Caldwell Hart, Principal for Procurement Supply Chain Management at Avetta, explains how the platform mitigates risks while enhancing resilience.
As leaders and decision-makers manage increasingly complex global supply chains with innumerable moving parts to consider, risk management has fast become a hot topic.
Enter Avetta, the all-in-one platform designed to empower supplier companies to meet your standards by streamlining qualification processes, workforce management, health and safety compliance, ESG initiatives and other critical risk areas to ensure a safer, more efficient supply chain.
The firm’s SaaS solution provides the high-quality information clients require to make responsible decisions on their suppliers.
“Individuals in my role manage really complex supply chains,” explains Caldwell Hart, Principal for Procurement & Supply Chain Management at Avetta.
“There are a lot of different kinds of suppliers, contractors and general goods and services. There’s a lot of information that has to flow efficiently between those groups to help drive the best strategy, the best execution and the best performance – and that’s where Avetta comes to play.”
Understanding supply chain complexity
Despite the litany of disruptions that organisations have been forced to contend with in recent years, Caldwell is keen to “dispel the myth” that supply chain management has only just become a strategic priority.
“I’ve been in this business for 25 years and maybe I was blessed with the companies I worked for but, from what I’ve seen, supply chain has always been a high priority,” he asserts.
However, what he believes has changed is the depth of understanding of supply chain complexity.
Whereas traditionally the ability to gain visibility into key data elements was largely relegated to tier 1 suppliers, companies are increasingly realising that risks exist much further upstream.
Offering an example, Caldwell elaborates: “Lots of industries use nickel alloy steel, but now nickel is a primary component in batteries and battery storage given the rise of electric vehicles. If I don’t have an understanding of the other supply chains competing for nickel, I might find myself with higher prices or lower supply because I haven’t assessed demand or market trends in an adjacent industry.
“The C-suite and boardrooms now have a broader understanding of the complexity of supply chains, what suppliers look like, all the different tiers and the fact the risk might not be in their direct control – that’s what has really changed.”
A provider of information
Avetta’s core capability is in the realm of information – more specifically, helping clients gather significant information about their contractors and suppliers in the realm of health and safety, insurance, cyber risk, sustainability metrics and beyond.
By quickly and easily identifying risk, customers are better placed to make informed decisions on who they do business with and potential impacts to their organisations.
“Say you have a supplier with a poor safety record,” Caldwell continues. “That affects capacity because of workforce availability. What if there’s a fatality? The operation will be shut down for a period of time until they get to the root cause of what happened. In the meantime, parts and materials are not being supplied, so there’s an impact on your ability to perform.”
He adds: “We can provide business risk information explaining how strong suppliers are financially and operationally. Are there things that might cause an impact 12 months down the line?
“These are business impacts and that’s what we enable our clients to address.”
Not just another tool in the box
Having served on “the other side” as a Chief Procurement Officer, Caldwell has the experience and industry know-how to recognise why Avetta stands out in the risk management market for a number of reasons.
One is longevity. Avetta was founded more than two decades ago and has, over the years, developed a proven set of capabilities.
While focused on technology, the firm also offers an advisory and consultancy service, enabling both internal teams and clients to maximise the returns they make on their investments in the platform.
“We understand how technology enables a process to feed the right information to the right people to make more informed decisions,” says Caldwell.
“That focus on standard implementation, change management process and subject matter expertise around procurement, supply chain, health and safety, ESG and sustainability – these are capabilities that we’re able to bring to a customer that a number of our competitors can’t.”
He concludes: “There are some good tools out there, but a tool just sits in a toolbox. You can have a great screwdriver, but if you don’t have someone to teach you how to use it effectively, success can be limited. If you don’t have someone to look at your processes and where there might be opportunities to enhance, expand and maybe change the aperture of how you’re thinking of using the tool, it’s the same story.
“That’s one of our differentiators: we’re not just software on the front of SaaS – we’re also the solutions on the other side.”
