Bad news is good news for vendor vetting

RudiKruger.jpgNews travels fast in this digital age and while it may be better for stress management to avoid being bombarded with an influx of negative news, in the case of supply chain, forewarned is forearmed. Keeping abreast of news about your suppliers enables you to mitigate risk.

Staying up-to-date with what is being reported about past, current and potential vendors can help you to understand potential risks earlier and gives you enough time to strategise before it turns into a crisis, Rudi Kruger, General Manager: Data Services, LexisNexis South Africa, told SmartProcurement.

“Supply chain officers must have a clear, consistent monitoring strategy to uncover threats before they become a problem, enabling them to plan effectively. It is their responsibility to vet existing and future vendors, and to keep track of the headlines to identify potential risks associated with the company’s chosen suppliers”, said Kruger.

In addition to alerting you so that you can mitigate risk, news tracking is important as it enables you to keep pace with changes from regulatory bodies.

However, it must be understood that the level of monitoring required is not practical with a do-it-yourself approach, especially if you are relying on the world wide web.

“By making use of the world wide web, which is largely unregulated, to keep track of news, you run the risk of missing out on pertinent information. Additionally, it requires a lot of manpower to manually sift through the news to determine the level of risk”, said Kruger.

To assist in simplifying this tedious task, Kruger advises making use of third-party data to enhance research instead of relying on the world wide web. “Monitoring tools that have alert functionality and strong databases on verified content are a lot more reliable and efficient for mitigating financial and reputational risk.”

A monitoring tool that is extremely useful in news tracking is Lexis ® Diligence, an easy-to-use web-based system from LexisNexis Data Services. This solution can uncover negative news quickly from over 23 000 news sources, going back up to 35 years. Used in conjunction with Lexis ® ProcureCheck, supply chain officers can equip themselves with valuable knowledge during the decision-making process.

For more information on Lexis ® Diligence, visit https://www.lexisnexis.co.za/lexisdiligence.

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