The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the thought leader as an individual, and are not attributed to CeFPro or any particular organization.
By Alastair Parr, Senior Vice President, Global Products & Delivery, Prevalent
How can institutions best prepare for and manage uncertainty in global supply chain demand?
Based on the volumes of third parties typically in scope, and the availability of resources and often, co-operation, it is nearly impossible to get a comprehensive grasp on the entirety of the supply chain. This is compounded by the types of data required as much as by the scale, with security, resilience, and compliance playing a part in decision making.
We are seeing a trend of organizations relying on tiered allocation of efforts, focusing on prioritizing third parties as necessary. Of course, this is only as good as the tiering exercise, which is dependent on the data available through procurement, onboarding, and the rest of the business.
One of the most effective mechanisms to better prepare in the future is spending the time to ensure that the business captures all of the necessary datapoints moving forward for new onboarded third parties. While this doesn’t address the historical, entities, it enables suitable triage in future. At a minimum, this should include spend, service provided, criticality of service, location, supporting fourth parties, and business function(s) supported.
For the existing legacy, we recommend leveraging what information is available, along with threat monitoring, to support triage. Prioritized assessments to monitor resilience can then be distributed to target critical suppliers, along with provision of mechanisms to enable suppliers to report deficiencies and events proactively.
As with many programs, good planning and communication makes the difference, enabling contingency plans to be built based on visibility.
