Legacy tools were not built for the speed and complexity of modern Procurement. The Craft supplier intelligence layer unifies fragmented supplier data into one connected platform, giving Procurement teams the tools to accelerate vetting and onboarding, and continuously monitor supplier health.
When systems, teams, and processes are connected, Procurement becomes a powerhouse of resilience and a competitive advantage for the entire enterprise.
Ilya Levtov, co-founder and CEO of Craft, on how Craft is helping strengthen supplier networks and reducing disruption in an era of supply chain uncertainty and geopolitical cross-winds.
In an era of uncertainty, visibility and collaboration are important tools to drive resilience. Powering these tools is something that Ilya Levtov, the co-founder and CEO of Craft, spends lots of time thinking about.
Managing suppliers while understanding risk is a key capability powering enterprise growth and agility. According to Levtov, supplier risk touches nearly every corner of the business, and while it involves legal, finance, supply chain, and IT, the best place for it to sit is with Procurement. “In large organisations, each of these groups can contribute in some way to vetting suppliers at intake, or checking compliance with audits and regulations,” discusses Levtov. “The challenge is that these teams rarely operate in a unified system, rather, it can be a lot of ad hoc, manual processes. As a result, suppliers can get stuck in a multi-step vetting process with little visibility, yet Procurement gets blamed for a delay onboarding a new supplier. A unified view and software platform that manages every step of the process consistently and clearly changes the game.”
Beyond workflows, the same applies to knowledge sharing. Too often, valuable insights about a supplier end up buried in an email, or trapped in a document, unavailable to others who could benefit from it. By surfacing and sharing that intelligence, we can prevent duplication of effort, streamline decision-making, and make everyone’s work more efficient.”
Levtov firmly believes in the strategic value of Procurement, but stresses that the definition of Supply Chain can be inaccurate. “We believe the term supply “chain” is a misnomer, it’s more a supply network, an ecosystem. “Suppliers are interconnected, forming relationships not just directly, but also indirectly. In many cases, the flow is not linear but inverted, overlapping, and multi-directional.”
Fortunately, available data enabled with AI can help get a handle on this complexity and give Procurement teams a rich picture of their supplier ecosystem, complete with strategic insight, risk intelligence and collaboration tools. The result is a more strategic Procurement organisation, that reduces disruption, builds resilience, and competitive advantage.
Find out more about Craft here.