Supplier Diversity: Evolution for impact

For the past decade, ConAgra Foods has been making strides in developing a Supplier Diversity program to better serve its customers, consumers and communities. They’re looking for the right mix of suppliers to develop a recipe for success, as indicated on their website.

MillerCoors, founded in 1855, develops its brands through brewing quality beverages, responsible marketing and consideration of the environment and community. They market to a wide range of consumers, and aspire for their supply base to actively mirror their customer base. The MillerCoors Supplier Diversity program dates back to 1975 and in 2004 CVM Solutions and MillerCoors began working together to advance their supplier diversity program and incorporate Tier 2 diverse spend.

A consulting and staffing program designed to give supplier diversity professionals the expertise they need to either develop a new supplier diversity program or advance their existing program.

World class firms consider supplier diversity to be a strategic initiative, but often the challenge is in identifying and evaluating qualified small diverse firms to compete for your business. There are literally millions of small and diverse firms and at times it can seem that all of them are knocking on your door and asking for your consideration. It simply isn’t practical to have a conversation with every potential supplier and you need tools which can make your limited time productive.

Industry best practices dictate that, before they deploy supplier portals and other projects, companies must undergo the process of data cleansing and data enrichment because they cannot manage suppliers without clean, quality and up-to-date data.

Supplier company information becomes out of date over time, causing processing errors. Processing delays and rework can result, for example, when the purchasing system has one supplier location address and the accounts payable system has another.