Transforming Procurement with Trusted Supplier Data

Supply assurance is a fundamental requirement for any business, and the procurement organization is on the front line when it comes to anticipating and mitigating supply risk. Over the past few years, ensuring supply continuity has become a critical driver for supply risk management programs across industries. To ensure supply continuity is to actively manage and mitigate supply chain risks that would result in supply bottlenecks, logistics issues, low stocks and unexpected breakdowns. 

Supply chain continuity management is an emerging discipline, and one that most organizations are still trying to tackle. Ensuring supply continuity should be seen as a critical and continuous process with risk assessment, control, and monitoring activities in place throughout the supplier lifecycle. Organizations that lack these defined processes and the supporting systems to plan, measure and mitigate risk, is a direct cause of unforeseen supply risks that negatively impact the bottom line. 

The first step of continuity planning is to have full understanding and visibility to every element that impacts your ability to deliver to your customers. To do this effectively and efficiently, it is critical that organizations have a trusted source of reliable data. Supplier.io’s Atlas equips organizations with a unified solution that delivers trusted supplier data. With a data foundation in place, your organization can finally evolve their supplier data to be a key differentiator and enabler, and equip the procurement function to deliver value. 

Three Key Ways to Help Supply Chain Continuity Planning 

Ensure Supply Base Visibility: Having visibility to the supply base is the first step to assessing and identifying supply continuity risk. Visibility to your supply base allows you to identify your key strategic suppliers. It also makes it possible to estimate the probability of a supply chain disruption or business failure. To achieve this, organizations must ensure that data is unified and autonomously updated across all relevant systems. The increased visibility and enhanced data allows organizations to quickly make informed decisions, which in turn can enhance continuity planning. Atlas delivers continuous, connected intelligence across your entire supplier ecosystem so you have updated insights on every supplier in your vendor master.

Diversify Your Supply Base: A simple way to mitigate supply continuity risk is to reconsider your sourcing process. Relying on a handful of primary suppliers is no longer sufficient. Organizations may want to consider dual sourcing (choosing two suppliers for the same material) or product substitution (replacing products or components with something similar when necessary). With Supplier.io’s Explorer, you can quickly and easily identify alternative suppliers who can meet your requirements and deliver according to your exacting standards. 

Implement a Supplier Data Platform: The success of continuity planning relies on a solid supplier data platform. For many organizations, supplier data remains fragmented across many systems, often with redundancies and inaccuracies. Unreliable data limits the value that procurement can generate for your organization and impacts the health and agility of the supply chain.

When procurement is unable to trust their supplier data, they become vulnerable to fines, missed cost savings opportunities, lost confidence from executives and other stakeholders, and a lack of competitive advantage. Leading organizations are shifting their focus to ensuring that comprehensive supplier data is available to make impactful, data-driven decisions not only as part of the supply continuity planning process, but across the procurement lifecycle.

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