Too often, carrying out due diligence around vendors is seen as nothing more than a tick box on a list of things to do. But in today’s business environment where every business is linked to the global supply chain disruptions and other problems can originate from the weakest link in your supply chain.
It is possible to eliminate vulnerabilities, mitigate new risks, and make informed decisions when you manage vendors properly. In doing so your business has clarity over which vendors to work with (and which to stop working with). In other words, VRM should be an essential part of any organisation's risk management strategy.
Before you can begin reaping the benefits of Vendor Risk Management, your organisation needs to take ownership of the process. Here's how to get started:
1. Define what you want to measure.
The first step in taking ownership of VRM is to define what risks you want to measure.
Do you want to measure cyber security risks? Legal risks? Regulatory risks? Privacy risks? IT risks? Business continuity risks?
All of the above? Once you've identified the types of risks you want to measure, you can begin to capture the information you need to make informed decisions about your vendors.
2. Take ownership for VRM.
The next step is to take ownership for VRM within your business. This means making sure you have the right expertise and resources in place to manage vendor risk effectively. Answer the questions below to
If the answer is no to any of the questions, now is the time to make changes and safeguard the business.
3. Set realistic goals.
Once you've taken ownership for VRM, it's important to set realistic goals for the process.
Whatever your goal may be, make sure it's something that's achievable and that everyone in your business buy into it.
4. Build trust and understanding.
Finally, remember that Vendor Risk Managment is not a one-off exercise - it's an ongoing process. This means building trust and understanding with your vendors so that they become partners in your Vendor Risk Management strategy.
When everyone is working together towards a common goal, you are more likely to achieve success and do business better.
Find out more and book a meeting about VRM today
As proud sponsors of the Causeway Exchange Business Seminar we'd like to introduce the incredible panel. The panel is a perfect blend of Irish and Scottish thought leaders from across the greener world, procurement and financial services.
Host and Panelists
Host:
Russell Dalgleish, Pulse Market Ambassador
Host: Russell Dalgleish: Scottish Serial Entrepreneur, Investor and Global Network Builder
Russell is founding Managing Partner of the advisory group, Exolta Capital Partners. He has enjoyed the benefits of a highly successful international career in the technology sector and now focuses his efforts on supporting owners and boards of companies to devise and implement international growth strategies. He is a regular speaker and conference host and has spoken at conferences from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi - and now with Causeway in Edinburgh!
Panel
1 Joanne Murphy, COO of Chartered Institute of Banking
Joanne Murphy is the Chief Operating Officer of the Chartered Banker Institute, delivering the Institute’s business wide transformation and people strategy. As Deputy CEO, Joanne leads the strategic review and annual business planning activity at the Institute. Joanne’s remit includes driving our professional inclusion agenda, and she has executive responsibility across a variety of business function including Learning, Professional Standards, Membership, Business Support, Finance, People, Innovation and Marketing.
Joanne was instrumental in development and launching of the Institute new Principles of Responsible Banking Academy in October 2022 and holds professional membership of the CIPD and Chartered Banker Institute.’
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanne-murphy-mba-mcbi-33753437/
Website: https://www.charteredbanker.com/the-institute.html
2 Tabi Jayne, Director and Interim CEO for Net Zero Nation
Tabitha Jayne is co-founder, director and Interim CEO for Net Zero Nation, a Scottish not-for-profit focused on mitigating climate change by mass mobilising SMEs on their journey to Net Zero.
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tabithajayne/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/net-zero-nation
3 Richard Carr - Group Environment Director WebHelp
Richard Carr, a Glasgow based professional with extensive experience within the ESG, Sustainability and FM sectors. As Group Environment Director for Webhelp his responsibilities include designing and delivering a strategy that will contribute to the global net-zero ambition. In a previous role as Head of Property and Environment, his responsibilities included leading a global team of colleagues in the transformation towards low carbon, energy efficient properties and services.
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-carr-1b318689/
Website: https://webhelp.com/
4 Andrew Morrison - Founder & Director AB Bid
Andrew established AM Bid in 2014 and has successfully grown it to a £1m+ business. Prior to that he led most of the British Gas bid function managing 5 national bid teams. His 17 years in bidding were preceded with a 12-year career in social housing. Andrew has won a string of awards including from the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Institute of Directors, British Chambers of Commerce and APMP (Association of Proposal Management Professionals). In May 2022 Andrew was named by APMP as the Global Bid & Proposal Thought Leader of the Year. Andrew was the first bidding professional in the world to be given LinkedIn Live broadcasting rights and, since July 2020, he has delivered over 110 bidding best practice and work-winning live broadcasts. AM Bid has recently launched Ultimate Tender Coach – a digital bid writing training and support program that equips people to write their own bids.
Andrew’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmorrisonbidding/
AM Bid website: https://www.ambid.co.uk/
Ultimate Tender Coach website: https://www.ultimatetendercoach.com/
5 Paul Murphy ClimeAction
Solutions Lead at Climeaction
In 2021 Paul joined Leading Edge Group to establish their company Climeaction, a whole operations decarbonisation solution for business. An energy and process engineer by education, Paul has previously held senior positions in global consulting organisations and is a non-executive Director of Renewable Gas Forum Ireland (RGFI). Paul has extensive global experience in industrial energy efficiency and decarbonisation of manufacturing organisations, being a key advisor to some of the world’s largest companies across 5 continents in the Food & Dairy, Beverages, Manufacturing and Life Science sectors. Paul has a passion for supporting SME business decarbonisation. When they say “Climate Action Solutions for All” they mean it. Paul and his team work with companies of all scales, providing the same level of service and expertise regardless of size and have worked with over 250 companies in the past 12 months on climate action. Their mission is to enable true decarbonisation of business, and this requires solutions at all levels of the supply chain and across all business functions.
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-murphy-climeaction/
Website: https://www.climeaction.com/
6 Neil Stevenson Procurement Manager at Aegon Asset Management
Neil works for Aegon Asset Management as Procurement & Vendor Manager. Neil has over 30 years’ experience in the financial and manufacturing sectors designing and managing supply chains across the globe. Neil is passionate about promoting the ESG agenda in sourcing decisions within the Aegon group and wider finance community .
Aegon
7 Craig Dick, Third Party Sustainability Lead, abrdn
Craig has worked in sustainability since graduating from university in 2016. Craig has worked in the built environment sector working for a global market leader in sustainability and delivering environmental sustainability outcomes on live development and construction projects throughout the UK. He recently joined the financial services sector to help deliver a sustainable procurement programme for abrdn which aligns with the firm’s corporate sustainability objectives.
Whenever we meet a client or listen to a person, we learn. At Pulse, we are always on the lookout for ways to continually improve our platform and support our clients. In order to learn more about the challenges organisations face with vendor risk management and third-party risks, we're conducting a survey.
We compiled the survey to engage attendees at the DNA conference. We didn’t expect it to be such a big talking point and now sharing it widely on our digital channels. The 3-minute survey with 10 questions stimulated conversations that lasted up to 60 minutes. Why? The questions really got people thinking about who they do business with and who their suppliers do business with.
As a result of the survey, businesses are becoming more aware of the risks associated with suppliers, such as cyber-attacks, data loss, regulatory compliance failures, financial uncertainty, and unethical business practices. Risks that can lead to reputational damage, financial ruin or both.
How do you compare? Take the Survey
Check out the surprising results below and take the short survey to see how you compare. There is no right or wrong answer – it is simply to get you thinking more about who you are doing business with.
Pulse Market is proud to sponsor the Causeway Exchange Network ESG business seminar. We'll be joined by event supporters Enterprise Ireland on Friday, 25 of November, in Edinburgh, at the stunning Waldorf Astoria.
As you know here at Pulse Market we love partnering with organisations that champion SMEs and make doing business simpler. That's why we're delighted to share this exciting news that we're sponsoring Causeway Exchange's next business seminar: 'ESG and Vendor Risk Management - how your business can gain competitive advantage'.
Buy your tickets today from Causeway Exchange
About the seminar
Pulse Market, Causeway Exchange and Enterprise Ireland are bringing experts from Scottish and Irish blue-chip businesses, procurement bid teams and ESG/Net Zero experts together to discuss the biggest challenges businesses face in relation to ESG and suppliers as we face a recession.
The panel of experts will present best practice in supplier management and show how these strategies can be implemented in your business so as to attain your ESG goals.
Why the theme ESG and supplier management?
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rules, alignment and enhancements have been at the heart of many business requirements in the recent years. None more so than with the rise of awareness following COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. Businesses are now looking for their suppliers to act, raise their game, and be accountable/aligned with their vision.
Whilst ESG has been a key business issue for some time, a greater need has arisen to have total accountability for you suppliers and supply chain. Recent events such as the Russian invasion on Ukraine, and the sanctions imposed on Russia, have ignited a demand for suppliers to be fully accountable and understand where they are buying their goods and services.
Suppliers having total clarity (look-through) of their suppliers, with due diligence completed, validation of infosec, and accreditation across ISO, ESG are the businesses staying ahead of the pack and winning business. Discover how your business can gain the competitive edge by coming along to the Causeway Exchange business seminar.
Meet the Panel
Host: Russell Dalgleish, serial entrepreneur and global networker
Panelists:
Tabitha Jayne, Director and Interim CEO for Net Zero Nation
Andrew Morrison, Founder and Director of AM Bid
Joanne Murphy, MBA, MCBI , COO of Chartered Institute of Banking
Richard Carr, Group Environment Director, Webhelp Enterprise
Paul Murphy Solutions lead at Climeaction
Neil Stevenson MCIPS Stevenson, Procurement & Vendor Management, Aegon Asset Management
Buy your tickets today from Causeway Exchange
(Tickets £35 for Causeway Exchange Members £50 for non members)
Follow our socials to hear more from the panel experts and be the first to hear the exciting updates about this event.
Join us and hear from a panel of procurement specialists.
Register now for the Procurement in the Digital Age Webinar starting at 8.45am - 9.45am on Wednesday 8 of June.
The theme for the day is Procurement in the Digital Age – it’s a game changer. The session promises to be an informative discussion with a panel of visionaries and experts who are transforming the world of procurement.
Introducing the Panel
What's covered?
We'd love you to join us.
We are delighted to be hosting our first webinar with a strong panel of speakers from the greener business world and 4th sector. We have chosen to host the 'Invest in our Planet' webinar on Friday, 22 of April to coincide with Earth Day.
Come along to the webinar for a lively and informative discussion. Discover practical steps you and your organisation can take to help your people and the planet.
Register for Invest in Our Planet Webinar
We'd like you to get to know our speakers so here are some short introductions so you can get to know them a little bit better.
Gavin Tweedie
Gavin Tweedie is the co-founder and chairman of the social enterprise Net Zero Nation Ltd and Scottish Net Zero community which he helped establish in January 2021 with the Scottish Business Network and James Napier at CBN Expert. The organisation has grown to over 1000 members and mobilised over £1bn in annual revenues to sign up to the UN Race to Zero.
Discover more about Net Zero Nation
Ellie Marshall
Ellie Marshall's role at award-winning Scottish solutions business Eco involves driving forward new ideas, bringing people together and delivering results which enable the firm to lead where others follow. As Executive Assistant to Managing Director and founder Eddie Black, she plays a central role in the adoption and development of innovations including the launch of EcoGoZero, the company's portfolio of net zero products.
Discover more about Eco
David Reid
Fuel Change is a social-enterprise movement that taps into the potential of Scotland's youth to solve the decarbonisation challenges faced by industries worldwide.
Discover more about Fuel Change
Aimee Doole
Aimee Doole is passionate about collaborating with businesses on their Net Zero journey and showcasing the role of culture and technology in creating a mindset where businesses can drive positive change - prioritising their people, the planet and profit with no trade off. Aimee's background is in strategy, marketing and communications and she has had over 10 years in the strategic brand development space primarily in the technical and engineering world. Her energy and enthusiasm has allowed brands to reach new heights across a wide variety of industries and gain national recognition and multiple awards. An accredited Workplace Innovation Practitioner, Aimee has also led many cultural and people engagement initiatives to support business growth and is regularly asked to speak at conferences both in the UK and internationally.
Discover more about Booth Welsh
David McDonald
David qualified as a management accountant with Scottish Equitable and is a seasoned Finance and Operations Director with board level experience in several sectors. As Director of Sustainable Development at UNITE Group plc, he was responsible for leading the strategic response to the emerging low carbon landscape within property development and operations. David has been involved in policy work, and helped to develop and present the first renewables route map to HM Treasury and to a parliamentary committee in 2001. He is an expert in capital investment appraisal for renewable energy and infrastructure assets.
John Dowdall
From Dublin, Ireland, John has worked in the funds industry for more than 25 years. In his early working life this was in financial services firms in the newly growing International Financial Services Centre in Dublin, with firms like Fortis (now BNP Paribas) Banque International a Luxembourg (now RBC) & Investors Bank & Trust (now State Street).
After that John Moved into the data and regtech market with SIX Financial & MoneyMate , where he created the regtech firm Silverfinch.
Discover more about Pulse Market
We'd love you to join us for the Invest in Our Planet webinar.
You can find out more about the Earth Day webinar here
Join us on zoom for our Earth Day Webinar at 8.45am - 9.45am on Friday 22 of April 2022.
The global theme for the day is ‘Invest in Our Planet’. That's why we are gathering a panel of experts from six different organisations with a shared passion for helping individuals and businesses reduce carbon emissions and urgently tackle climate change.
Register for our Earth Day webinar today.
The event will be a fantastic opportunity to be part of the conversation and you will take away a plan of action to help your people, your partners and the planet.
The lively session promises to be an energetic, informative and interactive discussion with a panel of experts from the greener business world.
What is Pulse Market doing for Earth Day?
At Pulse Market we want to be a business that does more than just talk about climate change. That’s why on World Earth Day we’re giving away our ESG Passports to webinar attendees.
We don’t want you to miss out!
Reserve your space today and guarantee an ESG Passport for free for your organisation.
Register for Earth Day Webinar here
If you are unable to attend on 22 April, you can still register to receive both the webinar recording and a Pulse Market ESG Passport.
You can visit Earth Day website to find out more about the movement that has been growing since 1970.
We're looking forward to you joining our webinar on Earth Day 2022.
Register for our Earth Day webinar today.
Guest writer, David Lewis, CEO of Lewis Agency shares his experiences and frustrations working within the framework of an outdated and costly procurement system - where there are no winners.
"For the past 30 years I've been in advertising and marketing the process for tendering and pitching for business has been like something from the 1920's not 2020's. An almost biased, unfair and lethargic process of sweet talking, beauty pageants and an ultimately labour intensive series of word and excel document causing confusion and disillusionment. Sound familiar?
This isn't a finger point at procurement teams, no it's a full head to toe process that needs rejuvenated and brought into the digital times for both buyer and seller.
Where do you start with a system that is so in need of transformation.
What about a more equal and ethical process where agencies must have a certain pre-defined set of quality accreditations, due diligence checks and automatically are pre-verified.
Imagine a procurement team that could search and select pre validated companies that would pass any due diligence and then ask one simple question: ‘You’ve achieved our level of due diligence. Would you like to be considered for this tender. Yes or No’?
After everyone in your business has answered the questions, you achieve a stunning 96% score. The crowd go wild. Procurement put a tick in the box, and you’re never asked about it again until the renewal invoice comes in next year! It’s only used by one procurement team and the next RPF uses XYZ accreditation which you need to start from scratch.
But wait a minute. I’ve got 80% of the questions answered in excel, word and PDF files somewhere in a folder somewhere on our system. Let’s pull them all into a new order rename them 1.12a and duplicate, submit and try again. Manually building new records and new documents that will need updated and are out of date from the day you completed.
What about all your documents assets and info in one system, online, secure and verified by buyers. You could easily update one and it would replicate across all providers. You can enhance and iterate these when you and your business gain knowledge or more expertise. And here’s the big one. Each and every buyer, accreditation company and organisation can gain access to them at your discretion. For one supplier we have nearly 250 different items that are managed and updated on an ongoing basis. For another we have 145. Surely, we can have quality cross-over, only using the best and most appropriate in one super slick location, which means I never, ever need to send an Excel spreadsheet again!
What about the ability to automatically search and select sellers that have achieved all the red-tape and policy, due diligence in an instant and can move quickly and efficiently to the real tender needs. What about being able to separate out the tender and have it manged and scored by selected people within the business, who are the experts. They can review only the sections they are experts at, scoring each answer, giving feedback, or asking for further information on selected answers, before scoring only those questions back to the seller. And what about being able to compare proposals side-by-side and being able to see where each seller scores higher or lower, where are the gaps, which areas are critical and should be necessary, which are lesser. How about a business strong validation on you decision making. Having reviewed scored, had expert feedback and clarity when viewing each side by side, you can truly make the best decision of the business.
For an agency what about a system or tool that would be able to use AI to read and offer up the best answer to the question from your massive archive of answers. This library of answers you have written and are now available to either automatically link to the question, edit, or adjust, or see which questions have scored well in previous RFPs and use the ones that work and not the ones that left you short.
What about the thing we crave the most, feedback! Yes, instead of the ‘we’re delighted’ or ‘we’re sorry’ emails, what about a truly beneficial feedback loop. A system that the agency can look at and see where their weakness are, where their strengths are and work harder, bring in more expertise and be a better business for all their clients.
So after my rants and 30 years or seeing it, doing it, winning the watch, what am I getting at with this article. Well it's to only state that we need change within the agency/procurement alignment.
We have some of the finest creative agencies in the world running innovative systems, platforms, and technologies. We can render pixel perfect CGI images and animations, build online tools that help detect health problems, we mine data and build tools to offer solutions to that one in a million individual. But we are running and answering RFPs, Proposal and tenders like something out of dark ages.
Who’s going to help get the advertising and marketing world to address this problem?"
We'd like to thank David Lewis for sharing his personal experience and highlighting the challenges sellers are facing while pitching to 'win a watch'!
For a live demo of Pulse Market contact us today.
I am very pleased to welcome you to our second ever Pulse Marketplace User Group newsletter. I would like to start by thanking those that responded so positively to the first newsletter and to those who signed up to our first ESG working group.
This month we are very excited to introduce the first Pulse prototype. The growing product team has put a lot of effort into this and we are very eager to get your feedback. The prototype focuses on providing functionality specifically for the vendor community within our marketplace. We have included a short video later in the newsletter to introduce it and would like to invite you to participate in a 30 mins hands-on workshop next week, where we will measure user responses.
This month I am delighted that we can introduce three new recruits to the Pulse team. Tim Murphy has joined us as Chairman, and will bring years of financial services, corporate finance, and general start-up know-how to support our senior team. And Nina Krstičević and Cathal O’Shea have joined the product & client service teams respectively, and both are repeat offenders, having worked with one or more founders in a past life!
Fresh from completing our seed funding round, I would also like to thank and welcome our new investors to the Pulse journey. It was very heartening indeed that we ended up 90% oversubscribed after just 4 weeks. Many of our investors have significant experience and extensive networks, and we look forward to working with them and benefiting from their support in the months ahead.
Finally, we have an update from the inaugural Pulse ESG working group, which was held on 18 February, and which promises to provide a dynamic forum for our clients and the industry more broadly to lead and embrace all things ESG.
It is with great pleasure that we have managed to secure an industry stalwart as our new Chairman. With extensive experience in financial services and building start-up's that fly, we welcome Tim Murphy to the Pulse team.
I’m delighted to introduce myself as the latest addition to a very exciting team here at Pulse Marketplace. And I am very much looking forward to working closely with the team in my role as Chairman.
I first came to know two of the Pulse founders, John Dowdall and Michael O’Shea, while doing some consulting work for them at their previous entrepreneurial venture, Silverfinch, which was part of the MoneyMate Group. It was evident then, as it is now again at Pulse, that they had no shortage of ambition. Since the successful sale of MoneyMate and John and Michael’s subsequent exit, I have followed very closely their progress, in particular over the past 9 months, as they took the embryo of an idea and turned it into something that has now gathered considerable momentum. I have since met John Ellis and the rest of the team and am very excited and impressed by the prospects to build something very special here.
My background is in financial services – I began my career at EY in Boston auditing Banks and other financial services firms, then joined the financial services industry in 1994 when I took a role with IBT, now part of State Street. I moved to Ireland with IBT 24 years ago in April, then soon joined BNY Mellon to run its then joint venture with AIB. During my 15 years at BNY Mellon, I held several senior positions within the Irish and European operations. Since departing BNY in 2012, I have been involved in corporate finance consulting and working as an Independent Director for several firms. In 2015, I joined some former colleagues from my BNY Mellon days at DMS Governance, where, as COO and CFO, I helped them prepare for global expansion and transformation into a leading third-party Manco, culminating in a successful refinance in 2019. I continue my corporate finance and board work today, along with investing in early stage fintech and regtech ventures.
I volunteer my time as a board member of The Social Care Workers Registration Board in Ireland, and in governance roles at Basketball Ireland, where I was a board member for 6 years. Despite my 24-year absence, I remain a loyal fan of Boston sports teams, particularly, the New England Patriots, and despite his change in teams, cheered Tom Brady onto his seventh Super Bowl victory a few weeks ago.
