Enterprise Social Networking Can Help Crack The Code On Supplier Risk Management

Forrester conducted 56 in-person and phone interviews with sourcing and vendor management executives to better understand how they are currently using supplier risk data from third-party sources. The results? Quality, cost, and availability concerns were all too common — to the point that most executives will not rely on this information as the single source of truth. It turns out that executives are primarily relying on good old-fashioned networking via industry groups to cut through the noise around supplier risk. The big challenge? While a personal approach can be highly effective it does not scale very well. This is where supplier risk and performance software can help. Next-generation solutions are applying the social networking paradigm to supplier management. Through virtual communities of stakeholders, both internal and external to a company, executives can share common supplier data and insights on risk-related events. And the software vendors that sell supplier management solutions are stepping up to build these capabilities into the tools.