Effective supplier data collection

There's never been a greater demand for transparency and accountability. Concurrently, your team may be struggling with outdated supplier data-tracking methods, such as email and spreadsheets, which can result in higher costs, increased brand risk, and ultimately lower revenue when your business fails to meet the increasingly high standards set by customers and investors alike.

Effective, streamlined supplier data collection – as the first step of a holistic supplier engagement strategy – can help your business accelerate valuable insights, build trust with suppliers, and ultimately thrive in a world with higher transparency standards.

Why the need for accurate supplier data is increasing

Accurate supplier data reporting is becoming increasingly critical for businesses to meet their sustainability and transparency goals. Yet, a 2020 supplier information survey with procurement and supply chain executives found that:

81% are not completely confident in their supplier data.
Nearly half (47%) experience such negative effects on a regular basis.
93% experienced adverse effects of misinformation about their suppliers.
67% of executives have cited financial losses from poor supplier data.

From the supplier’s point-of-view, they are having to coordinate numerous data requests from many of their customers, all with multiple tools and surveys, and often without the convenience of logging into a standard customer data platform.

However, opportunities are emerging for businesses to better collaborate with their suppliers. Businesses that are strengthening supplier relationships, such as the grocers Woolworths, Sobeys, and Walmart, have accelerated growth through the pandemic. In a post-pandemic world, businesses that are proactive in building supply chain efficiencies and stronger relationships with their suppliers are poised to secure their brand impact, growth, and loyalty.

Reach sustainability and social responsibility goals through supplier collaboration

As sustainability becomes an increasingly powerful market force, business leaders are incorporating suppliers into their own efforts to embrace change and integrate sustainable principles throughout their culture. Suppliers are key to social responsibility initiatives because they have the sourcing, materials, and emissions data that businesses must incorporate into their own reporting. As a result, business leaders are increasingly understanding how supplier collaboration is key to reaching their goals.

CEOs are recognizing greater accountability to not only shareholders, but stakeholders like suppliers.
The VP of Sustainability is galvanized by how corporate boards are recognizing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) as the way to do business.
The VP of Procurement is not seeing sustainability as secondary to cost, but that sustainability data is commercial data.
The VP of Own Brands is not seeing suppliers as external parties to be negotiated with, but suppliers as a critical part of their team.

Short-term solution:
How to collect data from suppliers in 12 weeks

The first step towards a successful supply chain data collection exercise is to align communications and streamline your approach to data collection in your supply chain management practices.

Supplier engagement software

Supply Pilot platform provides a branded supplier portal and supporting engagement tools to maintain an accurate supplier contact base, support your suppliers via an accessible knowledge base, and streamline communications as the basis for alignment.

Supplier engagement pillar page - Homepage

Supply chain tools to collect data

With the Supply Pilot platform, your team can collect any type of data at supplier, site, product, component or substance level. It provides brands with flexible forms to collect data from suppliers and reporting tools specifically tailored to your business’ requirements.

In a fixed-scope, 12-week data collection exercise, your team can leverage the platform to meet a specific supplier data collection requirement. Supply Pilot works with your team to refine form questions and identify key flags or data validation requirements.

Supplier data collection service

Supply Pilot’s data-driven, human-centric approach allows brands to unlock the valuable data and expertise within the long-tail of suppliers: rather than focusing on only your business’ largest suppliers and the top 20% of spend.

We help you avoid reporting by extrapolation by achieving at least 80% survey completion rates by blending technology, like chasing automation techniques, and people, like reaching out to suppliers to help them through the journey of providing you with the data.

Scope 3 use case page outlined_Supplier scorecards - Scope 3

Supply chain sustainability reporting

A clean data set – given back to your team in dashboard form – can be collected within weeks, as opposed to months or years. It can be used to benchmark where your suppliers are today as part of long-term initiatives to reduce emissions, increase sustainable materials, or ensure ethical sourcing.

Ongoing data collections are automated through the Supply Pilot Platform where the benchmarked data is embedded and woven into supplier scorecards that can be accessed 24/7.

Long-term solution:
Engage and motivate suppliers to reach your sustainability goals

Creating and maintaining change requires more than just data collection. Your business must also communicate your overarching strategy and help suppliers as key stakeholders of those initiatives to understand how they can contribute in the journey towards a more ethical and sustainable future. Supply Pilot helps with both the first tactical requirement and the longer, strategic requirement.

Within a long-term approach, the platform can align and activate suppliers by communicating what your strategy is and why their role matters. In drawing a parallel between supplier and employee engagement, aligning workers with the larger organization’s strategy can bring greater value in terms of productivity and profitability.

Disengaged employees cost organizations around $450-550 billion each year, according to a study on workplace engagement in the U.S.
Business or work units that scored the highest on employee engagement showed 21% higher levels of profitability than units in the lowest quartile, according to Gallup.

The platform can benchmark supplier data within multiple reporting requirements, and within the context of collecting the same data annually. The platform can scale supplier scorecards by allowing more team members to access performance review dashboards. Finally, to help suppliers improve products and performance, enable supplier development activities, in tandem with experts, to help your business educate suppliers on best industry practices. With the platform, your team can empower suppliers with data access and transparency to ultimately improve performance in alignment with social responsibility goals.

Using supplier collaboration to secure impact, growth, and loyalty

The future is dynamic and volatile. Businesses that focus on driving changes by working towards socially responsible goals are also securing their brand’s competitive position by improving their products and increasing loyalty. Working as one team with suppliers to collect and improve data can ultimately strengthen your business’ growth to:

Increase revenue: Aligning suppliers as part of your strategy can increase efficiency and productivity.
Reduce brand risk: Collecting data from suppliers at a pace and scale can demonstrate accountability and traceability.
Lower costs: Effectively holding suppliers accountable to high standards and helping them improve can increase product quality at reduced cost.