News travels fast in this digital age and while it may be better for stress management to avoid being bombarded with the influx of negative news, in the case of supply chain, forewarned is fore-armed.  Keeping abreast of news about your suppliers enables you to mitigate risk.

Staying up-to-date with what’s being reported about past, current and potential vendors can help you understand potential risks earlier and gives you enough time to strategise before it turns into a crisis, according to Rudi Kruger, General Manager of Data Services at LexisNexis South Africa.

“Supply chain officers must have a clear, consistent monitoring strategy to uncover threats before they become a problem, enabling them to plan effectively. It is their responsibility to vet existing and future vendors and keep track of the headlines to identify potential risks associated with the company’s chosen suppliers,” said Kruger.

In addition to alerting you so you can mitigate risk, news tracking is important as it enables you to keep pace with changes from regulatory bodies.

However, it must be understood that the level of monitoring required is not practical with a do-it-yourself approach, especially if you are relying on the worldwide web, Kruger emphasised.

“By making use of the worldwide web, which is largely unregulated, to keep track of news you run the risk of missing out on pertinent information. Additionally, it requires a lot of manpower to manually sift through the news to determine the level of risk,” said Kruger.

To assist in simplifying this tedious task, he advised making use of third-party data to enhance research instead of relying on the worldwide web. “Monitoring tools that have alert functionality and strong databases on verified content are a lot more reliable and efficient for mitigating financial and reputational risk,” said Kruger.

A monitoring tool that is extremely useful in news tracking is Lexis ® Diligence, an easy to use web-based system from LexisNexis Data Services. The solution can uncover negative news quickly from over 23,000 news sources, going back up to 35 years. Used in conjunction with Lexis ® ProcureCheck, supply chain officers can equip themselves with valuable knowledge in the decision-making process.

Lexis ® ProcureCheck uses advanced technology and multiple databases to highlight the conflicts of interest that exist in both your human resource and procurement environments. It is also useful in ensuring compliance with the Public Finance Management Act, Municipal Finance Management Act and King IV.

With Lexis ProcureCheck, you can create your own restricted vendor list and match suppliers against published external lists, as well as highlight external business interests of employees within your organisation. The system provides automated irregularity alert reports, as well as reports on vendors and staff. It also assists with procurement vetting and vendor management, and facilitates the verification of various data sets, providing linkage to identify possible conflicts of interest, pass-through schemes and shell companies. Lexis ProcureCheck has strong financial backing and is managed by a highly experienced team.
 
For more information on Lexis Diligence, visit https://www.lexisnexis.co.za/lexisdiligence and  www.lexisnexis.co.za/lexisprocurecheck for more information on Lexis ProcureCheck.