Global consultancy partnership Kearney today announces a new benchmarking tool to help businesses examine their sourcing operations and improve opportunities for diverse, women-owned, and women-led businesses in supply chains.
Kearney is a knowledge partner to the Women4Business Daring Circle. The Daring Circle, run by the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society, brings together a network of partners to promote and accelerate diversity in business and supply chains at a global level.
The Women4Business Daring Circle is led by P&G, in collaboration with BNP Paribas, Bouygues, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oréal, and Publicis Group. The Circle is supported by Knowledge Partner Kearney, Insight Partner Clifford Chance, Institutional Partners WEConnect International and UN Women, and Academic Partner HEC, along with a diverse network of experts and corporate champions.
Kearney’s research with the Women’s Forum in 2019 spurred the need to create this tool—while over a third (35%) of firms surveyed in Europe and North America already had a supplier diversity program, only 18% of those without one were planning to develop one in the future. Without action now, almost half of businesses will still not have a supplier diversity program in place by 2022.
Through the completion of the Inclusive Sourcing Journey, a digital assessment tool, organizations will be provided with specific actions that their company can take to advance equal opportunity in their procurement practices and that benchmarks their positioning against regional and industry peers. The research outcomes this year will inform the Women4Business Toolkit for Action, a set of materials designed to advance the development and implementation of best practices for supplier diversity and inclusive sourcing. The results of the research and the Toolkit for Action will be shared at the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society’s virtual Annual Meeting on 18–19 November 2020.
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Despite there being an estimated 224 million women entrepreneurs, owning 35% of firms worldwide, less than 1% of global corporate or government spend is on women-owned businesses. Through advancing supplier diversity, Kearney aims to empower women business leaders and diversify supply chains to create an environment that delivers multiple benefits to the economy and to society.