You know you need to improve your supply chain visibility, but your supply chain is complex, involving many different actors, across many different countries and time zones and your suppliers speak many different first languages.
How then can you collect the key supply chain data you need? How do you get suppliers to engage with your process? How do you structure and manage translation of the responses? How do you manage all this on an ongoing basis at scale – so your business is aware of changes that may be happening and has the supply chain visibility, security and resilience it increasingly needs?
Effectively managing suppliers is a challenge, especially when you’re doing it alone.
Why Supply Chain Visibility Matters
First, why do you need supply chain visibility?
Businesses are increasingly reliant on suppliers and supply chains to maintain smooth operations and meet customer demands. This dependency extends beyond raw materials and products to include services, logistics, and even technology. Efficient and resilient supply chains allow companies to stay competitive by ensuring timely deliveries, reducing costs, and supporting adaptability in shifting markets.
Increased supply chain visibility enables companies gain important insights into supplier performance and helps anticipate disruptions, identify compliance gaps, and proactively raise standards. Building strong supplier relationships is a key strategy to mitigate risks and strengthen business continuity. In addition, as stakeholders demand greater environmental and ethical accountability, businesses are increasing focus on sustainability making supply chain visibility more important than ever.
To limit financial, business and reputational risk, it’s crucial to properly engage and manage suppliers. Gartner defines this as a process that “enables organisations to control costs, drive service excellence and mitigate risks to gain increased value from their vendors throughout the deal life cycle”. Achieving the necessary level of engagement and visibility, however, can be challenging, especially for companies managing large supplier networks.
How Achilles Enhances Supply Chain Visibility
Achilles is internationally recognised as a leader in supply chain risk management and supplier engagement. A recent Verdantix Green Quadrant report, awarded Achilles a maximum 3.0 (out of 3.0) points for third party (supply chain) risk management, supplier engagement and user (supplier adoption). Get the report here.
Achilles collects, analyses and validates supplier data across an extensive set of categories including financial health, compliance status, cybersecurity, carbon emissions and environmental and ethical practices. Achilles does this by leveraging a powerful mix of high value human interactions, technology and data-driven processes to provide an integrated, transparent and in-depth view of supply chains. This integrated, multi-touch approach supports suppliers to engage with the process of sharing the information that buying organisations need and provide the high-quality information necessary to manage supply chain risk effectively and efficiently.
Multi-lingual supplier account management and support
The cornerstone of the Achilles solution is human interaction. Achilles has a dedicated, multilingual team of account managers that work with suppliers to ensure that the data and supporting evidence required for supply chain transparency is collected, validated and maintained. The Achilles global team speak more than 20 languages and are based in locations across the world to ensure the cultural understanding and important local insight necessary to provide the level of support suppliers need to give buyer organisations the transparency they require.
The Achilles process achieves market-leading supplier engagement levels in excess of 80% and ensures that businesses work with the most accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date information on each supplier as possible.
User-friendly, multi-lingual MyAchilles platform
The MyAchilles platform has been designed to maximise supplier engagement. It takes suppliers on a journey to provide the information businesses need to monitor, manage, and optimize every link in the chain.
Importantly, for businesses with global supply chains, the MyAchilles platform is multi-lingual. Suppliers simply choose the language they want to work in and get started. Not only does that enable suppliers to see questions and respond in their first language which maximises response rates and response quality, it also makes it easier for global buying organisations to share important supply chain information across teams in different countries. With MyAchilles, businesses benefit from a single source of supply chain truth that enables the knowledge and insights gained by one team, country or region to benefit others, ultimately strengthening an organization’s global resilience.
Rewarding openness and transparency
The Achilles process also proactively rewards suppliers for openness. Achilles account managers work with suppliers to encourage sharing of as much information as possible including supporting documentary evidence of policies, processes and practices. This openness is rewarded with the Achilles Transparency Score which enables purchasing organisations to clearly see and reward those suppliers that engage most with the process and have provided most information.
Benefits of Enhanced Supply Chain Visibility
Through comprehensive supplier data collection and validation, centralized management, real-time risk monitoring, and robust compliance tracking, Achilles enables companies to see beyond the immediate horizon, making supply chains a source of strength and competitive advantage.
By partnering with Achilles for supply chain risk management, organizations can realize several strategic benefits:
- Improved Resilience: Higher supplier engagement levels provide more visibility and enable quicker response to supply chain disruptions, helping businesses adapt to challenges with minimal impact on operations.
- Operational Efficiency: Centralized data and streamlined communication lead to greater efficiency, reducing the time and resources spent on supplier management tasks.
- Sustainability and Compliance Assurance: Ongoing monitoring of supplier compliance helps protect corporate reputation and ensure adherence to regulatory requirements.
Get started
To learn more about how the Achilles solution can help you enhance supplier engagement and supply chain visibility complete the form to arrange a call with one of our supply chain experts.
