It’s no secret that having a digital trail of your supply chain leads to greater transparency within your organization, but did you know that it supports compliance as well? We are going through seismic shifts in how we operate our businesses, and technology has never been as crucial for our organizations as it is today. With these fast-paced changes, we must take a deep dive into the organization that we’ve built, and if there is enough transparency to ensure compliance.
Compliance isn’t just about checking the boxes when it comes to regulation on the sourcing, production, and distribution. It’s about showing the outside world that your company is an organization that stands for ethical working conditions, sustainability, and the long-term impact your business will have on the planet and environment. We live in a world where transparency is no longer an option. To operate your business, you now need complete visibility into your supply chain to report to your internal and external stakeholders on every step of the production process. Transparency is now directly connected with your brand image and company values, making it a make-or-break for survival with the conscious consumer.
This level of transparency starts at the factory and vendor level. Do you know what certifications they have in regards to compliance, if any? Do you have a way of managing whether those certifications are up to date and valid? Do you have insight into what the operations look like as your products move through the production lifecycle? If the answer is no, the odds are that as a business, you’re not able to ensure ethical production processes to any of your stakeholders and customers. Especially as your business scales and your network of suppliers grows, it’ll become increasingly more difficult (if not impossible) to ensure compliance across dozens of partners with manual systems. For that level of detail, there needs to be software in place that enhances your team’s capabilities to quickly and effectively manage compliance all in one place. It creates accountability not just for your team to ensure they’re pulling the necessary details before making factory assignments but holds your partners accountable to stand behind ethical production across the supply chain.
COVID-19 exposed the deep-rooted issues that still surround compliance with counterfeit goods, factory workers in unsafe environments, and a lack of knowledge on the certifications partner factories have. Now is the time to prevent these costly mistakes from happening again by implementing technology throughout the entire supply chain. Explore a digital solution, such as the Suuchi GRID, which supports compliance for your supply chain by bringing all of your partners onto one platform for smarter vendor management and assignment.
