If you’re a business owner, you probably know by now that disruptions to your supply chain can affect operations and decrease profitability.

While you can’t necessarily prevent the external factors that cause disruptions, you can mitigate them with help from the best supply chain risk management software platforms.

If you can identify potential risks to your supply chain, you can put measures in place to mitigate them and the disruptions they could cause to your business operations.

Not sure where to begin? Keep reading to learn more about risk management software and the 8 best options for your business, so you can choose what meets your business’ needs.

Risk Management

What is Risk Management Software?

Risk management software focused on supply chains is designed to help you identify, assess, and mitigate risks in your end-to-end supply chain in real-time.

You can use the software in conjunction with supply chain partners for continuity when events threaten to disrupt business operations.

The best supply chain risk management software platforms bring together all supply-chain stakeholders for greater coordination.

When properly deployed, the system will identify and analyze all possible points of failure in the supply chain, which is an important part of small business risk management.

A few examples of failure points and potential risks are earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, pandemics such as Covid-19, security threats, product integrity, counterfeit goods, and security threats.

Top Risk Management Software Features

The best supply chain risk management software platforms boast a number of features that you can use to identify and mitigate potential risks. Those features include:

Multi-tier mapping: A supplier intelligence repository can help you visualize your supply chain and assess potential failure points and areas that are vulnerable.

This gives you the chance to prioritize supplier workflows. In a few minutes, you can identify links in the chain that have been affected by disruptions, and calculate the impact on revenue at different levels including supplier, location, part, and product. You also can create customized reports.

Event monitoring: Risk management software for supply chains lets you load sites and points of interest and monitor them via regulatory authorities, news sources, and social media.

In addition to keeping an eye on what’s going on in your supply chain, you can use modeling of potential scenarios to help you develop mitigation strategies.

Risk management: You can use the best supply chain risk management software to monitor suppliers and sites, find critical failure spots, track the progress of your risk mitigation, and follow up with the owners of supply and logistics companies.

Supply assessment: Good risk management software platforms let you create bespoke thresholds, weights, and questions that are relevant for consistent supplier assessments.

You can also manage to onboard and collect partner responses, create scorecard visualizations to spot gaps in the supply chain, and generate, assign, and track tasks for remediation. By combining all assessment results, you can prioritize the most important areas for improvement.

Supply Chain Risk Management Software Advantages

The best supply chain risk management software offers several advantages. Those advantages go beyond risk management for small businesses.

Supply chain process cost reduction: By documenting all movements in your supply chain, you can track suppliers and goods to the tiniest details.

The understanding offers insights into the entire process, from sourcing raw materials to destinations where the finished product is shipped. Thanks to this, you can identify weak links in the chain, repair them, and see better performance and profitability.

Improved supplier relationships: Top-notch risk management software can help you make better decisions for your business.

You can make smarter choices when you can analyze your relationships with your suppliers, especially as you’re able to assess the financial risks that could come with the resources and shipping methods options offered by your suppliers.

When you recognize good and bad supplier performance, you can decide which suppliers you want to continue working with and focus on building those relationships. The improvements in your relationships with your suppliers should lead to better communication, which in turn can help you detect dangers early.

Improved mapping and transportation management: Mapping is one of the biggest advantages of supply chain risk management software.

You can map your suppliers’ routes to find out if they’re efficient or not, which can help you predict any looming risks.

You can also work with suppliers to review re-plan routes when necessary, which can improve your relationships with your suppliers and your customers.

Plus, you can find consolidation opportunities that let your suppliers lower their costs or gain an advantage over competitors. If your suppliers aren’t good at handling interruptions, you can start looking for alternatives.

When you find possible alternatives, you can establish a supply chain model including capacities, expenses, and revenues that you can use to let those potential suppliers know up-front what you want from them regarding transportation management.

The Best 8 Supply Chain Risk Management Software Platforms

Now that we’ve taken a look at the features and advantages of supply chain risk management software, let’s explore the 8 best platforms so you can find one that meets your businesses’ needs.

1. Coupa Risk Aware

Coupa Risk Aware lets you monitor spend risk across all your suppliers with breakdowns of each supplier’s costs and performance ratings. You can also use it to optimize your supply base via disruptors and suppliers. The platform brings together news sentiment, financial, and judicial risk scores as well as community-rated scores drawn from the platform’s customer base, making it a community-based assessment.

The features include:

  • Spend-at-risk visibility
  • Multi-dimensional ratings
  • Risk ratings
  • News sentiment, financial, and judicial-based supplier risk scores
  • Community-informed supplier ratings
  • A complete view of each suppliers’ historical and inflight transactions
  • Actionable recommendations such as viewing alternative suppliers, contract revisions, and putting suppliers on hold
  • Transaction-level visibility with each supplier
  • Overages
  • Disputed and rejected invoices
  • Supplier comparisons

2. AnyLogistix

AnyLogistix offers various useful features, one of them being a supply chain digital twin. The digital twin is a custom simulation model that you can use to generate network behavior forecasts and to test plans of action before applying them to your actual supply chain.

The features include:

  • Supply chain digital twin
  • Risk analysis
  • IBM ILOG CPLEX analytics solver
  • Transportation optimization
  • Multi-echelon greenfield analysis (GFA)
  • Inventory optimization and safety stock estimation

3. GEP SMART

GEP SMART can help you to enhance efficiency and performance for direct and indirect procurement. You can also use it to automate source-to-pay processes.

The features include:

  • Supplier sourcing
  • Cleaning, validating, classifying, and reporting spend data from all sources
  • Savings tracking for planning cost-reduction programs and discreet savings projects
  • Contract management for authoring, aggregating, and collaborating on contracts
  • Supplier management for managing supplier information, performance, and relationships
  • Procure-to-pay covering order-to-invoice and source-to-contract processes
  • Mobile access
  • User-friendly interface

4. Resilinc

Resilinc lets you obtain supplier performance information through its AI-powered supply chain data monitoring service.

The risk management software’s solutions include EventWatch, RiskShield, Multi-Tier Mapping, and Capability Assessment.

EventWatch monitors your supply chain around the clock, which allows you to identify potential risks, predict how those events will affect your suppliers and sites, and ensure you are allocated and distributed the supply you need. The features include:

  • Loading sites and points of interest
  • Monitoring over 40 types of news
  • Alerts
  • Powered by AI
  • Source tracking
  • Regulatory agencies, news, and social media
  • Event war room for on-the-go impact analysis
  • Scenario planner
  • Research and expert commentary
  • Up-to-date event guidance

RiskShield lets you use dashboards to visualize your multi-tier supply chain, use automated workflows to mitigate risks, and measure supplier scores. The features include:

  • Supplier and site monitoring
  • Identifying critical failure points
  • Configuring risk scores
  • Alerts and war rooms on mobile during events
  • Mitigation process tracking and follow-ups with owners
  • Suppliers’ impact confirmations

Multi-Tier Supply Chain Mapping lets you visualize your supply chain, track supplier workflows centrally, quantify the risk to enhance supplier performance, and view potential vulnerabilities and potential points of failure. The features include:

  • All EventWatch features
  • All RiskShield features
  • Access to the Extensive Supplier Intelligence Repository
  • Multi-tier supply chain mapping with the Survey Assessment module
  • Plug-and-play with your suppliers who use Resilinc
  • Fast identification of disruption-impacted parts
  • Quantifying revenue impact at a supplier, site, part, and product levels
  • Customizable reports and analytics
  • Access to Maturity Model experts
  • Benchmarking information on your resiliency practices with peer comparisons
  • The dedicated customer success manager
  • Survey administration work by Resilinc’s partner relations team
  • Technical support and training

5. LogicManager

LogicManager is a supply chain risk management software platform that you can use to create monitoring and mitigation activities to identify risks to your business. You can also use it for incident reporting and resolution, regulation tracking, and conducting due-diligence activities on your suppliers. The features include:

  • Incident management
  • Enterprise risk management
  • Compliance management
  • IT Gov., security, and privacy
  • Third-party risk
  • Audit management
  • Financial reporting
  • Business continuity and DR
  • Policy management

6. Jaggaer One

Jaggaer One assists you to source the whole procurement process. The risk management software platform can integrate with your existing accounting software and ERP systems to offer insights into your spending, which can help you make the best decisions for your business.

You can also use it for global visibility into suppliers, purchases, and risks in a common workflow, which is great for small business risk management. The features include:

  • Category management
  • Supplier management
  • Spend analytics
  • Sourcing activities
  • Contract-compliant purchasing guides
  • eProcurement
  • Inventory management
  • Invoicing
  • Quality management
  • Supply chain collaboration with direct material suppliers

7. IntegrityNext

IntegrityNext is supply chain risk management software that you can use to identify and mitigate risks through automated risk alerts, social media monitoring, and self-assessments.

Pre-built compliance assessments let your suppliers confirm their compliance with sustainability standards. You can also track messages to review supplier behavior for early warnings on threats to your business’s reputation, and you can learn of public sentiments and awareness. The features include:

Pre-built supplier assessments

CSV data export

Social media monitoring

Supplier compliance assessment

8. Reply

The Reply is risk management software that includes a suite of integrated solutions for supply chain execution management and control.

You can use it to ensure the enhanced operation and precision control of supply chain execution processes for production plants, distribution warehouses, and inter-operational facilities.

The suite includes Click Reply Warehouse Management, Click Reply Yard Management, Click Reply Labor Management, Click Reply Warehouse Performance, and Click Reply Warehouse Billing.

Click Reply Warehouse Management highlight features include:

  • Distribution, production, and e-commerce logistics processes
  • Material handling with automated or human resources
  • Warehouse space optimization and lead time reduction
  • Inventory management
  • Optimized shipping, packaging, and VAS scheduling
  • Productivity analysis and indirect time inputs
  • Specific processes for various sectors

Click Reply Yard Management highlight features include:

  • Inbound and outbound yard operating processes
  • Truck, container, and internal movement tracking
  • Stopover and time analysis
  • Warehouse operations event alerts

Click Reply Labor-Management highlight features include:

  • Personnel, calendar, shift management, and short-term planning
  • Task-by-task holistic work activity modeling
  • Process efficiency and productivity analysis

Click Reply Warehouse Performance highlight features include:

  • Warehouse KPI overviews
  • Current and recent operating performance and historical trend analysis
  • KPIs and customized views based on the application’s data model

Click Warehouse Billing highlight features include:

  • Cost structure and rates modeling
  • Current operating cost estimates
  • Tracking activities outside the system
  • Monthly billing is calculated automatically based on WMS activity

Simplify and streamline your business. Find the best software platforms for supply chain risk management for small businesses from the suggestions above.

Sign up today for a 14-day free trial on Vonza to create an online course, memberships, sales funnels and many more. 

Uyi Abraham is an award-winning business coach, serial entrepreneur, strategist and a best-selling author. He has been educating people on business and success principles for over 20 years. He is the founder of Vonza.com – a SaaS company that makes it easy for entrepreneurs to start and grow a profitable online business.

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