Deep Supplier Insights For Resilient Retail Supply Chains
Lead Participant:
SOURCING PLAYGROUND LIMITED
Abstract
Sourcing Playground aims to improve the resilience and mitigate risks of UK retailers supply chains that have largely been affected by the Coronavirus.
The UK retail market has 306,655 companies generating 5% of the total GDP with a total £394 billion of sales (2019) employing over 2.9 million people. Retail is a key sector and backbone to British economy.
Coronavirus has highlighted the industry's reliance on outdated, offline methods of sourcing and qualifying manufacturers for their own brand products with companies being slow to react to changing customer spending because of supply chain issues.
Sourcing Playground is an online platform for supplier discovery and qualification for brands and retailers. Having successfully received grant funding, Sourcing Playground has developed and launched an innovative, AI driven sourcing and procurement web app for the UK retail market, used by buying and sourcing teams for the development of private label products. The initial grant enabled Sourcing to sign 2 major contracts as early paid pilots and is now seeking further funding to meet the new technical challenges to meet client demand and increase speed to market and scale new business and commercial activities to generate more sales.
The innovative project has three main objectives:
1. improving UK retailers' competitiveness and speed to market - reducing 5% of companies' associated sourcing costs
2. increasing their supply chains' resilience through diversification
3. improving companies' digital capabilities ensuring buying roles and jobs remain within the UK.
The product will ensure retailers within the fast-moving consumer goods sectors can scale supplier discovery and qualification for their tier 1 and tier 2 supply chains, improving supplier transparency and improved strategic sourcing. The first in the industry online web app will also provide deeper market insights so that retailers can make more confident buying decisions and increase their speed to market for new products from six months down to one month.
The pandemic has highlighted that companies with production of products in one country open themselves up to huge risks. The project aims to allow UK retailers to quickly diversify their supplier base in days as opposed to months, by discovering and qualifying new secondary and tertiary vendors helping to mitigate risk and reliance on one country for their production. Only 7% of retailers say they had enough flexibility in their supply chains during the pandemic to be able to switch suppliers. We are aiming to increase this figure to 30%. (Retail Economics, 2020).
The UK retail market has 306,655 companies generating 5% of the total GDP with a total £394 billion of sales (2019) employing over 2.9 million people. Retail is a key sector and backbone to British economy.
Coronavirus has highlighted the industry's reliance on outdated, offline methods of sourcing and qualifying manufacturers for their own brand products with companies being slow to react to changing customer spending because of supply chain issues.
Sourcing Playground is an online platform for supplier discovery and qualification for brands and retailers. Having successfully received grant funding, Sourcing Playground has developed and launched an innovative, AI driven sourcing and procurement web app for the UK retail market, used by buying and sourcing teams for the development of private label products. The initial grant enabled Sourcing to sign 2 major contracts as early paid pilots and is now seeking further funding to meet the new technical challenges to meet client demand and increase speed to market and scale new business and commercial activities to generate more sales.
The innovative project has three main objectives:
1. improving UK retailers' competitiveness and speed to market - reducing 5% of companies' associated sourcing costs
2. increasing their supply chains' resilience through diversification
3. improving companies' digital capabilities ensuring buying roles and jobs remain within the UK.
The product will ensure retailers within the fast-moving consumer goods sectors can scale supplier discovery and qualification for their tier 1 and tier 2 supply chains, improving supplier transparency and improved strategic sourcing. The first in the industry online web app will also provide deeper market insights so that retailers can make more confident buying decisions and increase their speed to market for new products from six months down to one month.
The pandemic has highlighted that companies with production of products in one country open themselves up to huge risks. The project aims to allow UK retailers to quickly diversify their supplier base in days as opposed to months, by discovering and qualifying new secondary and tertiary vendors helping to mitigate risk and reliance on one country for their production. Only 7% of retailers say they had enough flexibility in their supply chains during the pandemic to be able to switch suppliers. We are aiming to increase this figure to 30%. (Retail Economics, 2020).
Lead Participant | Project Cost | Grant Offer |
---|---|---|
SOURCING PLAYGROUND LIMITED | £67,088 | £ 67,088 |
People |
ORCID iD |
Heather Williams (Project Manager) |