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Unless you're a vendor's largest client, or one of the largest companies in the world, I'm not sure how you "force" another company to do something. (I've always wanted to be on a call between two of the ten largest companies in the world - just to hear how they negotiate with a near peer and not be able to stonewall everything.)
It's unfortunate when companies aren't willing to use automated processes, but there are numerous (besides legal) reasons NOT to participate. Vendors have their own workflow efficiencies; we all count on those efficiencies when retaining third parties. Their methods of responding to the flood of questions they receive will have been worked out over time to be most efficient for ----themselves. That efficiency contributes to their overall value proposition for us.
Original Message:
Sent: 10-25-2023 07:10 PM
From: Dave Pendroy
Subject: Suppliers refusal to answer due diligence requests via a spend management/risk assessment portal or platform
We recently implemented a spend management and risk assessment platform. The change management with our suppliers has gone well for the most part. However, we've recently had two suppliers notify us that their legal departments to not allow them to complete our questionnaires via the tool. While part of me wants to respect the decision and assume they've taken a risk informed stance; it is creating challenges in our process, ability to drive workflow, calculate inherent and residual risk and eventually will be an audit finding. I doubt we're the first company to face this and I'm interested in perspectives, effective challenges put back to suppliers, rationale for forcing then to use your tools or how your organization worked around it. TIA.