The COVID-19 pandemic has tragically cost thousands of lives in nations all over the world. While the contagion is inflicting a tremendous human cost on our society, it’s also causing significant disruption to our economy and underlying infrastructure.
Of most concern is the myriad of global supply chains. Some analysts state that approximately 90% of supply chains are disrupted, resulting in shortages of key goods, which has ground productivity in many businesses to a halt.
In addition, our supply chain risk guide contains helpful tips and advice on how to identify known and unknown risks. An excerpt is below:
When you start to create your supply chain risk strategy, start by broadly thinking about the known and unknown risks your organization faces. Without sounding too much like Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous Iraq War-era speech - here’s what you need to do:
Known risks are possible to identify, measure and mitigate over a sustained period. For instance, if a supplier goes out of business because of bankruptcy, and disrupts your supply chain, this is something you’ll be able to anticipate.
You’ll be able to analyze your suppliers’ finances by checking their financial history, which you will have obtained at the initial onboarding phases, as well as other public resources such as business registers. When you’ve got these details, you’ll be able to quantify what impact that would have on your business through considering the products/services your supplier provides and how that would impact your ability to deliver your own products or services.
Later in the supply chain risk management guide, we outline the steps you should take to analyze and act on known risks. However, broadly speaking your approach should consider:
These are the types of risks that blindside you and your organization. For many businesses, the COVID-19 is an unmitigated disaster that’s disrupted their supply chains. It’s tricky to predict unknown situations like the coronavirus pandemic, even for the most risk-aware procurement managers, because of these types of disaster can come from nowhere.
To tackle unknown risks, agility is key. Training staff internally to spot unknown risks quickly and then developing a contingency framework is vital to tackling these challenges. We’ll detail what your organization needs to do to manage these challenges in the guide.
Our supply chain risk management guide is packed full of tips and advice you’ll find useful as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold. You can download yourself a copy by clicking here.
How is your supply chain holding up? Are you seeing serious disruption? How have you managed to mitigate that? Tell us more on our LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.