About LEF

In March 2022, SupplHi debuted at LEF, the largest and most integrated digital model company in the world. Born in 2011 as a joint venture between McKinsey & Company, Confindustria Alto Adriatico and other local partners, LEF is an experiential training center that showcases the best practices in terms of instruments, organizational processes and team engagement.

LEF allows visitors to explore, try and put into practice methods and knowledge necessary for improving business processes, thus creating a real-life model company with machinery, offices, real products and operators. The Model Factory has become an accelerator of lean and digital transformations where it is possible to experience first-hand more than 30 providers of the best technological and organizational solutions on the market for Industry 4.0 initiatives. Since 2022, SupplHi – the best-of-breed platform for Vendor Management – is among the solutions shown within the factory.

 

How to experience SupplHi at LEF

Working in close collaboration with McKinsey consultants, we started our collaboration in late 2021 by identifying four different use cases to understand how the SupplHi digital platform can support Buyer organizations in dealing with large and complex vendor bases and anticipate the recurrence of problems.

Easy Vendor Scouting

The first use case we addressed and explored is how scouting processes can be simplified and streamlined to avoid recurring difficulties. The use case, addressed using our Vendor Scouting module, generated from the analysis of common pain points that typically make the job of Procurement Managers or Category Managers harder than it needs to be.

For example, there is often limited visibility on market benchmarks, coupled with a lack of understanding of ongoing market trends and the lack of a centralized location where fact base analysis and vendor-related information are stored and easily accessible, leading to long and difficult scouting processes.

The SupplHi’s Vendor Scouting module tackles all these problems at once, allowing Buyer Organization users to look for suppliers of a specific category of supply and within the necessary geographical perimeter with a few clicks; moreover, the vendor profiles already contain the basic data of the company, the capabilities, some references, the production locations and much more.

Efficient Vendor Performance Evaluation

It is no secret that evaluating the performance of a vendor can lead to unnecessary complications, the proliferation of different methodologies as well as the loss of knowledge on a project, when not done properly. The use case created within Industrial Co. – the name of the fictional factory in LEF – showed how the lack of a standard and systematic supplier performance measurement prevented Industrial Co. management from having easy and fast access to legacy performance evaluations, thus complicating the decision-making process.

The use case is addressed using SupplHi’s Vendor Performance Evaluation module. The module, leveraging precise and easy-to-use surveys, allows for the right user to be assigned evaluation and approval processes, facilitating internal operations and making the evaluation itself more efficient and transparent.

Moreover, all users have visibility of the Purchase Orders / Projects being evaluated, as well as a comparison of the Supplier’s performance with the average score from vendors within the same category of supply. Managerial dashboards – at Vendor, Category, Project, and Division levels – complete the module, allowing prompt and actionable decisions.

A comprehensive look at your Supply Chain’s Sustainability

The latest regulations regarding Corporate Sustainability Reporting demand for the creation of Non-Financial Reports, but several challenges stand in the path of organizations like Industrial Co.

Among the most common ones, we find the lack of ready-to-use data, the necessity to involve a great number of internal resources and to engage suppliers, and, ultimately, the lack of a ready-to-use methodology for calculating suppliers’ ESG performance.

To address this use case, Industrial Co. explores SupplHi’s ESG Meter, which assesses suppliers’ ESG performance through an industry-shared and transparent methodology implemented within the module and updated twice a year. From the platform, Sustainability Managers can filter and download all data necessary for the monitoring and reporting of sustainability levels with a few clicks. Moreover, suppliers receive suggestions for improvement actions they could implement to improve their scores.

As in most of SupplHi’s modules, the ESG Meter is equipped with managerial dashboards at Vendor, Category and Country levels, facilitating a comprehensive overview of the status of the supply chain.

Perform Compliance Checks at any time

The fourth use case explored relates to the possibility to cope with the appearance of a supplier on an international sanction list. The use case, tailored on SupplHi’s Compliance Checks module, is especially relevant nowadays and could have meaningful implications on the reputation of a buyer organization.

The Compliance Checks module allows buyer organization users to countercheck suppliers’ names – both at company and at natural persons level – against the major international sanction lists, at any time. The lists are updated automatically every night and can be integrated with PEPs or adverse media that the customer is already subscribed to, through a bring-your-own-license model.

 

Visit the LEF website to book your visit and find out more about the services offered: in-person and remote training, consulting and new technologies testing.