AI-Enabled Digital Risk Mitigation Solution for Supplier Due Diligence
The Challenge: Our UK-based client was required to ensure suppliers were compliant with labour laws for a leading Fashion Company. This meant they had to manually process large amounts of unstructured, paper-based information. A large number of new and existing suppliers had to undergo stringent due diligence procedures in order to satisfy internal and regulatory standards. This placed a significant burden on a small, highly skilled team who were responsible for ensuring all suppliers were compliant.
There was a need for automation and Digital Risk Management tools that would scan applications and associated documents to return extracted highlights for humans. Demands from stakeholders required a system that would improve speed, efficiency and predictability.
The Solution: Due to increasing volumes of application processing and increased regulatory obligations, the Client approached pTools to design, develop, and deliver an enterprise-level solution for risk assessment in the supplier onboarding process.
pTools expertise, skillset and experience in Digital Risk Management were ideally suited to the task at hand.
The Supplier Due Diligence solution by pTools imports and extracts between twenty to thirty risk measurement points from the application form using content analysis and metadata extraction to pre-screen and calculate an aggregate score from the information submitted and highlights suspicious applications for review.
The solution combines the processing of form elements submitted and leverages a variety of technologies, including Digital Risk Management, AI (Artificial Intelligence), Image Processing, 3rd Party Reference Data, User and Request Data, and Lookups, into a single centralised solution.
Starting with the Forms data submitted, the solution acts as an organisation's risk reduction and extraction engine that persistently processes multiple data sources and adds reference data for use in 3rd party solutions.
The solution reduces the need for manual intervention and allows staff to focus on approval steps, enabling the processing of a higher volume of applications. Inbuilt managed escalation to senior personnel responsible for key decisions in Forms Processing and workflow solutions.
The solution uses below tools for information processing:
Network Analysis
Whitelist Grey list Lookups
Email Validations and Lookup
Phone Number Verification
Named Entity Recognition
OCR ID Analysis
Text Comparison
Sentiment Analysis (for text)
Document Notarisation
Text Keyword Analysis
Image Analysis
Workflow
The Result: Since launch, all the Client’s suppliers have undergone a strict screening process. They, and the regulator, have been reassured that all suppliers are compliant with both legal and voluntary labour standards. All new suppliers now follow the same screening process.
Key employees’ skills are better utilised on higher-level issues. Rather than trawling through mountains of documents for pertinent information, efforts are focused on tasks that are just as important and require the nuance of human decision-making. The allocation of resources allows for greater efficiency for all related operations.
In terms of technical specifications and capacity, the environment is dynamic and scalable, allowing for uninterrupted service.
High-level management users have control over system categorization and list management. This minimizes the dependency on the supplier. The system allows the client to be self-sufficient in data management and processing.
The structured work process allows for greater predictability in day-to-day operations - particularly at peak times or important business and regulatory dates. This predictability is a key factor in improving operational efficiency for the client.
After rounds of stringent tests and reviews, the new automated system was found to be as accurate in identifying relevant information as the previous manual method.
Stakeholder demands for efficient, reliable, and predictable operations were met and exceeded. The system is now a crucial component for the client.
