Informative video of UPMC's supplier diversity outreach event

The University of Pittsburgh's Medical Center held a Supplier Diversity outreach event at the end of March, 2014. This video captures the energy there! Thank you for sharing, UPMC.

DIR's take on "Why Attend?" WBENC 2014

The Women's Business Enterprise National Council offers a variety of ways to connect to their dynamic network of WBEs (Women's Business Enterprises) and Corporate supporters. The pinnacle of this networking happens during their national conference, however. 

This year's conference is in Philadelphia, PA on June 22-25, 2014. A projected attendance of 3,000+ put it at a grand, but manageable size to navigate for networking opportunities and workshops. It certainly is the largest event of its kind in the nation for women business owners. 

This year, over 300 exhibitors will fill the Business Fair floor showcasing their products and services. Exhibitors include WBEs themselves who wish to do business with like-minded companies, and corporations who want to encourage WBEs to do business with them via their Supplier Diversity initiatives. 

Supplier Diversity is about economic growth. Corporations understand that broadening their supplier base brings flexibility, cost-efficiency and innovation. Sometimes a diverse-owned businesses is introduced to a major corporation by doing business with a prime (a majority-owned, larger business who sub-contracts) and sometimes a corporation chooses to mentor and invest in a diverse-business enterprise directly, enabling you to provide services/products in the future. (Here's a LINK to an article in "Minority Business News" about Dell's Suppler Diversity staff and their concerns.) 

Economic growth is the best reason for a WBE to attend this national conference. By attending you'll:

• learn from peers: hear stories that resonate with your own experiences
• support your peers: share stories that will educate others
• network, possibly even attend a face-to-face matchmaking session, with corporate representatives: you are the face of your company ... smile and share it!
• learn from case-study sessions, about what to learn from failing (always important!) and how others walked a road of success
• meet allies: sometimes it takes a village to approach a corporation; team up and try out
• learn jargon: every industry has it, you want to understand it

DIR encourages WBEs who are ready to explore working with a bigger client base to attend. For more information, visit WBENC's site.

Taking the step from Supplier Diversity to Supplier Development

Supplier Diversity industry magazine, MBN Texas, published an article on the impending need of corporations to step beyond a Supplier Diversity initiative into Supplier Development. We link to the article, but also highlight the following excerpts because our annual seminars, "Building Strategic Phases of a Supplier Diversity Process" and "Best Practices in Supplier Diversity Strategies and Initiatives" typically address this concern by sharing case studies and real-life examples. To learn more about DIR Seminars for Corporate Executives, see links on the left of this blog, or visit DIR's web site: DiversityInfoResources.com

• "Visionary executives see much of that supply business coming back to their home countries and are developing the suppliers that will replace offshore sources.”
• "Over the next two years, Verchot foresees a continued, steady growth in corporations, first-tier suppliers and government agencies that have goals and dedicate some resources to supplier diversity efforts. "This [growth] is really driven by the growing understanding of the changing demographics in the United States. But, what I’ll be most interested in seeing is how many of these corporations, first-tier suppliers and government agencies develop and implement a strategic approach to minority supplier development,” he said. "That’s the much harder and more complex challenge and the only way that we will significantly move the needle when it comes to growing the size of large numbers of minority-owned businesses.”

From Rick Hughes of Procter and Gamble ... Innovation, Investment, Enabling ... 3 great reasons for diversity in the supply chain.

"A Diverse Approach To Supplier Engagement" 

15-Jan-14 09:44

In this guest post, Procurement Leaders invites Procter & Gamble CPO Rick Hughes, to look at supplier diversity - why it's important and how to demonstrate value from the initiative.

As procurement professionals we are constantly creating, managing, transitioning and connecting our supply chains and supply chain partners in innovative ways to meet the needs of our customers and consumers. Aside from the traditional expectations of cost; quality; service & responsiveness and innovation we should all be looking for how to best infuse diversity in our supply networks, just as we seek to have diverse employee bases in our companies.

It has been proven that diverse teams of employees can out-perform homogeneous teams. Having a diverse employee base, which mirrors the pool of recruiting talent for a company, is an objective for any company of scale. This principle also applies to our supply networks. As procurement leaders we must ensure this is recognised by the organisations we lead, as well as by our non-procurement colleagues in other functions and disciplines.

Diversity is often construed narrowly, to consider only visible diversity like color or ethnic background. Considering diversity of supply on a much broader scale, however, enables breadth and depth in the supply chain that is supportive of the mandates we all have from the business units we support. Small companies (versus large multinationals) are often more responsive, and can innovate and iterate quickly.

In addition to this value add, there is another element of diverse supply bases to consider – that of investment in the employees and communities where the supply partners live and work. While this is an objective of many/most corporations, minority owned, women owned, small corporations disproportionately invest in their employees, their families and their communities.

I visited an Alaskan native corporation in the US to see firsthand what the company was doing to improve the lives of their employees and their communities. The profits of the corporation were shared among the owners (who were the Alaskan native tribal members) and used to strengthen communities who were struggling from loss of fishing revenue resulting from the growth of commercial fisheries. Another company in western China was sharing its profits among a remote village to provide basic necessities of life like clean water and decent housing.

There are many examples of small/ medium-sized companies enabling growth and business development over years or even decades. A third supplier we work with is celebrating 20 years in business (and the same time in supplying P&G). This small but growing firm has provided not only contract manufacturing services, but has expanded to now include promotional design and execution, promotional materials management, and has partnered with a large multinational to expand into customisation and display building. All the while, the employee base has grown and developed into loyal consumers of the products for which they provide services.

This last element, of enabling individuals and families to purchase consumer products, is a unique opportunity and advantage to B2C companies like P&G. It makes diversity of supply not only the right thing to do from a supply view, but also a business decision that makes sense. For us, supply diversity is part of ‘responsible sourcing’, which includes other elements of supply management like stewardship, environmental sustainability and social responsibility & compliance.

As procurement leaders, when we review our supply chains and the value and capabilities they bring to our business, we must ensure we do so with a focus towards partner diversity in those chains. Where that diversity is lacking, leaders must drive the change we want to occur, champion the small firms, the un-tried supply potential, and ensure that opportunities for new suppliers are considered. We never know when the next Intel or Microsoft is being formed, and a diverse supply base can bring new capabilities and competencies to help drive our innovation, sales, and profits."

**original source: http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog--guest-blog/a-diverse-approach-to-supplier-engagement**

Share your latest Marketing and Information material . . .

This is a "how-to" post for diverse suppliers registered with DIR Corporate Clients. 

BACKGROUND

DIR answers suppliers’ LinkedIn connection requests with an invitation to join a LinkedIn group called “Suppliers Registered with DIR”. This group serves two functions. When we are looking for opinions or feedback, we go to this group first. In marketing jargon, we call it a “hotlist,” a vehicle for DIR to more easily reach a group of suppliers (most are certified as being diverse) knowledgeable about our products/services. It’s also a networking/sharing “bulletin” board used by diverse suppliers to exchange information with each other about successes, trials, and experiences reaching out to SD and Procurement professionals. DIR moderates all contributions to this group for privacy reasons. 

Suppliers occasionally email back with an informational PDF attached. I check the supplier’s profile in the DIR portal to see if the information is attached there, too. It rarely is, so I thought I’d blog about how to do just that: attach informational material (annual reports, fliers, flow charts, mission statements, etc.) to a supplier profile. Although DIR can upload certifications to a supplier’s profile, we cannot upload informational attachments (or change anything about your business listing) for privacy reasons. 

ACTION

If you are a registered supplier on DIR’s portal and have materials to share … please do! Perhaps you registered on DIR’s site, or via one of our corporate clients. Documents need to be under 1MB (there are a few exceptions, but try to keep it under 1 MB) and have the file suffix: .doc, .xls, .vsd (Visio), .ppt, .pdf, .gif, and .jpg. These file types are noted on the upload page, but if you’re like me, you tend to glaze over the small print!

My suggestion is to save documents as .jpgs or .pdfs because both formats are easy to condense to a smaller file size (72 dpi is fine for .jpgs online, and .pdfs can be saved as “smallest size possible” with the ‘save as’ command).

DIRECTIONS

READY? (Note! Save your file with a meaningful name like <MyCompany.2013Capabilities.jpg>, not <doc.feb.13.jpg>. This is important because, if someone saves/downloads your info to their hard drive, they can more easily find it using your company name in the search.)

SET. (Do you remember where you saved these files?)

GO!

1. Log-on to your profile (via DiversityInfoResources.com (illustrated) or a client’s site).

2. Mouse over the “My Account” tab and drop down to “Update Organizational Profile” (Note! Not “Update My Profile” right above it). 

3. Click on the hyperlinked/underlined word: Attachments

4. Click the “Choose File” button and proceed on to your own hard drive to find the document you wish to upload. 

5. Once you’ve chosen your file (you do one at a time), click the “Upload” button. You’ll be directed to a page where you can fill in more details about your document. Be brief, but targeted, and give your file (again, an informative) a name (i.e. MyCompany.MissionStatement2013). 

6. Success! You’re now done and have provided up-to-date, additional information for a sourcing company to reference.

7. Congratulations … you can view them or upload more at this point.