In today’s world, consumers expect products that are safe, sustainable and responsibly sourced. They want to buy and connect with brands who care about the products and services that they offer, who value the importance of an ethical supply chain that will incorporate social and human rights together with environmental considerations into how they do business across the world. To deliver on these expectations and secure consumer trust, businesses must ensure their supply chains are wholly transparent.
An ethical supply chain focuses on the need for corporate social responsibility, working to produce products and services in a way that treats its workers and the environment, ethically. The pressure is mounting from all sides: NGOs, investors, governments and consumers are all demanding more from retailers and brands.
Segura, a leading platform for next-generation transparency, was founded in 2012 to combine digital expertise with detailed knowledge of global supply chains to create a simple-to-use business solution. It delivers market-leading solutions to retailers, focused on helping them to achieve ethical, sustainable and compliant multi-tiered supply chains through automatic supplier onboarding, mapping and reporting.
Peter Needle, Founder and President at Segura said: “Our aim is that one day every product will come with provenance: accessible, trustworthy information about the origin, journey and impact. We want to empower shoppers to drive progress through their purchasing power and at the same time, generate rewards for brands making a positive impact on people and planet.”
Retailers have spent decades working on their supplier relationships. However, most of their focus has been on making apparel at the right price and ever faster – typically by increasing the number of suppliers. In a competitive marketplace, failure to respond to consumer demands can be catastrophic. But retailers have moved from dealing with a small number of large apparel manufacturers close to home to a vast array of suppliers all over the globe.
Many solutions have sprung up over recent years to try and help brands have more visibility and control over their suppliers. However, these companies don’t always offer the complete package and very often falter after the first tier of interrogations.
Needle added: “The Segura platform has the capacity to map and validate all suppliers through multiple tiers, capture their supplier compliance and standards information, verify this by linking to audit and certification partners and to draw in data from bottom-up tracking and other vertical systems.
“Once you have visibility in both breadth and depth over your supply chain, you can also target measures that will improve performance. Observing the buying patterns of your suppliers will help you identify and tackle the many inefficiencies that exist. The savings made in this area can be ploughed back into your suppliers in exchange for improvements in their ethical and sustainability performance.”
Segura’s view is that any business should first adopt a central, top-down platform to map out all suppliers through multiple tiers, validate the suppliers and provide advanced reporting, acting as the collaboration and control system. Once it has been embedded, other specialist solutions can be onboarded and their value greatly leveraged. The platform enables sustainable and ethical sourcing through multi-tier supplier mapping, compliance and reporting, providing retailers with the assurance that each product, and everything in it, has been made in good quality, ethical factories.
In conclusion, the landscape of supplier sourcing is changing rapidly and the demand to bring more visibility, control and accountability to retailers and brands is constantly growing. Consumer demand has spoken and they will not accept a brand without full supplier transparency.