No legislation, no ease of access
In countries outside of the US, finding Diverse Suppliers is difficult.
Due to legislation across the US, Buying organisations work with NGOs or non-governmental organisations, and advocacy groups to find Diverse Suppliers they can work with.
These organisations provide a great service:
Validating a firm's diversity through certification.
Connecting those Suppliers to their Corporate partners who want to work with Diverse owned businesses.
Providing business support services to companies who need it.
The challenge however is that each diverse organisation works independently and this creates real problems for Buyer organisations.
Across the UK and EMEA region the challenges are similar, but also very different due to cultures and territories. There are no legislations driving the use of Diverse Suppliers. Instead society has focused on being more equitable, and inclusive and this has created an opportunity for Buyers to be seen to be doing the ethical thing.
But whilst some advocacy groups have a regional equivalent or extensions of their operations in the UK and across some European countries the data is in disparate places and this affects a Buyer’s ability to hit their spend goals and ultimately have an impact of the lives of those most affected by discrimination, bias and prejudice.
5 core challenges
From speaking with over 120 Chief Procurement Officer responsible for delivering a successful Supplier Diversity program, they identified these 5 core challenges:
Finding Diverse Suppliers Buyers want one place to go. A Centralised repository to find all Diverse Suppliers in one place.
Deciding which NGO/Advocacy community to support Having to cherry pick a handful of Diverse identities to support means an exclusion of others. The optics look bad when this is done.
Achieving their spend targets If finding Diverse Suppliers is difficult, it compromises a Buyer's ability to hit their spend targets. Loud commitments to spending $xxx per year gives the perception of greenwashing Supplier Diversity.
Replication -scaling their SD program across other territories Many large corporates have a presence in multiple countries. Sometimes in over 100 countries. Buyers need tools and services to help them scale their reach with efficiency.
Resourcing and effectively managing SD sourcing events Spending 5% of an annual budget with Diverse Suppliers is a lot of work and requires a lot of headcount and high resource utilisation if most deal sizes are beneath a spend threshold (typically £100,000 - £150,000).
Kaleida’s fully-inclusive platform helps Buyers find, identify, and then assess Diverse Suppliers irrespective of their diversity, and then invite them to Tender.
As the centralised, golden source of data, Buyers now have one place to go to find all Supplies, and Diverse Suppliers be they officially accredited, or self-certified.