Start with one question Here is a question your team already asks suppliers: where was this made? Seven words. One field in a form. It looks like the easiest thing you will collect all year. Now watch what happens when four different colleagues ask it in the same quarter. The sustainability team asks it because […]

Gartner’s 2026 CPO Survey: 63% expect AI to improve procurement performance, but only 25% have redesigned roles. Why buyer enablement technology needs logic, not just licences.

Here is a question worth trying on your own systems this week. A customer emails to ask which of the products you sell them contain material from one named factory. Not one named supplier. One named factory, out of the four that supplier operates. Most teams can answer the supplier version of that question in […]

On 3 September 2026, the European Commission’s guidelines on the EU Forced Labour Regulation were published in the Official Journal as C/2026/4637. They were adopted on 26 June 2026 and presented on 30 June alongside the launch of the Forced Labour Single Portal. Together with an implementing regulation that went into force in May, they […]

Most supplier lifecycle management programmes have every stage covered and still lose data and accountability between them. Here is how to evaluate SLM by its handovers instead of its modules.

Ask ten supplier quality teams how often they re-evaluate suppliers and most will say once a year. Ask why once a year, and the answers get thinner: it is what the last system did, it fits the budget cycle, it is what the auditor saw last time. Annual is a habit rather than a rule. […]

Every supplier programme eventually runs into the same wall, and it is rarely the wall people plan for. The scorecard design is sound. The KPI weightings survived the workshop. The regulatory requirement is understood, the questionnaire is built, the deadline is in the calendar. Then the requests go out, and six weeks later 58 percent […]

Just under 100 days separate us from 30 December 2026, the date the EU Deforestation Regulation starts to apply to large and medium operators and traders. Micro and small operators that are new to the rules have until 30 June 2027, although those already covered by the old EU Timber Regulation are in the December […]

On 16 September 2026, ISO published ISO 9001:2026, the first full revision of the world’s most widely used quality management standard in more than a decade. Certification bodies are already publishing gap guides, and most commentary focuses on leadership, quality culture and climate. For supplier quality and vendor management teams, the more useful question is […]

Every supplier management vendor now has an AI story. Here is a practical way to compare them: judge the loop the AI sits in, not the model behind it, with eight questions to ask every vendor.