PROCUREMENT STRATEGY
Alicia Heavisides, Global Product Strategy Lead, Value Chain Solutions at Dun & Bradstreet, explains that the challenge for procurement is not just securing the data itself, but standardising how it’ s collected, validated and shared across systems from day one.
“ Balancing speed with thorough compliance and security comes down to shifting controls earlier in the process and standardising how they’ re applied,” explains Alicia.
She adds:“ Too often, organisations treat onboarding as a linear workflow, collecting data first, assessing risk later, which creates delays or forces teams to shortcut checks under time pressure. The most effective approach is to embed risk and compliance into the onboarding flow itself.”
That means structuring data captured so that validation, screening and risk scoring happen in near realtime. Applying a tiered model where higher-risk suppliers trigger deeper due diligence while low-risk suppliers move quickly through the process.
“ In practice, it’ s about automating the repeatable, such as data validation and regulatory checks, while focusing human expertise on exceptions and high-risk cases,” continues Alicia.
“ This allows organisations to move at speed without compromising security, because control isn’ t an additional step, it’ s built into how onboarding works from the outset.”
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