the energy they produce and the excess quantity sold to the national grid. Microgrids serve campuses and are seen as the future of community-driven energy production.

Digital Credentials for Carbon Accounting is an initiative by the British Columbia government in Canada. The initiative known as “Traction” set up under the Energy & Mines Digital Trust supports the BC Government’s requirement for certified annual sustainability reporting. The solution is built on a blockchain platform based on Hyperledger Aries and Indy and leverages the Decentralized Identity (DID) standards protocol. The mining companies collect data for sustainability reporting, which is verified by organizations such as PWC resulting in the issuance of a Verifiable Credential that can be shared with the government.

ESG and Blockchain (A conceptual architecture)

Earlier in this article, we discussed how a blockchain complements ESG solutions. Can blockchain add value beyond Carbon Offsets and Credits? Yes, there are many reasons.

The Blockchain can serve as an ESG BUS providing access to various services such as project verification and tokenization

Many institutions maintain verifiable registries of carbon projects, some enabled by blockchains, and others provide APIs. A decentralized identifier can be assigned to every project. Decentralized identifiers are a W3C-enabled standard and specification to define the structure, attributes, and architecture of DID and its constituents. DIDs are universally resolvable to “DID DOCS” which are JSON documents present authentication schemes, digital signatures, and service endpoints to access various aspects and details about the project.

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The blockchain can record hashes (aka digital fingerprints) of data received from IoT sensors that track emissions or watch human activity, thus providing immutable tamper-evident proofs for later audit.

Carbon offsets and credits are offered by various organizations. A unified solution can act as an interface for enterprise blockchain to have access to those marketplaces and exchanges.

Enterprises having insetting programs can record the lifecycle of their projects against commitments, thus offering transparency into their programs. Solutions such as TYS capture and/or process such information in their risk assessment workflows. Blockchain “Oracles” assist in making those connections and ensuring the reliability of the source and the received data.

AI ML algorithms and third-party rating providers can calculate ESG scores. which can be recorded with proofs and signatures. Today many companies such as Bloomberg, Ecovadis, CDP, Moody’s, D&B, S&P Global, and other analytics firms provide the service and can secure their ratings on a trusted decentralized ledger.

Lastly, both enterprise and public blockchains have a role to play.

Summary

Governments across the world and global conferences such as the World Economic Forum-Davos, United Nations Climate Conferences held in Kyoto and Paris, and UN Climate Action i.e. COP27 are focused on actions to address climate change. The “E” in ESG is not just limited to carbon emissions but includes plastic waste and other human and industrial waste, non-carbon pollutants. and management of our forests, coastal and marine life. While Carbon offsets have been used as a tool by individuals and industries, it does not make them responsible for their actions. The impact of offset projects has been difficult to measure and report. Insetting as a goal puts more responsibility and accountability on corporations to improve their process and technology. Blockchains can help bring more trust, transparency, accountability, and compliance to ESG management. Also, it is unclear, how much of the geo-political events and industrial disasters are taken into account such as the war in Ukraine, the Norfolk Southern toxic spill in Ohio, or the dairy explosion that occurred in Texas.

About Chainyard

Chainyard is a boutique blockchain consulting and advisory firm based in Morrisville, NC. As the first Hyperledger Certified Service Provider, it has executed over 50+ projects. Chainyard’s Trust Your Supplier enables supplier risk assessment and qualification including ESG-related risks. To learn more, please send me an email or visit our website.

One Woman, Three Companies, Graceful Leadership: Meet Sri Mudunuri

Managing one global business in an ever-changing world is tough enough but managing three?! Now, that requires nearly superhuman leadership skills.  

Meet Sri Mudunuri, the co-founder of IT People Corporation, Chainyard, & Trust Your Supplier, who has been making a name for herself in the technology, staffing, and services industries. With 23 years of experience in the staffing and services industry and her desire to provide an end-to-end solution for her customers, Sri was moved to co-found Trust Your Supplier. Her motivation to become a leader stemmed from two female trailblazers, Indira Gandhi and Jayalalithaa, who played a significant role in shaping the future state of India. From a business perspective, Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s former CEO, and chairperson is Sri’s inspiration. 

Apart from being a co-founder, Sri also plays multiple roles in the organizations she leads. As a CFO, she manages financial activities and ensures the balance sheet lines up. As a President, she is responsible for board meetings, compliance with state and federal laws, and managing certifications from organizations such as WBENC and NMSDC.  In addition to all this, she also manages the staffing side of the business, Workforce Solutions, and keeps the recruitment team on their toes. 

The most significant obstacle Sri has faced in her career is proving herself to get the respect she (and all women) deserve. She noted that women must do more to get the same respect as men with the same title. But Sri’s persistence, ability to not take things personally, and work with trusted partners have helped her succeed. 

Sri’s advice to women who aspire to become leaders is simple: follow your dreams, be decisive, and don’t be afraid to make tough decisions. Sometimes conversations and decisions are tough, but we’re tougher.  

Let’s continue celebrating women’s history month by empowering and inspiring women to be anything and everything they want. 

Breaking Barriers: TYS’s Michelle Armstrong, Global VP of Value Engineering

In 2023, women are defying expectations and shattering glass ceilings 👏 every 👏 single 👏 day. And Michelle Armstrong is a prime example of this. Michelle, who hails from Ireland, is the Global VP of Value Engineering at Trust Your Supplier, a position that requires her to excel in building strong relationships with clients, colleagues, and partners. And excel she most certainly does.

When you meet Michelle, it’s easy to see why she was chosen for this role. Her kind and intuitive nature makes her an expert in understanding and connecting with others. Her ability to know the minute details of all her customers’ schedules is a testament to her excellent organizational skills and attention to detail. It’s no wonder she’s been so successful in building strong relationships with people from all walks of life.

At Trust Your Supplier, Michelle leverages her exemplary change management skillset to analyze issues, devise continuous process improvements, and incorporate business process initiatives to increase efficiency and streamline operations. She excels in building strong relationships with clients and third-party vendors and is highly skilled in translating their business needs into key features for our product development team.

But Michelle’s success is not just about her skills and experience. It’s also about her determination and resilience in the face of adversity. She grew up in a society that expected women to marry farmers and take care of the home. Yet, she refused to be held back by these expectations and chose to follow her own path, which has taken her all over the world. Michelle is a role model for women everywhere, showing that it’s possible to have a successful career while also prioritizing family and personal relationships.

Despite her busy schedule, Michelle has been married to her husband for 30 years and has gracefully raised strong, independent, and humble children while traveling around the globe. She embodies the idea that balancing personal and professional life is possible while excelling in both.

In a world where women are still fighting for equality, Michelle’s success is a shining example of what’s possible. She proves that with determination, resilience, and a willingness to break through societal expectations, women can achieve anything they set their minds to. We can’t wait to see what she’ll accomplish next.

#womeninleadership #breakingbarriers #femaleempowerment #diversityandinclusion #leadership #successstories #careergoals #genderequality #womenwholead #inspiration #supplychain #vendormanagement #businessrelationships

Digital Readiness and Your Degree For Success

Last week was one of the more interesting ones on the social media circuit, e.g., LinkedIn.

To start, a post referencing Dirk Spijkers raised an interesting debate regarding technology and partnerships. According to Spijkers, “at a high level, you must do more than provide great technology,” although great technology is still important. However, beyond the technology, you also “need to become a trusted “expert” partner who understands procurement organisations’ challenges across the enterprise and beyond.”

In my comment to that post, I said I would write an article about “breaking down the functional silos that limit the ability of internal and external stakeholders to work collectively toward a mutually beneficial outcome.” Today’s post is the fulfilment of that promise. I will also discuss the “critical role that a service provider will play in facilitating this collaboration to ensure seamless integration and user adoption.

The “Right” Skills

According to an August 2022 CIPS report, success in breaking down silos is directly linked to an organisation’s effectiveness at “facilitating collaboration to ensure seamless integration and user adoption” of new technologies. In short, and as intuitively user-friendly and effective digital tech – including AI is today, it still requires people with the right skills to work collaboratively toward a mutually beneficial result.

The report’s skills included “communication, internal stakeholder management, influencing, supplier relationship management, and negotiation.”

While the above observations sound entirely reasonable, a Deloitte Global Survey of CPOs indicates that a significant gap between recognition and realisation of skills still exists. The survey’s findings suggest that most CPOs are dissatisfied with the progress and results of their digital transformation strategies.

You may be wondering where I am going with this track. I will now come to the point. No matter how great the technology, digital success is built on the foundation of an organisation’s “digital readiness.” The core component of digital readiness means having the right talent and skills to communicate and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders. The collective and proactive application of these skills breaks down silos and paves the way for digital transformation success.

A Degree For Success

Several studies and corresponding articles indicate that in the five years leading up to the pandemic, many CPOs did not believe their existing teams possessed the necessary skills to deliver their strategic objectives. As I thought about these findings – which were somewhat surprising, a post by Iain Campbell-Mckenna caught my attention.

The post “Procurement’s Conscious Degree Bias” lamented the profession’s continuing practice of screening job candidates using a university or college degree as the proverbial “golden ticket” to get their foot in the door. How important is a candidate’s degree pedigree for choosing the next great hire? To what degree (excuse the pun) is having a diploma a predictor of success? Based on CPOs’ views of their team’s capabilities, prioritising education isn’t working.

There are a couple of great articles about “hiring for skills” by Chris Burt (University Business, July 2022) and Jonathan Finkelstein (Forbes May 2021) regarding the shift from diploma knowledge to “skilled experience.”

The message from a growing number of procurement industry experts and executives is becoming clear. Organisations need a team with the “right skills” to successfully break down the silos to achieve the level of digital readiness that leads to success.

Partner Skill and Experience Is Also Key

So, why am I talking about end-user skills as a solution provider?

Because when you are selecting a digital transformation partner, you have to look beyond the great technology to find the right skills, experience, and expertise to turn the digital promise into a digital success reality.

In a future post, I will talk about how you can assess a service provider’s technology and industry knowledge to optimise your success by leveraging advanced intelligent solutions.

Michelle Armstrong
TYS, Chief Relationship Officer

How does improving supplier relationships through greater supply chain visibility help the battle against inflation/shrinkflation?

Inflation is a hot topic, and of course, outside of my personal wallet, my procurement background means that I usually view inflation/shrinkflation through a supply chain lens – more specifically, relationships and visibility.

For example, Dawn Tiura’s recent article on the introduction of a “grocery conduct code” was worthwhile reading for several reasons.

To start, citing the inflation battle between a large grocery retailer and Frito-Lay explains why price hikes are happening and why the manufacturer pulled some of my favorite snacks from the grocer’s shelves. By the way, some consumers have benefited from the situation because they discovered that alternative boutique brands were tastier and easier on the budget—more savings in their wallets.

That said, according to reports, by “providing clarity for business practices and establishing guiding principles” to “improve industry relationships” across supply chains, this new code will “ultimately benefit consumers as well.”

Of course, the code alone will not improve supply chain visibility resulting in a mutually positive buyer-supplier result. Companies will have to leverage real-time digital capabilities to assess market conditions and potential price hikes to allow them to collaborate on a solution with suppliers before it gets to the point of a loggerhead.

A State of Ready Visibility

The conduct code, or any legislative intervention, can be positive, especially when it “motivates” organizations to examine the state of their extended supply chains. I emphasize the words “extended supply chains.”

Not surprisingly, there is usually a greater familiarity and a much better understanding of the relationship with tier-one suppliers. These relationships can still be challenging, e.g., the retail grocer and Frito-Lay example from Dawn’s article.

What stood out to me from that example was the grocer’s ability to quickly tap into their second and possibly third-tier network to fill their empty shelves with quality product alternatives when their primary supplier stopped shipping their product.

It is clear that the retailer’s ability to engage their extended supply chain partners occurred long before the impasse with their leading supplier came to a head.

Here is the question: If you were to find yourself in the same position as the grocer, how quickly would you be able to identify and engage your next-tier suppliers? What is your state of ready visibility?

Extended Visibility by the Numbers

According to McKinsey, many organizations wouldn’t be able to respond to disruption by inflation or otherwise as quickly as they would need to or would want. Only 21 percent of companies have “visibility beyond their tier-one suppliers,” with only 2 percent having sufficient insight to engage their tier-three suppliers on short notice effectively.

Regardless of whether you are contending with inflation or geopolitical instability, or any other possible or probable supply chain challenge having complete line-of-site visibility throughout all tiers of your extended supply network is a state of readiness you should always want to achieve.

Nick Picone
Trust Your Supplier VP of Advisory Practice

Team Member Spotlight: Director of Product Strategy & Solutions

“Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.” -Kenichi Ohmae 

Our Trust Your Supplier (TYS) platform doesn’t remain static. Data, market conditions, and new regulations are constantly in flux, which means the information our customers need invariably changes on a regular basis. 

With a distinct ability to anticipate and scan the global environment for signals of change, Shyam Adivi serves as our Director of Product Strategy and Solutions. As a strategic leader, Shyam engages with our customers and partners to determine the direction of TYS’s roadmap.  

Shyam’s strategy around features, timings, and offerings is often influenced by external occasions and regulations that affect procurement, supply chain, risk and compliance management, and digital transformation. 

With these insights, Shyam aligns our customers’ needs with a streamlined development process. The results are an agile, innovative platform that provides continuous value and business results for our customers and partners. 

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.

UN Anti-Corruption & Human Rights 2022

As part of our mission, Trust Your Supplier allows organizations to manage a broad spectrum of subject areas to inform compliance with global regulations. We would like to recognize the work being done by the United Nations in the areas of Anti-Corruption and Human Rights. 

Over the next couple of days, the United Nations will launch yearlong campaigns to recognize the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention against Corruption. These issues impact areas such as financial, human potential, societal trust, and our future.  

Read more about the Cost of Corruption and how ‘dirty money’ breaks everything – and what we can do to fight back here: https://undp.medium.com/the-cost-of-corruption-a827306696fb  

Learn more about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here: https://www.standup4humanrights.org/en/declaration.html  

#UnitedAgainstCorruption #IACD2022 #UNCAC20 #STANDUP4HUMANRIGHTS 

TYS Implementation Case Study

Now available is a Trust Your Supplier case study on a telecoms company’s approach to managing change when implementing a new supplier onboarding process. Read how the organization worked with suppliers and internal teams to roll out the Trust Your Supplier platform and the outcomes they are finding as a result.

Read the Case Study