Recently, we talked about the importance of diverse spend in measuring the impact of supplier diversity. Understanding your supplier engagement and utilization numbers is mission-critical for a successful inclusive procurement strategy. As supplier diversity continues to evolve in an economically volatile, post-pandemic landscape, a strategic trend has emerged that has brought about significant change. Over the past three years, there has been a major corporate focus on Environmental, Social and Governance principles, or ESG. ESG is a set of investment principles that focus on more than just a company’s sales, revenues, and indicators like market share, by folding in such considerations as carbon footprint, human capital, civic engagement, climate change, social justice, philanthropic commitment and environmental sustainability. It is now mandatory for companies to do more than produce profits.
With Wall Street ever more reliant on ESG-oriented metrics, supplier diversity is in a state of flux, as the organizational structure and the reporting chain of command for the DEI and ESG elements of the business are changing. Often, supplier diversity – traditionally a standalone element or housed within the DEI organization – now reports to an ESG department head, which has shifted the priorities but not the overall focus or the essential nature of the work. Companies subject to governmental regulations – as well as those who have government contracts – are required to report their performance in utilizing small and diverse businesses as Joint Venture partners and subcontractors. How they collect, track, analyze and report those numbers, however, is a different conversation altogether. Utilizing sophisticated supplier management and spend tracking tools like the ones in Certifiably Diverse can make all the difference. How so, you ask?
It is stunning to consider the number of global, multi-national corporations that do not have a standard application, across the business, for spend tracking and analysis. Many of us still utilize manual lists, printouts and spreadsheets to compile results. Not only is this cumbersome and unnecessarily time-consuming, but the potential for human error is huge. Just consider the impact of one comma, typo or error on the statistical accuracy of a company’s reporting. It is not uncommon for the numbers on the master spreadsheet not to match the sum of the departmental inputs from across the business, requiring the investment of valuable time trying to locate the error in the numbers. Certifiably Diverse provides a simple, easy-to-use interface that can rectify the reporting accuracy challenge once and for all by fully automating the process.
One of the strengths of the software is the customizable dashboard views and reports that are available to an enterprise. If you have not seen a demonstration of CD’s next-level capabilities, I strongly encourage you to visit certifiablydiverse.com and contact the experts for a demo. In addition to a comprehensive set of tools for registering, engaging, documenting, searching for and inviting suppliers to participate, you can review your spend in an almost unlimited number of ways. By supplier, by category, by certification type, by industry, by NAICS code, by status, Prime or Sub…the number of fields and criteria you can analyze is practically limitless. When it is time for monthly, quarterly or annual reporting, the info you need is available with one click.
Supplier Diversity professionals are also accustomed to the occasional summons to the C-Suite, to once again present the business case for supplier diversity at budget time or year’s end. CD makes your preparation to tell a compelling story, even on a moment’s notice, fast and easy. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to predict the future of your diversity procurement efforts? All you had to do was ask. Certifiably Diverse is an Amazon Web Services Advanced Tier Partner, which means you have access to sophisticated data analysis and reporting capabilities made possible by the Amazon QuickSight Business Intelligence platform. Enterprises inside the CD Universe can now utilize their data from past periods of time to create a forecast of future performance, based on historic trends and parameters you determine.
The advantage this provides to the strategic leader is huge, as you can analyze the direction of your program and make adjustments now that will change the results you can expect down the road. If your current growth trend is not going to hit your target for the upcoming year, how great is it to be able to predict that trajectory in advance and make course corrections? This set of tools is truly a market advantage for the CD enterprise…you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Why continue to aggregate data for departments and divisions from spreadsheets or different software applications? CD’s cloud-based software suite is secure, fully functional and available to all of your users across the enterprise. Everyone is singing from the same sheet of music which makes your operation more agile, more accurate and more nimble in responding to market trends and economic factors. Data is available by project, time period, Prime supplier and category, real-time and on-demand. What has been a complex, time-consuming nightmare is streamlined and simplified in the intuitive world of Certifiably Diverse.
Are you ready to impress your C-Suite with the level of sophistication your supplier diversity effort exemplifies, and the myriad of data points CD makes available? Make your life easier while improving the overall performance of your outreach, both now and in the future, by joining the growing number of enterprise clients who are embracing the CD movement. Manage your spend data and performance metrics like never before with the last suite of software you will ever need for managing suppliers. Are you Certifiably Diverse?
