Assess your Suppliers

What proportion of your revenue goes towards paying suppliers? For example, a typical organisation buys/pays $70, add value of $30 and sells at $100. So out of $100 revenue generated, it spends $70, so 70% of revenue. So if you make your organisation sustainable internally, then you can address 30% issues (where you add value) out of 100% issues. So to make your organisation fully sustainable, you will have to address 70% of issues which are being imported into your organisation. That means the organisation needs to extend support to procurement team to meet overall sustainability goals. This can help you move towards 100% sustainability goal.

Imagine you have capacity, capability and time to do sustainability assessment of your 500+ suppliers. You will then collect and store data to carry out assessment. So data related risk is with your organization. By hiring us, you transfer that risk to us. We have a unique process to assess your supplier without transfer of data, so everyone’s risk is significantly minimized.

For you this may be a problem, however this is a day-to-day job for us.

For you this may be a problem, however this is a day-to-day job for us.

We may be able to address far more problems than what we have mentioned below:

1. You may have to create, amend and manage a sustainability system/process if you do it yourself. We will save you time and investment required to create, change and manage sustainability system/process.
2. Imagine you have 500+ suppliers. You will need skilled manpower to manage sustainability assessment yourself. By hiring us, you can focus on your day to day procurement function, while staying away from hiring, training and monitoring your workforce on sustainability assessment. So you save on time, energy as well as cost.
3. Stakeholder may have limited confidence in in-house non-core activities like sustainability assessments. By hiring a 3^rd party sustainability assessor, your stakeholders can be assured that it has done by the 3^rd party expert.
4. You may find it difficult to create the right level (depth and breadth) of assessment and certification for each supplier based on their profile and your supplier relationship strategy. We have various assessment products, which can help meet different assessment levels (depth and breadth) for different supplier relationships.
5. Imagine a large global organization, with suppliers around the globe. Your procurement team may not know all languages to deal with all assessments. We can take care of your limitation on language.
6. Imagine a procurement personnel sitting in the UK and trying to assess supplier in Thailand or India or China. It is difficult for your global procurement team to know and remember all local sustainability risks and challenges to be addressed. We can do it better, as we review local laws, directives, risks, etc on regular basis.
7. Imagine 500+ suppliers, and each has 3 sites. So it would add more difficultly in terms of time commitment required by your team. We can deliver this challenge for you, or you can hire a temporary staff through us.
8. There are so many components of sustainability, so more information adds confusion rather than creating a solution. We can easily design assessment based on
   1. your customer’s requirement,
   2. your values,
   3. your corporate strategy and
   4. your supply chain department vision.
9. You can avoid costs, if we have already have assessed your supplier. This may save you cost as well as time.
10. Speed of assessment depends on your core skills. Most of the procurement team’s core skills do not cover all aspects of sustainability. We can address the expectation on speed and skills gap.
11. Imagine you have capacity, capability and time to do sustainability assessment of your 500+ suppliers. You will then collect and store data to carry out assessment. So data related risk is with your organization. By hiring us, you transfer that risk to us. We have a unique process to assess your supplier without transfer of data, so everyone’s risk is significantly minimized.

1. Social
2. Environmental
3. Ethics
4. Health & Safety
5. Governance
6. Culture, Heritage & Values
7. Technology
8. Legal
9. Economic
10. Procurement
11. Supply Chain
12. Conflict Minerals
13. UK Modern Slavery Act 2015
14. USA Dodd-Frank Act 2010
15. EU Conflict Mineral Regulation 2021

We have defined five levels of assessment based on the depth of assessment. This is to meet organizational needs.

• Bronze – Desktop Verification
• Silver – Desktop + Virtual Verification
• Gold – Extended Desktop + Extended Virtual Verification
• Platinum – Extended Desktop + Extended Virtual + Physical Verification
• Diamond – Extended Desktop + Extended Virtual + Physical + Surprise Virtual Verification + Surprise Physical Verification

Secondly, for Silver, we follow at least 2 data check point methodology. For Gold, Platinum & Diamond levels, we follow 3 data check point methodology, which may go up to 5 data check point methodology. This demonstrates the depth of the process.

Thirdly, for silver, we follow at least 2 criteria from policy, process and performance. For Gold, Platinum & Diamond levels, we check on all three criteria of policy, process and performance, which demonstrate the breadth of the process.

The answer is yes. The cost can be shared between you and your supplier. Our organisation segregation is as follow:

• Micro – up to 10 employees
• Small – 11 to 100 employees
• Medium – 101 to 1000 employees
• Large – 1000+ employees

Yes, it addresses following problems of your supplier:

1. Once assessed, the supplier can share this assessment certificate with other companies (if you and supplier agree). This may enable you to share cost with your supplier.
2. It may let your supplier gain business from the public sector, as most governments have added sustainability criteria into purchasing decisions.
3. Your supplier may be able to become supplier or win business from large companies, as 97% of the procurement organizations surveyed consider sustainability/CSR important for procurement decision. https://www.hec.edu/en/news-room/state-sustainable-procurement-latest-ecovadis/hec-paris-barometer-released
4. Your supplier may have an upper hand in competing with other suppliers to enhance their business. US Dodd-Frank Act, UK Modern Slavery Act and EU Conflict Mineral Regulation are driving companies to assess their supplier’s sustainability credentials.
5. Your supplier may be able to attract more consumers. As per Forbes – 88% of the consumers want companies to help them make a difference. https://www.forbes.com/sites/solitairetownsend/2018/11/21/consumers-want-you-to-help-them-make-a-difference/?sh=63b431896954
6. Your supplier may be able to address the fast growing expectation on environmentally-friendly, ethical and healthy alternatives. BBC – COVID-19 and sustainability. – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55630144
7. You can drive financial outperformance. Oxford University –
   https://arabesque.com/research/From_the_stockholder_to_the_stakeholder_web.pdf
8. You can uplift revenue of 5-20%, reduce cost by 9-16% and increase brand value by 15-30%. World Economic Forum – http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_BeyondSupplyChains_Report2015.pdf