“There’s no point in doing supplier risk management just because it’s the best practice. Because if you try and do that without being ready, it could actually destroy the value which procurement offers to the business.”
In an increasingly global business environment, there is a growing necessity to focus on Supplier Risk Management. The impact of reputational risks, data security breaches and issues within the supply chain have evolved over the course of 2020 in particular.
In episode 24 of Talent Talks, Martin Smith is joined by Oliver Mountain and Avnish Patel, whose decades of experience with Revive Consulting and Air Products respectively have provided key insights into how you can increase the resilience of your supply chain, and formulate a plan to mitigate supplier risk before it materialises. Oliver and Avnish share some of the trends in SRM to which the industry has had to react, and the impact that social media has had on the importance of reputational risk.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- The current impact of Supplier Risk Management
- Trends in SRM
- Effects of globalisation on risk
- Increasing cases of ransomware and data security breaches
- Mitigating reputational risk
- Developing supply chain resilience
- The evolution of analytics in inventory management
Links & references:
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsmith2009/
- Oliver Mountain, Director of Revive Consulting https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivermountainprocurement/
- Avnish Patel, Head of Procurement at Air Products https://www.linkedin.com/in/avnish-patel-fcips-mba-b-e-456b7433/
Episode Highlights:
“For the next 12 months, there will be quite a focus on the regulatory horizon, particularly around financial services where the European Banking Authority are reviewing their detailed guidance on outsourcing and third party risk management as well. So there will be a real push in terms of regulatory activity that’s put pressure on the risk management piece as well.” – Oliver Mountain
“In today’s world, social media is everywhere. So it’s really important that you’re able to protect your brand image, because it just takes hours for information to flow from one part of the world to another. If you’re not careful, in terms of ensuring that your supply chain is free from conflict of minerals and modern slavery, it could cause a lot of damage to your business, to the extent that it could actually wipe you out.” – Avnish Patel
“There’s no point in doing supplier risk management just because it’s the best practice. Because if you try and do that without being ready, it could actually destroy the value which procurement offers to the business.” – Avnish Patel
“Some of the recent research from my clients shows that they’re seeing this as an opportunity to avoid cost to the business. So it’s that cost avoidance to alleviate the damage limitation that’s really quite important to businesses now.” – Oliver Mountain
“I think it’s really interesting that you’re almost anticipating that risk management at the start, you’re not going into crisis management mode, you’re trying to have that proactive decision making at the front end of it, rather than just reacting and saying ‘We need to sort this’.” – Martin Smith
“Your supplier could face legal risks from regulators, and the biggest impact is the reputational risk, and what is that damage in terms of what value does that equate to.” – Oliver Mountain
“I think a lot of companies are thinking about how you can have your supplier closer to where you are, rather than having your supply chain so stretched.” – Avnish Patel
“Before COVID, our sparing strategy would have been “Let’s not stock too many spares because they’re expensive”. Now, since we’ve seen the impact of what COVID has created, we are likely to stock more spares on site, because if something has gone wrong with our air separation plant, we cannot be in a situation where we go out to the market and try and buy a spare and find out that the supplier is closed.” – Avnish Patel
“I think the seat is at the table. The litmus test for me now is whether then there’ll be the investment: in people, in the analytics, in technology.” – Martin Smith
