In the first two posts in this series (click here for Part 1 and Part 2), I covered the history and context behind D&B’s Supplier Risk Management toolset. This solution set includes supply risk content, predictive analytics and an underlying technology platform for monitoring the supplier lifecycle. In this post, I’ll provide details on the specific solution elements, and in a final installment of this series I’ll offer a peek into the data elements and categories D&B uses in predictive forecasting around supply risk. Let’s begin by covering the basics of D&B’s supply risk solution platform today.
D&B’s Supplier Risk Manager solution, which combines past elements of the Open Ratings solution with broader supplier management lifecycle capabilities, enables risk management across four broad process areas: certification, monitoring, analysis and mitigation. D&B Supplier Risk Manager further offers a set of seven modules that map to the four Supplier Lifecycle Risk Management process areas including: supplier locator / identification, certification, alerting, score-carding, supply base analysis, surveys and assessments. The toolset, while focused primarily on risk, has material overlap with supplier information management tools from AECSoft, Aravo, Ariba, CVM Solutions, Emptoris, and more. However, the predictive risk scoring and alerting within D&B Supplier Risk Manager appears to be fairly unique.
The Supplier Risk Manager – Alerts module — which falls under the “monitoring” phase of the supplier lifecycle — provides real-time alerting based on changes in a variety of underlying data elements. User customization allows companies to “set thresholds on over 25 data elements,” including D&B’s Supplier Stability Indicator (SSI), designed to predict near-term “90-120 day financial and operational stability” in suppliers, as well as their Supplier Evaluation Risk (SER) rating that “predicts the likelihood that a company will obtain legal relief from creditors or cease operations without paying creditors in full over the next 12 months.” Other configurable alerts include special claims indicators (e.g., operations, liens and claims, natural disasters), EPA, OFAC and debarment indicators/OSHA incidents, supplier performance benchmarks and deviations and government control lists. In addition, the Alerting components enable companies to look at their portfolio of risk distribution based on all monitored suppliers identified by the company, showing “the risk distribution of all the suppliers on [a] watch-list compared to the benchmark.”
Outside of the alerting component, D&B provides additional core functionality, which begins to show increasing overlap with other companies…
