Scaling Up the Supply Chain With More Speed, Less Risk
The New Hampshire Division of Procurement and Support Services is responsible for statewide procurement contracts and management of procurement data, procurement cards, merchant cards, recycling, fleet, real estate, graphic services, federal food distribution, and state surplus.
With responsibility for more than half a billion dollars in annual spend, the State of New Hamphire’s (SONH’s) procurement and support services team assesses best value, vendor dependability, and quality for products and services. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such ability to conduct assessment outside the State’s “normal” supply chain became even more critical for financial solvency and public health.
Helping the State to Manage Pandemic Response
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the procurement and support services team had to repurpose half its staff to support emergency PPE demand for statewide use. The team had to scale up the PPE supply chain very quickly, while at the same time ensuring that State of New Hampshire (SONH) funds were allocated as judiciously as possible. One of the biggest challenges SONH faced was vetting hundreds of unknown vendors that were offering PPE.
The Dun & Bradstreet COVID-19 Business Impact Research Platform not only helped to distinguish between unknown and established vendors, but also refuted or validated key business details relative to company structure and the integrity of operations. It made the supplier vetting processes more efficient and effective to keep up with the pace of demand for PPE.
By using this complimentary service, which Dun & Bradstreet made available to all government agencies during the pandemic, SONH staff have been able to access reports on businesses not previously vetted to help assess viability, credibility and stability from a broad set of data and analytics, including:
- Basic firmographics (such as year founded, estimated sales, and address)
- Predictive analytics (such as the financial stress score and commercial credit score)
- Family trees (such as linkages between domestic and global divisions and subsidiaries)
- Lawsuits, judgments, and current and prior bankruptcies that may serve as red flags
Improving Capacity to Assess Businesses Rapidly
SONH was able to conduct detailed due diligence reviews in 15 minutes or less for each new supplier offering COVID-19 related supplies and equipment, a process that would have otherwise required one hour per supplier, on average. Ten percent of suppliers offering PPE were excluded from consideration due to failed validation. Using Dun & Bradstreet’s platform, SONH staff also strengthened the reliability of research for more than 500 business inquiries through analysis of information not available publicly on the Internet.