How a Supplier Diversity Program Can Help Your Company Grow

Supplier Diversity Brings Improved Quality and Other Benefits

Businesses that have robust supplier diversity programs report that they see improved quality and often extract other business benefits, including increased market share and access to new revenue opportunities (The Hackett Group, 2017). Companies and organizations that take the time to properly implement a supplier diversity program are in a better position to penetrate new market segments and gain new customers.


What is Supplier Diversity?

Supplier diversity is a business program encouraging the process of sourcing products and supplies from minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned, LGBT-owned, service disabled veteran-owned, historically underutilized businesses, and SBA-defined small business vendors. Some companies create supplier diversity programs to meet customer mandates, to leverage governmental initiatives or to comply with federal supplier requirements. What these companies eventually determine is that, in addition to these benefits, robust and well-designed supplier diversity programs can be instrumental in improving a company’s bottom-line and can impact more than spending.


Promoting Innovation through Supplier Diversity

Smaller diverse businesses are agile and can implement change and innovation more quickly than larger, more established suppliers. Companies that continually use the same supplier network risk losing creative benefits that can be gained by seeing the depth of innovation that can be represented by a more diverse supplier base. Diverse businesses can also provide solutions for customer acquisition in more diverse markets. The knowledge base that diverse businesses can bring to a business or organization expands opportunity by bringing new ideas to the forefront of your research and development, or marketing, teams. New ideas that the market wants to see can result in growth opportunities and increased profitability.


Value Advantage through Supplier Diversity

Suppliers want to give you the best deal that they can to win your business. By expanding your network of suppliers for similar products, you are engaging the supplier network to remain competitively priced and to analyze and offer other service factors, such as location, depth of product offerings, quality and overall customer service, as a way of differentiating their value proposition to you, the buyer. According to The Hackett Group, companies with well-designed supplier diversity programs spent an average of 20% less on their buying operations and increased their overall return on procurement investments.


Integrative Flavors® is a Nationally Certified Woman Owned Business (WBE)

Our woman owned, national certification is updated annually by the WBENC and the State of Indiana.

We certified our business as a WBE because we believe that the certification helps to differentiate our company as one who responds to the needs of the shifting demographic profile in our country. Major corporations and organizations who partner with Integrative Flavors® can receive additional benefits by applying their spend with us toward the diverse spending requirements required by the federal government. Small, medium, local and regionally based businesses and organizations who partner with us can produce significant impact in their local communities by increasing spend and use of quality products, while also promoting job creation at the local and regional level.

Please contact us for more information about how we can partner with you and your supplier diversity initiatives in your manufacturing, food service or brokerage business. Click link to view our Cook’s Delight® soup bases and flavor concentrates product list.


References
The Hackett Group. (2017, 02 17). Research Alerts and Press Releases. Retrieved from The Hackett Group: http://www.thehackettgroup.com/about/research-alerts-press-releases/2017/02162017-top-supplier-diversity-programs-broaden-value-proposition.jsp

Newsletter Signup

Receive Product News & New Recipes