Ardent Partners and Determine, the Indiana-based source-to-settle and contract lifecycle management solution provider, recently teamed up to produce one of Ardent’s newest reports, Better Together: Linking CLM with SIM to Improve Third-Party Risk Management (click to download). If you’re a procurement leader or practitioner and you grapple with the liabilities and risks associated with supplier contracts and information, then this report is for you. Get your hands on it right here.
It’s a Mad, Mad World
Turn on the television, thumb through a newspaper, or browse the internet, and one will see that risks and compliance challenges are everywhere, impacting enterprises across all industries. Beyond the traditional financial and operational risks that business leaders must manage lies a relatively new set of risks that increasingly fall to procurement and supply management teams to manage, mitigate, and avoid. Conflict, environmental disasters, infectious diseases, human trafficking/modern slavery, political uncertainty, and security concerns are no longer the sole responsibility of a government or host nation. Other geopolitical risks, like cybercrime, migration, and terrorism, are increasingly becoming supply risks that cannot be overlooked by business leaders. In fact, any enterprise whose digital or physical supply chain originates in and extends through a troubled country or region is put at risk by these and other supply risks. There are also the brand or reputational risks associated with being on the “wrong side” of an issue, like labor abuses or unsafe working conditions, which could result in the loss of brand reputation, customers, and market share, and could manifest in other embarrassing and costly ways like civil litigation.
Shining Light on Dark Practices
With so many forms of risk residing across global supply chains, and with today’s supply chains extending well beyond first-tier suppliers to third-parties (and in some cases, like the garment industry, even further), gaining visibility into suppliers, third-parties, and the associated risks becomes paramount. It is also important from a compliance standpoint, since failing to comply with internal policies, and in some cases, governmental regulations, creates further liabilities. These risks and liabilities cannot be managed (or avoided) if they continue to grow in the dark, like toxic mushrooms. They must be illuminated before they can be treated. Fortunately for Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) and procurement teams, there are a couple of advanced, yet user-friendly business tools that can help them gain visibility into (and ultimately control over) supply, supplier, and third-party risks, as well as achieve and maintain internal and external compliance.
SIM and CLM Solutions: Better Together
Chief Procurement Officers and procurement teams that wield the power of Supplier Information Management (SIM) and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) to gain visibility into suppliers and operations, manage or avoid the associated risks, and achieve and maintain compliance can enhance their efforts by linking the two processes and solutions. SIM and CLM can be powerful solutions in and of themselves, particularly for organizations that suddenly face criteria for certain governmental regulations, like the Conflict Minerals Provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act or the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015, and need to quickly aggregate, parse, and analyze large volumes of information (paper-based and/or digital) in order to assess and ultimately achieve compliance. Taken together, SIM and CLM solutions can serve as force multipliers for small teams that are suddenly soaked in multiple streams of procurement and supplier data.
Ardent Partner’s newest report, Better Together: Linking CLM with SIM to Improve Third-Party Risk Management, goes much further in depth on how each solution, separately and together, can provide CPOs and their teams with the tools they need to gain the visibility they need into their supply base, their contracts, and the associated risks. Download this report today, sponsored by Determine, by clicking here.
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