Читать книгу Supplier Diversity For Dummies - Kathey K. Porter - Страница 40

The 2000s were marked by several shifts in the marketplace — the tech industry, changes in demographics, the growing influence of consumers, and the increased globalization of business — that had a tremendous impact on corporations, the likes of which they hadn’t experienced before. Each of these factors presented new challenges and raised the stakes for supplier diversity to not simply comply with government regulations or push its feel-good message as the right thing to do. Supplier diversity needed to help the organization maintain a competitive advantage by making the business case to support its reason for being.

As I describe in Chapter 7, a strong business case for supplier diversity focuses on the tangible impact or metrics you can monitor through measured performance results. It’s sustainable in ways that the phases in the two preceding sections weren’t. Compliance allows programs to be challenged or risk being shut down based on court rulings. Programs based on an emotional appeal like “the right thing to do” can shift depending on leadership’s priorities or be difficult to justify when decisions are based solely on numbers.