Enabling Supply Chain Transparency to Combat Forced Labor and Modern Slavery: Key Technology Providers [Spend Matters]
In our new three-part series looking at technology’s role in rooting out and combatting forced labor and modern slavery through transparency in global supply chains, we covered, in part 1, the changing regulatory environment and, in particular, two of the newest regulations that are emerging from Germany and the US. These two, and similar regulations, are setting other countries on the same path to create their own legislation or to strengthen their existing legislation.
In part 2 we provided a high-level overview of the implications for procurement and supply chain professionals, and in part 3 today we highlight several solution providers whose capabilities support the necessary due diligence processes, including suite providers, supplier risk management solutions, and best-of-breed solutions.
Requirements for disclosure or corrective actions regarding human rights and working conditions in supply chains all rely on the ability for companies to understand their supply chain, from the direct (tier-1) suppliers to, often, the raw material producers. Supply chain transparency is, therefore, a cornerstone of the due diligence process. In addition, the ability to understand the state of current practices, verify and improve them, is an additional building block of the overall framework.
Forced labor and human rights are topics worth addressing in themselves. However, the framework (including supporting technological solutions) can be applied to many other ESG topics because there are, and will be, more and more regulations covering supply chains (GHG emissions, water consumption, etc.). Also, as the adage says: “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” and supply chain transparency is increasingly vital to optimize supply chains and ensure business continuity in a rapidly changing environment. Unfolding events in Ukraine are an example.
Therefore, the panorama of solutions we provide below can be looked at with more than human rights in mind.
From a segmentation perspective, the market can be divided into different buckets of solutions:
Suite providers: generalists (direct and indirect) and specialists of direct materials
SXM providers: generalists and risk specialists: Avetta, GoSupply, IntegrityNext, Responsibly, Robobai, Sedex, and The Smart Cube
BoB providers with a niche focus that cover supply chain transparency and human rights with, sometimes, capabilities to address traceability and/or broader ESG themes: &wider, Circulor, Everstream Analytics, FRDM, Interos, Resilinc, riskmethods, Sourcemap, Sustainabill, Supply Dynamics, SupplyShift, Transparency-One, Wholechain
Source: https://spendmatters.com/2022/04/26/supply-chain-transparency-tech-providers/