Sedex has expanded its supply chain platform with a set of upgrades aimed at giving companies a clearer view beyond their direct suppliers and a sharper picture of site-level risk.
The changes come as businesses continue to struggle with visibility further up the chain. In Sedex’s own sample survey, only 12% of organisations said they held data from most of their second-tier suppliers. KPMG has reached a similar conclusion in separate research, finding that just 28% of busine...
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sses have a clear view of their second tier. Sedex’s data also suggests the gap can be even wider at site level, with 15% of supply chain worksites said to have no measures in place to ensure their own suppliers or subcontractors meet required labour standards.
That matters because regulatory pressure is increasing. The push for deeper mapping and more detailed due diligence is being reinforced by rules such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which is raising expectations around how far companies must look into their sourcing networks.
Sedex says the platform changes are designed to address two linked problems: knowing who sits upstream, and understanding where the greatest risks lie. On the mapping side, suppliers can now add and tag their upstream relationships by tier, building out their networks more quickly and linking them to individual worksites rather than simply corporate entities.
Before any information is shared with buying organisations, the upstream supplier must confirm the relationship. Sedex says that extra step is intended to protect data quality and build confidence between trading partners.
According to Sedex chief executive Jon Hancock, the pressure on sourcing teams has intensified as operating conditions have become less predictable. Speaking in a company statement, he said that broad network models and head-office data are no longer enough, adding that businesses need information that distinguishes between each individual facility. He said the combination of site-level detail and richer risk insight allows corporate teams to focus resources on the most significant gaps, risks or impacts in their supply chains.
The buying side of the platform has also been updated. New analytics dashboards allow users to drill into individual tiers, identify higher-risk suppliers and spot weaknesses in mitigation processes that might otherwise remain hidden. Sedex argues that this should help companies act more quickly and with greater precision across large, extended supply chains.
The risk assessment tools have been broadened as well. Sedex says it now offers more refined risk scores across 15 topics for the more than 120,000 worksites registered on the platform. Its Audit Risk pillar is based on non-compliance patterns identified through more than 250,000 SMETA audits at 115,000 sites in 106 countries, including the latest SMETA 7.0 data. The company says this is intended to highlight issues revealed in actual audit findings, rather than relying only on broader contextual indicators.
A revised Wages Risk pillar now combines wage-related information from more than 70,000 site-level SMETA audits with external expert sources. Sedex says this produces stronger inherent risk calculations and helps identify where pay is most likely to fall short of legal requirements. It has also introduced a new environmental risk assessment feature that brings environmental data together at worksite level, so users can prioritise due diligence and environmental management across their supplier base.
Duncan Ellis, Sedex chief product and technology officer, said the hardest part of managing supply chain sustainability risk is deciding where to intervene first. Speaking for the company, he said the platform combines global sources with site-level audit data across multiple tiers to turn that challenge into a more evidence-based decision.
The latest product changes follow another recent Sedex release: a self-serve interactive tool designed to help companies work out which major supply chain and sustainability regulations may apply to their operations. Together, the updates suggest Sedex is trying to position its platform not just as a mapping and audit system, but as a broader compliance and risk-management tool for companies under growing scrutiny from regulators, customers and investors.
Source: Noah Wire Services
