Supply Chain and Operations

Good understanding and management of third-party networks within supply chains is critical for all businesses - however sustained supply chain disruption and evolving regulatory landscape can make this a difficult challenge. At the same time, the complexity of contracting with your third parties and suppliers, requires thorough portfolio management and complete contract solutions. We help clients navigate these challenges, to mitigate risk and reduce costs, allowing them to focus on their core strategic objectives.

Supply chain challenges are occurring more frequently across the world, with the disruption they cause, not expected to ease in the short to medium term. Businesses are looking for ways to manage these challenges, which balances cost, resilience and sustainability.

83%

of executives say their supply chain investments haven't delivered on their expectations

Source: PwC's 2023 Digital Trends in Supply Chain
52%

of businesses identified misconduct in their supply chain

Source: PwC's GECS 2022
69%

of external fraud is committed by third parties, agents and shared service providers

Source: PwC's GECS 2022

Market context and drivers

Increasing risk exposure and complexity

Increasing sanctions risk exposure as a result of geopolitical events is increasing operational, regulatory and reputational risk. Continuous monitoring of rapidly evolving sanctions regimes is key to balancing compliance and operational continuity.

The move to Net Zero demands greater visibility of the supply chain, specifically the need to fully understand and operationalise reporting requirements to mitigate regulatory risk and greenwashing exposure.

Rising volumes and increased complexity of contract lifecycle management, governance and compliance can result in clients not realising the full value of third party contracts, driving an increased cost-base as well as increasing non-compliance risks.

Advancement of tech solutions

Software solutions are offering businesses the opportunity to bring third party risk and contract management, alongside procurement functions, to unlock value, provide better visibility of data and simplify the technology stack.

Contract Governance & Compliance

We support clients to proactively manage and maximise the value from third party contracts to:

Enhance revenue: identify and monetise revenue leakage across existing commercial agreements
Optimise, reduce and manage contract costs: Recover supplier costs due to over billing or under delivered services, or optimise contractual spend
Contractual risk management: assessing contractual risks across the customer and sales channel e.g. protect IP, sanctions, AB&C
Drive insights across your contract portfolio: Rapidly extract data from contracts supported by Tech/AI and contract specialists to deliver business insights and support informed decision making

We provide a range of services including:

IP and licensing reviews
Supplier contract audit
IT Asset Management (ITAM) services
Channel partner examinations including trade compliance
Contract management and insights during a transaction

Contract Lifecycle Management

Our CLM service not only addresses contract process challenges but also helps in managing spend against contracts, supplier relationships, and service risks. Using leading technologies and GenAI we help our clients to unlock data driven insights from their contracts, enabling them to:

Track and monitor spend against contract terms, ensuring compliance and maximising cost savings.
Drive the effective management of supplier relationships by providing visibility into performance metrics, obligations, and key milestones.
Help identify and mitigate service risks associated with contracts, ensuring contractual obligations are met and potential risks are monitored and managed proactively.

To complement our offering, we have vendor alliances and partnerships with some of the leading CLM technology providers in the market.

How we support our clients

CLM Assessment and Strategy: We conduct a comprehensive assessment of your organisation's current contract management processes and identify opportunities for improvement. We develop a CLM strategy tailored to your specific needs, goals, and industry requirements.
CLM Vendor Selection and Implementation: We assist in selecting the right CLM solution that aligns with your requirements. We provide guidance in evaluating different vendors, conducting demos, and selecting the most suitable CLM software. We also support the implementation process, ensuring smooth integration, data migration, configuration, and user training.
CLM Process Optimisation, Change Management, and Managed Services: We optimise your contract management processes by identifying inefficiencies and recommending process improvements. Our change management support ensures successful adoption of the CLM system, including stakeholder engagement and effective communication. Additionally, our managed services cover contract drafting, execution, and ongoing management, enhancing overall efficiency and compliance.

Third Party Risk Management

We help our clients identify, monitor and respond to third party and supply chain risks, using analytics and intelligence, to provide greater visibility and resilience. Our propositions include; Third Party Risk Management (TPRM), Third Party Resilience, Enhanced Due Diligence, Sanctions Screening and, Supply Chain & Risk Analytics.

Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) - There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to TPRM transformation. Working with key stakeholders, we can review and improve existing TPRM frameworks, as well as design and run bespoke end-to-end frameworks that are tailored to client needs. We have experience working with Digital Procurement solutions, such as Coupa, to help embed and transform TPRM as part of overall business strategy.

Third Party Resilience - Our tech-enabled solution uses multiple data sources to monitor and assess third party resilience. It provides a holistic view of key third parties’ resilience and criticality using scoring and interactive visualisations. Third parties’ resilience can be compared with each other and tracked over time to identify high-risk entities and emerging trends.
Enhanced Due Diligence - We can support clients in understanding third party opportunities and risks by interrogating a range of public records and human intelligence, identifying red flags and summarising reputational suitability.
Sanctions Screening - With sanction regimes rapidly evolving and the resulting compliance challenges driving risk, our technology and regulatory experts can transform and execute the systems required to operate a successful sanctions programme.
Supply Chain & Risk Analytics - We help clients to detect and monitor for high risk activity, such as fraud, error and corruption, in their supply chain and procurement process.

We advise on the latest analytics technology to monitor third party intelligence data and transactional data, and we lead on the implementation of technologies such as the Quantexa & PwC Risk Detect platforms.

Response

We quickly respond to supply chain and third party incidents, bringing a holistic view - via Investigations, Restructuring support and Contentious Recoveries & Claims - to protect our clients’ reputation and safeguard resilience.

Featured insights

UK Digital Procurement Survey 2024

Our latest global PwC Digital Procurement Survey draws on insights from 1,000 procurement professionals spread across 60 countries to position the future of digital procurement and shares priorities and recommendations to drive growth.

PwC Digital Trends in Supply Chain Survey 2022

A survey of operations and information technology leaders, C-suite executives and other digital supply chain officers on managing current disruptions and taking advantage of opportunities that can help improve their chances for long-term success.

The smart moves your supply chain needs now

Supply Chain and Operations Transformation

Take a human-led tech-powered approach to supply chain transformation to optimise cost, build resilience and increase productivity across your organisation.

Our Technology Alliances

Examples of how we have helped our clients

Contract Lifecycle Management
PwC assisted a British multinational bank to simplify their supplier contracting process and reduce their time to contract. We helped bring together their legal, technology and procurement teams, along with their external legal counsel, by rewriting their global master templates, drafting a clause library and implementing the CLM vendor to digitally enable their contracts.

Third Party Due Diligence
Supported a client to undertake third party due diligence as part of its compliance programme. Our screening spanned 70+ countries and uncovered issues ranging from bribery allegations, sanctions and environmental law and labour rights violations.

Contract Governance & Compliance
Supporting a global multinational tech company to deliver a range of recurring contract services designed to support broader business strategies and initiatives. We leveraged our multi-disciplinary team of technical, accounting, and contract specialists coupled with our technology platforms to perform IP license reviews, channel partner examinations, and trade and sanction compliance support. In addition to mitigating risk and supporting customer success, our work also returned significant shareholder value and a ROI.

Third Party Risk Management
Designed a simplified Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) process for a global client, including advice on the right technology solution to facilitate TPRM workflow across the business. Our work included support with accompanying TPRM policies and procedures, helping the client achieve a consistent implementation across the business.

Supply Chain Risk Analytics
Working alongside our Alliance partner, Quantexa, we deployed their advanced analytics platform to help our client proactively monitor for supplier risk, fraud, error and non-compliance across their procurement, supply chain and compliance functions. Our client is now able to identify hidden risks across numerous typologies including procurement fraud, sanctions and bribery & corruption.