SAN DIEGO, May 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Determining how to
collect compliance and sustainability data from suppliers has been
an on-going challenge for brands and retailers for many years. With
an ever-changing business environment and an expanding list of
global regulations, companies face pressure on numerous fronts.
Data collection tools that are cost-effective and efficient can
help minimize risk and confusion.
Matt Thorn is the Chief
Operating Officer and founding partner of Source Intelligence, a
leading provider of data collection for Supply Chain Compliance and
Sustainability Information. He leads the company's global
operations and platform development team and is the driving force
behind the Source Intelligence (SI) technology platform, a unique
solution associated with providing supply chain transparency
services for some of the world's most recognizable brand names.
Many are saying 2015 is the "Year of Hyper-Transparency." How
can companies embrace the trend and understand the impact to their
business?
Hyper-transparency starts with open dialogue and communication.
It involves suppliers, data collection, and risk mitigation.
While brands and Fortune 500 companies develop and implement
their compliance and corporate social responsibility initiatives,
suppliers beyond tier 1 are scrambling to provide the required
data. In order to address the backlog of requests, many suppliers
are building their own internal teams. Companies at the early
stages of the supply chain need information and tools to meet
environmental and social compliance requirements.
We see this imbalance as an opportunity to help companies by
providing an easier way to collect data, while recognizing that
there needs to be a flexible standard that is free or nearly free
for every company to utilize.
What does Hyper Transparency mean to you?
It means that every actor in the supply chain, along with the
ultimate consumer of the result of the supply chain has access to
all the information they need to make an informed decision. Whether
it's to drive out harmful substances, stamp out corruption and
other human rights abuses or to prevent adverse effects to the
environment, having collective access to this data helps all of us
make the right choices about products we use every day.
Many companies have launched responsible sourcing programs
with their supply chain partners. What is the biggest challenge
faced with regard to supply chain visibility?
The biggest challenge is in finding tools that automate and
streamline the process of collecting and analyzing data from the
supply chain. This will remain a challenge unless we can scale down
to manageable and even free tools. Unfortunately, there are so many
tools out there that are specialized, it's tough for a supplier who
is just learning about collecting compliance data to know which
ones to use or worse, having to use many tools specific to each
brand or retailer.
It is true that in order to minimize and manage supply chains
risks, it's imperative to have that level of visibility but it's
also important to see all the disparate pieces and be able to put
them together.
Providing a way for companies to look at every level of their
supply chain and make informed decisions with the data they find is
critical. Brands need to work together to find low cost or free
tools that reach the lower levels of the supply chain in order to
facilitate transparency at the regulatory, investor, and consumer
levels.
With so many standards and tools available for collecting and
analyzing compliance and sustainability data, how does a company
know which one will work best with their supply chain?
Early on, we realized trying to collect and analyze this data is
no easy task. There isn't one industry standard that companies can
follow to collect all of the data needed. All of the standards in
existence tend to be industry aligned or a NGO sponsored specific
tool. Most companies use a combination of standards and tools, as
well as internally developed solutions in order to collect the
specific data needed.
Realizing this complexity drove my company to create a platform
to simplify data collection and analysis. We did this with the
understanding that it had to be simple enough for companies at the
beginning of the supply chain to use and meet all regulatory and
brand level requirements.
Can you share some examples of standards or tools that you
believe have helped with data collection?
A perfect example is the great work the EICC-GeSI team did with
the conflict minerals template. It is the de-facto standard working
across multiple industries, albeit very specific to conflict
minerals – tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold.
Those of us in software development and training need to work
with the various industries to expand our work on tools that are
even more flexible and to make sharing this data up and down the
supply chain easier.
I've had this thought that there needs to be a platform that
operates on sharing data the way Facebook does but focuses
specifically on connecting suppliers and brands. The challenge is
to make the platform generic enough and available to everyone. It
needs to be cost effective and useful. For the vast majority of
users, it needs to be free.
Why is it important to put the tools into the hands of every
supplier and how important is human interaction in data
collection?
The tools by themselves won't train a compliance team or enable
a supplier to provide the required information. Awareness,
education, and guidance is needed. Our business is a bit different
from most compliance solution providers. We leverage the human
component as solution providers not just the technology.
The goal is to put the technology into the hands of every layer
of the supply chain, down to the smallest supplier and provide a
human touch. There needs to be a person on the other end of a phone
call to answer the hard questions when suppliers don't understand
the steps in data collection. The best way is to provide more than
a simple webpage, but also a knowledgebase, training, and customer
service wrapped in technology.
With so much information being collected is there value in
leveraging the data beyond compliance and sustainability
programs?
So much more value!
If you think about the amount of data being created and stored
in various systems around the globe, it's an enormous amount of
decision making power.
At some point in the near future, that large store of compliance
and sustainability data needs to be turned into usable analytics
that enables industries across the globe to make better decisions.
The ability to predict risk and highlight potential problems from
compliance and sustainability data will provide a new paradigm for
managing supply chains and sourcing.
These data stores will enable companies to do a comprehensive
risk assessment by pulling from multiple sources and combining the
data in ways that create multidimensional views of what is
happening in real time. Imagine the possibilities locked away in
data vaults today.
These data vaults will provide a big opportunity in the
Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) arena to tie together risk
management, supply chains visibility, and technology.
What steps would you recommend to companies who are focusing
on building transparency throughout their supply chain?
Determine what matters most to your company and how you can
begin to track and measure what is material.
Identify where in the supply chain there are potential risks and
build a plan that will mitigate them should the risks occur in the
future.
Go beyond tier 1 suppliers, they generally aren't where you will
find the risks. Go deeper into the supply chain. Look for hands off
and subcontractors that might need guidance and become familiar
with their sourcing, work force, and suppliers.
Transparency needs to be a repeatable process and structure at
every level of the supply chain with access to tools, support, and
data.
With so much pressure on companies to meet compliance and to go
above and beyond to protect and enhance brand value, companies need
to look at the tools they use to collect compliance and
sustainability data and simplify the process for the companies in
their supply chain. Data is valuable. Finding multiple ways to use
the data that is collected helps to minimize its cost in the long
run and could provide valuable intelligence to an organization.
To read the full piece, go to
http://insights.cermacademy.com/category/csrrisk-kelly-eisenhardt/
by Kelly Eisenhardt, Managing
Director at BlueCircle Advisors, LLC
Featuring: Matt Thorn, Chief
Operating Officer of Source Intelligence
Lina Ramos, Chief Business Officer
lramos@sourceintelligence.com
(760) 232-4087 tel | (858) 724-1961 fax
www.sourceintelligence.com
1921 Palomar Oaks Way, Ste. 205
Carlsbad, CA 92008 USA
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SOURCE Source Intelligence