THE SMART CUBE UPGRADES SUPPLIER RISK INTELLIGENCE SOLUTION
The Smart Cube (a WNS company), a global provider of strategic research and analytics solutions, today announced a host of new functionalities for its Supplier Risk Intelligence solution
The Smart Cube’s Supplier Risk Intelligence is an end-to-end risk monitoring and management solution - the most comprehensive solution of its kind - providing a holistic view of third-party risks, including financial, operational, legal and ethical, and human and environmental risk metrics. The solution leverages both artificial and human intelligence to track supplier risks on an ongoing basis and deliver actionable insights, allowing businesses to take the right actions at the right time.
The company has seen substantial growth in its Supplier Risk Intelligence solution, with the number of customers increasing four-fold in 2022 alone, as businesses seek to better understand their third-party risks and extended supply chain challenges.
Following significant upgrades announced last year - including AI-powered dynamic risk scoring - the solution’s latest features include:
● Category risk dashboards – Informs customers of disruptions happening within a particular industry, geographic region or logistics node long before this affects the tier 1 suppliers themselves, allowing customers to plan ahead and build business resilience
● Action planner – Allows customers to collaborate with internal as well as external stakeholders to mitigate the risks in an effective and time bound manner with everyone in the loop
● Updated risk deep dives – Leverages best practices within financial due diligence and forensic analysis to give customers better understanding of risk exposures and their impact
● REST APIs upgrade – Allows client S2P/ERP systems to ingest risk insights from The Smart Cube’s cloud-based platform Smart Risk. This way customer users can get easy access to actionable risk insights directly in their internal systems, which ensures that business decisions are better informed
With these expanded capabilities in place, The Smart Cube’s Supplier Risk Intelligence solution provides a deeper visibility into third-party risks than ever before and significantly enhances customer’s ability to respond to risks effectively.
“In recent years, businesses have found their supply chains becoming increasingly disrupted by major macroeconomic events, which have affected multiple industries and entire regions in some cases,” said Sayan Debroy, Head of Supplier Risk Intelligence at The Smart Cube. “What were once isolated incidents have now become a pattern of ongoing disruption. However, most businesses remain unprepared when it comes to tackling major disruptions due to limited visibility of suppliers and their supply chains.
“As such, it’s imperative for organisations to modify their supply chain strategies so that unprecedented third-party risk exposures are considered. For that reason, we have decided to supercharge risk management by expanding our Supplier Risk Intelligence capabilities, enabling us to provide customers with 360o continuous risk intelligence, making it the most comprehensive solution of its kind.”
For all businesses – whether they have a large supplier base and complex supply chains or a small base with straightforward supply chains – managing supplier risk is a challenging task. The Smart Cube’s Supplier Risk Intelligence solution can help companies to proactively identify, monitor, and manage third-party risks to ensure business continuity, even in difficult periods of time. To find out more, visit The Smart Cube’s website.
The Smart Cube was acquired by WNS (Holdings) Limited (NYSE: WNS), a leading provider of global Business Process Management (BPM) solutions, in December 2022.
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About The Smart Cube
For leading businesses around the world, The Smart Cube (a WNS company) is a trusted partner for high performing intelligence that answers critical business questions. And we work with our clients to figure out how to implement the answers, faster.
Through custom research, advanced analytics and best of breed technology, we transform data into insights – enabling smart decision-making to improve business performance at the top and bottom line. We call it: Intelligence. Accelerated.
Our clients include a third of the companies in the FTSE and Fortune 100, primarily in the CPG, Life Sciences, Energy, Chemicals, Industrials, Financial Services, Professional Services and Retail sectors.
We serve our global client base from our offices in the UK, the USA, Switzerland, Romania and India.
About WNS
WNS (Holdings) Limited (NYSE: WNS) is a leading Business Process Management (BPM) company. WNS combines deep industry knowledge with technology, analytics, and process expertise to co-create innovative, digitally led transformational solutions with over 400 clients across various industries. WNS delivers an entire spectrum of BPM solutions including industry-specific offerings, customer experience services, finance and accounting, human resources, procurement, and research and analytics to re-imagine the digital future of businesses. As of December 31, 2022, WNS had 57,994 professionals across 64 delivery centres worldwide including facilities in Canada, China, Costa Rica, India, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
For more information, visit www.wns.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Safe Harbor Provision
This document includes information which may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which are necessarily subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as to future events. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied are discussed in our most recent Form 20-F and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. WNS undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
The U.S., U.K., and Australia will strengthen supply chain resiliency by sharing data and taking joint actions under the terms of a pact signed last week, the three nations said.
The agreement creates a “Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group” designed to build resilience in priority supply chains and to enhance the members’ mutual ability to identify and address risks, threats, and disruptions, according to the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade.
One of the top priorities for the new group is developing an early warning pilot focused on the telecommunications supply chain, which is essential for the three countries’ global, digitized economies, they said. By identifying and monitoring disruption risks to the telecommunications supply chain, this pilot will enhance all three countries’ knowledge of relevant vulnerabilities, criticality, and residual risks. It will also develop procedures for sharing this information and responding cooperatively to disruptions.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the group chose that sector because telecommunications infrastructure is vital to the distribution of public safety information, emergency services, and the day to day lives of many citizens. For example, undersea fiberoptic cables carry over 95% of transoceanic data traffic without which smartphones, financial networks, and communications systems would cease to function reliably.
“The resilience of our critical supply chains is a homeland security and economic security imperative,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a release. “Collaboration with international partners allows us to anticipate and mitigate disruptions before they occur. Our new U.S.-U.K.-Australia Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group will help ensure that our communities continue to have the essential goods and services they need, when they need them.”
A new survey finds a disconnect in organizations’ approach to maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO), as specialists call for greater focus than executives are providing, according to a report from Verusen, a provider of inventory optimization software.
Nearly three-quarters (71%) of the 250 procurement and operations leaders surveyed think MRO procurement/operations should be treated as a strategic initiative for continuous improvement and a potential innovation source. However, just over half (58%) of respondents note that MRO procurement/operations are treated as strategic organizational initiatives.
That result comes from “Future Strategies for MRO Inventory Optimization,” a survey produced by Atlanta-based Verusen along with WBR Insights and ProcureCon MRO.
Balancing MRO working capital and risk has become increasingly important as large asset-intensive industries such as oil and gas, mining, energy and utilities, resources, and heavy manufacturing seek solutions to optimize their MRO inventories, spend, and risk with deeper intelligence. Roughly half of organizations need to take a risk-based approach, as the survey found that 46% of organizations do not include asset criticality (spare parts deemed the most critical to continuous operations) in their materials planning process.
“Rather than merely seeing the MRO function as a necessary project or cost, businesses now see it as a mission-critical deliverable, and companies are more apt to explore new methods and technologies, including AI, to enhance this capability and drive innovation,” Scott Matthews, CEO of Verusen, said in a release. “This is because improving MRO, while addressing asset criticality, delivers tangible results by removing risk and expense from procurement initiatives.”
Survey respondents expressed specific challenges with product data inconsistencies and inaccuracies from different systems and sources. A lack of standardized data formats and incomplete information hampers efficient inventory management. The problem is further compounded by the complexity of integrating legacy systems with modern data management, leading to fragmented/siloed data. Centralizing inventory management and optimizing procurement without standardized product data is especially challenging.
In fact, only 39% of survey respondents report full data uniformity across all materials, and many respondents do not regularly review asset criticality, which adds to the challenges.
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help users build “smart and responsive supply chains” by increasing workforce productivity, expanding visibility, accelerating processes, and prioritizing the next best action to drive results, according to business software vendor Oracle.
To help reach that goal, the Texas company last week released software upgrades including user experience (UX) enhancements to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) suite.
“Organizations are under pressure to create efficient and resilient supply chains that can quickly adapt to economic conditions, control costs, and protect margins,” Chris Leone, executive vice president, Applications Development, Oracle, said in a release. “The latest enhancements to Oracle Cloud SCM help customers create a smarter, more responsive supply chain by enabling them to optimize planning and execution and improve the speed and accuracy of processes.”
According to Oracle, specific upgrades feature changes to its:
Production Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations improve manufacturing performance by providing real-time insight into work orders and generative AI-powered shift reporting.
Maintenance Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations increase productivity and reduce asset downtime by resolving maintenance issues faster.
Order Management Enhancements, which help organizations increase operational performance by enabling users to quickly create and find orders, take actions, and engage customers.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Enhancements, which help organizations accelerate product development and go-to-market by enabling users to quickly find items and configure critical objects and navigation paths to meet business-critical priorities.
Nearly one-third of American consumers have increased their secondhand purchases in the past year, revealing a jump in “recommerce” according to a buyer survey from ShipStation, a provider of web-based shipping and order fulfillment solutions.
The number comes from a survey of 500 U.S. consumers showing that nearly one in four (23%) Americans lack confidence in making purchases over $200 in the next six months. Due to economic uncertainty, savvy shoppers are looking for ways to save money without sacrificing quality or style, the research found.
Younger shoppers are leading the charge in that trend, with 59% of Gen Z and 48% of Millennials buying pre-owned items weekly or monthly. That rate makes Gen Z nearly twice as likely to buy second hand compared to older generations.
The primary reason that shoppers say they have increased their recommerce habits is lower prices (74%), followed by the thrill of finding unique or rare items (38%) and getting higher quality for a lower price (28%). Only 14% of Americans cite environmental concerns as a primary reason they shop second-hand.
Despite the challenge of adjusting to the new pattern, recommerce represents a strategic opportunity for businesses to capture today’s budget-minded shoppers and foster long-term loyalty, Austin, Texas-based ShipStation said.
For example, retailers don’t have to sell used goods to capitalize on the secondhand boom. Instead, they can offer trade-in programs swapping discounts or store credit for shoppers’ old items. And they can improve product discoverability to help customers—particularly older generations—find what they’re looking for.
Other ways for retailers to connect with recommerce shoppers are to improve shipping practices. According to ShipStation:
70% of shoppers won’t return to a brand if shipping is too expensive.
51% of consumers are turned off by late deliveries
40% of shoppers won’t return to a retailer again if the packaging is bad.
The “CMA CGM Startup Awards”—created in collaboration with BFM Business and La Tribune—will identify the best innovations to accelerate its transformation, the French company said.
Specifically, the company will select the best startup among the applicants, with clear industry transformation objectives focused on environmental performance, competitiveness, and quality of life at work in each of the three areas:
Shipping: Enabling safer, more efficient, and sustainable navigation through innovative technological solutions.
Logistics: Reinventing the global supply chain with smart and sustainable logistics solutions.
Media: Transform content creation, and customer engagement with innovative media technologies and strategies.
Three winners will be selected during a final event organized on November 15 at the Orange Vélodrome Stadium in Marseille, during the 2nd Artificial Intelligence Marseille (AIM) forum organized by La Tribune and BFM Business. The selection will be made by a jury chaired by Rodolphe Saadé, Chairman and CEO of the Group, and including members of the executive committee representing the various sectors of CMA CGM.