Dear SAP Community,
Happy New Year and welcome to 2023. During the month of January, our Community Spotlight will be focused on Supplier Management, Supplier Risk and how Sustainability is woven throughout.
Given that this topic is pretty broad, let’s start with some definitions.
“Supplier Management” is an umbrella term that covers the supplier lifecycle processes as well as supplier risk management. The topics are interdependent in that, as you ask and learn information about the supplier, it influences the other lifecycle and risk processes. “
3rd Party Risk Management”, on the other hand, is about control, regulatory compliance, brand management, and how best to address both anticipated events and unanticipated surprises as expeditiously as possible.
Because companies have unique stakeholder requirements, each company may have its own definition of
“Sustainability”. But regardless of definition, Sustainability usually must be driven into business processes in order to meet organizational Sustainability commitments. When it comes to Supplier and Risk Management, this means finding, vetting, onboarding, and maintaining suppliers that are in alignment with your sustainability goals.
Throughout the month of January, we’ll dive into various aspects of Sustainable Supplier and Risk Management.(To see an intro video by Matt Montgomery, Solution Manager for Supplier & Risk Management, please click
here.)
Here’s a glimpse of what you can look forward to this month:
Navigating the Supplier Management Process
In this blog post, we will cover supplier onboarding, supplier qualification, supplier performance evaluation, “off cycle” collaboration with suppliers, risk monitoring, risk assessments, risk findings/event collaboration, and supplier off-boarding. We will also weave in some best practices we have observed from customers globally.
Incorporating Diversity into Supplier Management
In this post, we’ll talk about what kind of Supplier Diversity goals companies have around the world, and then look at every aspect of Supplier Management through the Supplier Diversity lens. And of course we’ll talk about the technology that companies are using to help them achieve their Supplier Diversity goals.
Managing Your Services & External Workforce Suppliers
While Product and Services companies have some similar supplier management components, we’ll dive into a few examples of how services companies may need additional checks and balances to measure against their delivery.
Supplier Risk
In this post, we’ll go deeper into the logic of risk monitoring and the need to ensure that a score is well understood, trusted by the customer, and most importantly relevant for the situation. Monitoring 1 supplier isn’t hard, 10 isn’t too much worse, but as we look at 100 to 100K suppliers (or more!), this topic forces the need for prioritization.
Human Rights Due Diligence in the Supply Chain
While Human Rights Due Diligence (or HRDD) is not a new topic, the number of HRDD regulations coming out, as well as the severity of the consequences for non-compliance, is increasing.
In addition to the upcoming blog posts, we will release a Community Challenge about how to best calculate risk exposure and report on impact / recommended outcomes. With so many variables that can be poured into the formula, we can’t wait to hear your ideas about the industry-specific best practice risk calculations that can be leveraged. Finally, be sure to bring your questions to the YouTube Livestream at the end of the month.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy January. We look forward to spending the month with you!
Warm Regards,
Matt Montgomery - Global Director of Solution Management, Supplier & Risk Management
Kristen Hanel - Global Director of Solution Management, Sustainability