Sigmoidal Success Story
60% Time Reduction Spent on Supplier Risk Assessment
60%
Time reduced previously spent on supplier assessment
31
Different variables taken into consideration for every prediction
187 174
Suppliers assessed as of 2020
What was the business problem?
With both a great number of suppliers and a high number of variables, it can be quite overwhelming for a human to make such an analysis and decision, and often some vital information might be missed. As a result, selecting the supplier and maintaining a proper relationship can be difficult.
Our client wanted to create a platform that would allow him to compare and choose suppliers, maintain them, then continuously assess and manage risk in a more informed manner. The main business goal here was to allocate less time for research and prevent potential financial losses caused by inadequate supplier selection.
What savings and profits does the client achieve?
We leveraged machine learning to reduce the time spent on research and risk assessment from 5 hours to 3 hours a day on average. Sigmoidal enabled the client to compare a much higher number of suppliers automatically. As a result, helpful, non-obvious patterns can be found. The solution allowed our client to predict outcomes based on historical data, enabling him to make better-informed decisions.
How did we accomplish it?
Sigmoidals’ team developed a hybrid machine learning-based system with the majority of cases being handled automatically. However, more complicated cases were flagged for manual verification. Therefore, we made sure to embed two crucial stages into our clients’ software:
Risks analysis: There are a significant amount of supplier-related risks that have to be considered. These risks types include:
- Financial: Risk involved with using a third-party supplier. There can always be a problem of tax changes, bankruptcy, or price change.
- Delivery: include government or economic issues, natural disasters, etc. Such risk cannot be predicted and avoided, preventing a supplier from delivering goods.
- Compliance: it is essential to ensure that a company you choose is compliant with standards and regulations. Otherwise, you can face fines.
- Image: it is also vital to ensure that your chosen company is ethical and professional.
- Quality: quality and performance supplier risk may involve over-promising and under-delivering, violating contracts.
Choosing Variables: There are a lot of parameters based on which you can make a comparison. We decided to include quite many of them, so although our client named the crucial ones, he still had a chance to look at different aspects of the chosen company. Variables included (among others):
- product price – most basic variable, which everyone takes into account
- tariff and taxes – if the supplier is from another country, it is essential to know government regulations
- product quality
- percentage of faulty items
- delivery performance
Data sets generated from SRM actions, such as supplier assessments, audits, and credit scoring, provide an essential basis for further decisions regarding a supplier.
How did we boost the project with Sigmoidal DNA?
Design Authority
We employed our proprietary architecture for reproducible research, which enabled our client to compare various suppliers without a need to redefine the principal parameters or repeat the research cycle.
Product-focus Method
We minimized the total cost of ownership by automating the supplier risks analysis, including all crucial factors, and as a result lowering the workforce needed, while maintaining the analysis quality.
Knowledge Sharing
Sigmoidal organized technical workshops for the clients’ team, enabling them to make future decisions regarding the software easier, and develop more complex features.
Deployment Strategy
We utilized the Blue-Green deployment method allowing us to release a model transferring production traffic from the old environment to a new one, both of which were running in production.
What technical stack has been designed and implemented?
