Diversity in Supplier Sourcing

Filed in archive Supplier sourcing on January 7, 2012

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It can be difficult for companies to identify new, quality, diverse suppliers, but certainly not impossible. Especially for companies that want to find resources for diverse supplier sourcing, it can be quite challenging to go through out-of-date or incomplete databases, fragmented resources and expensive software. At the same time, many minority and woman-owned businesses have difficulty sharing their qualifications and developing relationships with purchasing managers, especially at large companies.

But the time and effort invested in this process do pay off, as diversity in sourcing suppliers has been proven to provide a real business advantage. It is possible for a company to reduce purchasing costs significantly by increasing their spend with diverse suppliers. Supplier diversity should be integrated into a company's normal procurement process, and it should be driven by the demand side of the equation, not the supply side.