thinking about it as holistically as they could at this stage. It’ s not a new concept, but it’ s becoming more prevalent and more accessible to companies.”
Understanding the critical supplier base Given that level of volatility, Charlie’ s advice to procurement and supply chain leaders starts with a basic but often overlooked step:“ Organisations need to understand who their most critical suppliers are.“ Across our customer base, there are companies that have a really good understanding of who their critical suppliers are, and others that have a reasonable understanding. But there’ s also a subset of suppliers who, if something happened to them, it would be a problem – maybe not critical – but the impact of a disruption would be distracting. Step one is figuring out your universe of suppliers that matter; step two is developing a strategy for how you want to assess and monitor them.”
That strategy, he adds, should not default to a single approach applied across the supplier base. High-risk, deliverable-based projects may warrant quarterly review, while for most suppliers an annual assessment represents best practice.
CREDIT: GETTY procurementmag. com 75