GEP Zeroes In On eProcurement Risk

Digital procurement software firm GEP is targeting risk associated with B2B trade with a new partnership.

The company revealed this week that it is partnering with Global Risk Management Solutions (GRMS) to integrate GRMS’ supplier risk management capabilities within the GEP procurement platform. The integration will focus on GEP’s SMART procurement offering.

“Our partnership with GRMS is helping our clients get the kind of deep data required for rapid decision-making at complex global organizations,” stated GEP Global Vice President of Software Sales Suresh Visvanathan. “They can now, at the click of a button, receive a full risk profile from any vendor and have that information at their fingertips in the SMART by GEP system.”

According to GRMS President Gerard Smith, supplier management is critical to corporate success.

“Knowing your supplier is a top corporate objective,” he said in another statement. “By partnering with GEP, GRMS’ services provide a world-class supply chain risk solution to our joint clients.”

GRMS’ collaboration with GEP follows an earlier partnership with procurement technology firm Zycus, announced in September. Smith, along with Zycus VP for Corporate Development Richard Waugh, told PYMNTS in an interview that an overarching theme in modern procurement is “trust but verify.”

Supplier risk can be plagued by manual and paper processes, however. B2B trade company Tradeshift rolled out a solution last year to tackle that issue, with the company noting that “finance and procurement teams have long been plagued by risk due to limited visibility into supplier compliance and external risk factors.”

Old, inaccurate data, the company noted, which needs to be manually managed and updated, can lead to a host of problems when it comes to supplier management, like a corporation falling out of compliance with global regulations.