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Supplier diversity - Have you checked your supplier base?

Recently blackenterprises.com published their list for 2009 Best Companies for Diversity , listing companies who are doing business with different diversity groups like employee base, board of directors, senior management and suppliers. From strategic sourcing initiative its very important to identify the diversity status of your supplier, have visibility towards your diversity supplier base.

Its not just legal apsect but social and economic aspect as well. You should be able to see and analyze how much of your vendor base is governmant certified small business, is it minority owned, hispanic, asian owned, woman owned, is 8a certified, hubzone certified.......There might be a individual certified business.

To have this visibility, you need to have your data in correct and updated shape. How many IT guys or business people care about this? You might have done this updation once, but what if EXIT DATE of the certification is crossed and vendor no more belong to that category? Or what if you have more vendors certified under these categories than you know.

Why should you look for diversity and small business supplier when the strategic decision is to consolidate the supllier business and save on costs. Recently Raj Sharma came across a good article about The Evolving Case for Supplier Diversity .

There are lot of strategic sourcing benefits that supplier diversity provides. Lets look at that in detail sometime later next week.

To know more or share your opinion on this you can always write to me on pmendki(at)gmail(dot)com or post your comments on this article.

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