Organizations Struggling With Vendor Risk Mitigation

A new report from Dun & Bradstreet finds that businesses see supplier risk mitigation as a top challenge in their supply chain management operations.

According to recent reports in Supply Chain Dive, a D&B survey of 1,100 financial risk managers found that most agree their own efforts to manage supplier viability create risk for their own organizations. These professionals cite a lack of centralized data, a lack of data integration and siloes throughout the enterprise as top barriers.

“Because risk management is becoming less about programmatically addressing the past and more about dynamically interpreting the future, modern finance leaders must embrace the knowledge that they don’t have the data, or [they haven’t] analyzed it yet, and the possibilities that may impact their businesses,” said the report’s author, Eric Dowdell.

Researchers pointed to access for innovative tools as possible ways to improve supply chain and supplier risk management. In-house analytics and third-party data are some tools already in use by risk management professionals – yet, according to Dun & Bradstreet, 60 percent of the data represented in the report exists in siloes.

Only one-fifth of respondents said their companies are “advanced” in their use of modern risk mitigation tools like blockchain, machine learning and artificial intelligence, reports said. According to D&B, these tools could help businesses analyze more sophisticated, complex and large data sets.

Unfortunately, researchers concluded, businesses are more likely to adopt blockchain and machine learning in areas to focus on revenue and profit boosts, instead of implementing the solutions in their risk mitigation strategies.

In a blog post from Dun & Bradstreet, Abigail Lutte, senior content manager, noted that the report makes clear that “finance teams are still in the beginning stages of implementing emerging technologies, tools and data sources to manage risk.”

Earlier this year, D&B researchers released another report on procurement compliance, finding that risk mitigation remains a key priority for procurement professionals.