As consumers become more informed, educated, and conscious, there is an immense on companies to ensure that they comply with ethics and uphold transparency and human values. Consumers today care a great deal about sustainability, environment, animal rights, corruption, and labor exploitation, which is why it is important for companies to conduct a thorough assessment of their suppliers and vendors to ensure that compliance practices are being adopted and upheld and by all the parties involved. This also helps companies project a positive brand image and contribute to developing a better business environment.In order to protect your company’s reputation, it is important for businesses to ensure accountability and open communication across the entire supply chain. At BlinkGlobal, we provide international sourcing and supply chain management solutions to companies across the United States. In this article, our experts share important things to consider to ensure transparency in your supply chains.
Identify Standards
Developing a strong policy that ensures the protection of workers, minorities, the underprivileged, the environment, and animals is crucial for supply chain transparency. Get all the important stakeholders onboard and decide on certain “red flags” for suppliers. It is also a good practice to make all these commitments public so that your consumers know that you adhere to ethical business practices. A strong policy in place also helps you make informed decisions to screen suppliers that fit with the ethical business culture and practices.
Increase your Supply Chain Visibility
The term supply chain visibility refers to keeping tabs on what’s going on at all levels of your supply chains. Supply chain visibility is an organization’s ability to track and trace the entire process starting from the procurement raw of materials and components to the distribution of finalized products to end consumers. Supply chain visibility is not only crucial to maximizing your bottom line as it helps you anticipate disruptions and spot potential revenue leakages but also helps you ensure transparency and compliance at all levels of supply chains. Companies must consider making this information public and publish the names and addresses of their suppliers.
Initiate audits and remediation
Audits are extremely important as they help you identify if a supplier not complying with ethical practices. Audits must be conducted regularly as they help you make informed and effective decisions. Researches indicate that an increased amount of audit data leads to a decrease in incidents of non-compliance. Companies and suppliers should consider third-party audits as they provide detailed and impartial reports. The companies must also decide on how to work with suppliers that fail to uphold these obligations.
Engage and collaborate
Companies must also consider engaging and collaborating with NGOs, unions, civil society, government departments, animal rights organizations, and environment agencies to tackle all social issues across the supply chain. The communications department must be set up to collaborate with these agencies and stakeholders must be taken in confidence whenever there is a breach.
About BlinkGlobal
Your Global Sourcing Partner. With our deep understanding of global sourcing, we supply B2B industrial and consumer products with centralized procurement and high delivery precision.
