and veteran-owned businesses) in our procurement processes by ensuring fair and equitable access for all, and in doing so, sign new contracts with diverse suppliers that help to build their capacity, experience, and ability to scale. To get there, we first had to establish the foundations of the program, by becoming corporate members of five advocacy organizations that certify companies as “diverse” (including WBE Canada), learning from the experiences of organizations with established programs, and identifying a supplier diversity champion in our Procurement team.
and the sooner you start, the sooner you begin to make incremental change and create impact.
Melanie Travers is the Director of Sourcing and Supplier Management at EDC, responsible for EDC’s procurement and vendor management functions. A Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) with over 21 years’ experience in financial management and management consulting, her areas of expertise are target operating model design and business process improvement.
Next, we updated our Supplier Registration Form to identify which of our new suppliers are diverse, leveraged the events organized by certifying councils to meet with diverse suppliers, and leveraged our corporate memberships to obtain coaching with the development of our program. Along the way, we learned that we needed time to familiarize ourselves with the service offerings of diverse suppliers and make connections between suppliers and our internal buyers, and to examine our procurement processes to identify and remove potential barriers. Thinking of this endeavour as more of a strategy than a program has helped myself and my team understand this is not something we’re going to finish in one year. Since announcing our intention to create more opportunities for equity-seeking businesses through our supply chain in 2020, we’ve created a registry of diverse suppliers (existing and new), confirmed an executive champion for the program, and signed a number of new contracts with diverse suppliers.
IBM and Supplier Diversity Celebrating 50 years and counting Find out more: ibm.biz/GlobalSupplierDiversity
This year, some of our objectives include updating our Procurement Policy to include requirements related to supplier diversity, organizing a matchmaking event between diverse suppliers and our internal buyers, continuing to build our database of diverse suppliers, and identifying supplier diversity champions within EDC’s lines of business. Ensuring our procurement processes foster a higher participation rate among diverse suppliers is a longterm commitment and learning experience. But that shouldn’t scare off any organizations that haven’t yet started work in this space. There are countless supports and partners to help guide us through this,
WBE Canada Magazine | Issue 5 | March 2022
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