Source: WEConnect Canada On our last blog post, we wrote about the WeConnect Canada’s Opening Doors conference. WeConnect Canada distributes the Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) certification for majority owned, and controlled women’s businesses. The conference is about how certifications such as the WBE is a great strategy for creating opportunities to provide a competitive edge for bidding on corporate contracts as part of supplier diversity programs.
But what is supplier diverstiy? According to WeConnect Canada:
Supplier diversity is all about building relationships and trust to enable business opportunities between corporations and historically under-utilized groups, like women business owners.
In essence, Supplier Diversity programs were creative to give minorities an opportunity to secure contracts with government agencies, major companies and corporations as qualified small business owners. This has come about a reaction to minority and women owned businesses being classified as under-utilized small business owners in order to promote balance and diversity for participating organizations.
In the United States, the Supplier Diversity program was conceptualized in 1953 along with the establishment of the Small Business Administration . The federal government’s efforts to create opportunities for often underrepresented small businesses was a natural segway into providing those same opportunities for minority groups, such as women-owned businesses.
These days a majority of large companies are indeed looking into how to incorporate minority-owned businesses into their partnership agreement and this is especially the case in the logistics and supply chain industry. The biggest challenge is discovery; large corporations have trouble identifying women-owned businesses. Hence the creation of certifying networking organizations such as WEConnect.
These types of certifications allow large corporation to find these companies and take advantage of the following benefits:
A Ready and Capable Force to be Reckoned With Women-owned businesses are an untapped force to be reckoned with. There are 6.5 million majority women-owned businesses in the United States, employing 7.1 million people according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Large corporations agree that there is a strong business case for investing in women; a recent McKinsey & Company survey results showed that 35% of senior executives reported efforts to empower women in emerging markets led to increased profits with an additional 38% reporting an increase in profits in the future. This is even more emphasized in the world of logistics, a well known gentleman’s club but is slowly changing due to the benefits that partnering with diversity suppliers can provide, which brings us to our next point:
Unique Opportunities from Unique Expertise Businesses that are primarily female-owned are often noted for their ability to have a unique view of the industry and can offer a fresh take on not just the ideas involved in the process but the along every step along the business process. Traditionally only seen in the service sector, women-owned enterprises are now in many specialized industries such as manufacturing, construction, and other industrial fields. This is evident in the efforts that large corporations like Cisco are taking steps into providing the most sustainable means to empower women through supplier diversity and inclusion.
And that’s all for us this week! If you liked this blog post, why not subscribe to our blog ? If you’re interested in what we do as a 3rd party logistics provider, don’t hesitate to check out our services (as expressed above, we are very pro finding you the lowest total cost!). We’re also in the twittersphere , so give us a follow to get the latest logistics and supply chain news! To find out more about WEConnect and getting certified as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE), visit their site at www.weconnectcanada.org
BONUS: Check out Inc.com’s Top 10 Women-run Companies !
