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FW FOC US 10, MINORITIES & EMERGING MARKETS
When you think about diversity, what comes to mind? Increasing the diversity of your workforce? Making sure your marketing activities portray your full customer base? But there is one component of corporate diversity that is sometimes overlooked: supplier diversity.
What is supplier divesity?
Simply put, supplier diversity programs endeavor to increase the number of minority-owned businesses that supply goods and services to our nation's corporations. Corporations spend billions of dollars every year purchasing goods and services from other, usually smaller, businesses. Without a concerted effort to make sure minority business enterprises (MBEs) are given a real opportunity to compete for these dollars, they, and the communities they represent, will continue to be marginalized or left behind.
The need for such programs has never been greater. As companies look for more and more ways to save time and money, many are downsizing their vendor ranks and consolidating their purchasing activity with a handful of suppliers. This phenomenon makes it harder to bring in new suppliers, especially MBEs, because they often do not have the capacity levels required to secure such large contracts. In addition, when companies award such large contracts, the natural tendency is to award them to suppliers they have been using for years and for whom they have a certain level of comfort. More often than not, these long-standing suppliers are not minorities.
Why are supplier diversity programs necessary?
As consumers become increasingly aware of the economic impact corporations have in their communities, they have begun to insist that corporations hire and do business with people in their community, and that includes adding MBEs to corporate supplier ranks. Therefore, supplier diversity is no longer just "the right thing to do," it has become a business necessity.
Several franchise companies have had supplier diversity programs in place for several years. They recognized that it makes good business sense to partner with minority suppliers to serve their increasingly diverse customer base. According to Michael Tobolski, senior director of diversity initiatives at Marriott International, Inc., "We look to mirror the communities where we do business, not only by how we staff our...