Organizations today and in the future will have to gain more visibility into their supplier information. Data is coming from everywhere – spend, supplier contracts, and other third-party information – and it can overwhelm procurement departments. Part of building a third party risk management strategy (TPRM) includes gaining visibility into where the risk is coming from, and building a strategy to help mitigate it.
Approaching supplier relationships the same way as customer relationships is the easiest path to building trust and long-term shared value. Constant communication, a focus on process automation and transparency are all key to getting your supplier relationships to a place where they can do your organization the most good. And vice versa. Continue Reading
It is consistently amazing how the conversation about a broad topic like risk is dependent on the individuals involved, and more often than not will generally be focused on specific aspects like contract management, for instance.
In fact, digging deeper into the subject with colleagues and customers, it’s surprising that a majority of what’s been written on risk in a corporate setting narrowly focuses on digital security and compliance in the context of governance, risk and compliance (GRC).
But, as a source-to-pay organization, the question has to be “What about third-party exposure?”
By Tom Rogers. A version of this blog was published on Vendor Centric.
Every company knows that auditing third-party financial statements is an important piece of their due diligence. Financial statements are an endlessly valuable fact finding resource. After all, numbers don’t lie. In many instances, however, reviewers are uncertain what exactly it is they’re looking for. Getting ready to conduct an audit? Here’s a guide to the primary components of an audited financial statement as well as four red flags to watch for.
This blog originally appeared on Strategic Sourceror.
In June, it was reported that LOT Polish Airlines, the main airline of Poland, paid 2.5 million PLN (US$685,000) to scammers last year that sent a fraudulent invoice for a monthly aircraft payment. It appears that the invoice also had amended payment details which enabled the transaction. LOT paid the amount to a Cyprus bank account and it was immediately transferred to an account in Asia. They were able to recover about 30% of it, costing them $500,000. Continue Reading
Executives in all functions and lines of business are driven to create shareholder value, a challenge that increasingly requires them to take calculated risks that often involve the supply chain. From a shareholder’s perspective, nothing destroys the perceived value of an investment faster than negative press, even when it is the unintended result of ‘pushing boundaries’. In some cases, the criticism may not even be due to a company’s own actions, but rather those of their suppliers (or suppliers’ suppliers).
Supplier diversity was initially promoted as corporate stewardship for the disenfranchised. Today, it’s considered a competitive advantage. Changing work demographics and emerging markets compel businesses to invest in supplier diversity programs. Yet, most organizations are unable to measure and report on their efforts.
Organizations are starting to adopt a new attitude when it comes to their suppliers – treat them like customers. This seems basic, but the truth is, supplier management is evolving fast; it is critical not only to catch up but to get ahead of the curve.
In an environment of increased regulations and demand for compliance, organizations are placing their suppliers under increasing scrutiny. Yet, managing supplier information is often near impossible given the the inability of organizations to easily tie supplier information to procure to pay (not to mention contracts and enterprise data as a whole).
Interesting snippet from a Gallup article (undated) that I read recently: [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”#SupplierManagement”]Gallup finds that customers increasingly expect suppliers to possess the deepest and timeliest information on their most important business issues. These include the economics of customers’ businesses, emerging challenges within customers’ industries and trends within a supplier’s customer portfolio[/inlinetweet]. What’s interesting is that they refer to supplier/customer dynamics as “partnerships” instead of just “relationships.” Optimizing those partnerships requires integrated supplier management and contract management.
Considering the challenges facing modern business, CLM continues to increase in importance across the wider enterprise. Contract management technology may very well be the unsung hero of the procurement technology landscape. It has been steadily improving for two decades, from straight document storage, to metadata and redlining, to today’s full enterprise contract lifecycle management (CLM) solutions. […]
The challenges and solutions of effective TPRM. Organizations today and in the future will have to gain more visibility into their supplier information. Data is coming from everywhere – spend, supplier contracts, and other third-party information – and it can overwhelm procurement departments. Part of building a third party risk management strategy (TPRM) includes gaining […]
Optimizing source-to-contract means focusing on wider business needs. In Part 1 of this two-part blog we addressed the initial approach of S2C. Our viewpoint is, that while S2C is often focused on procurement as the primary users of the technology, decisions around adopting the components — such as sourcing, contract management and supplier management — […]
To be effective at source-to-contract (S2C), procurement organizations must be able to properly align data and processes with automation. Often referred to as upstream procurement, “source-to-contract” defines the approaches for how to connect the efforts related to spend analysis, sourcing, contract management and supplier management. At its most basic, these processes encompass all the pre-requisites […]
