Between two thirds and three quarters of organizations experience fraud every year and the average organization affected by fraud loses 2.0% of revenue in the UK and EU and 1.7% in the US. This means that, even if your organization is not aware of fraud, there’s still a 66%, or more, chance that it is being defrauded. And it should know for sure, one way or the other. Because if fraud isn’t detected, dealt with, and discouraged quickly, you end up with headlines like this:
- Alibaba.com CEO And COO out because of vendor fraud
involving over 2,000 suppliers and 100 staff members - Former Vodafone employee facing fraud charges
for the fraudulent requisition of €2.3 million of services - The great Sainsbury’s potato fraud:
Jail for vegetable buyer who took £5 million in bribes
Which all have one thing in common — each of these frauds involved the payment of millions of dollars to fake suppliers. Not over billings, not duplicate billings, fake billings from fake suppliers. A situation that can easily be prevented with a good supplier information management or supplier visibility system that validated the accuracy of the supplier information and the legitimacy of the supplier. If the supplier information management and visibility system cannot validate the existence and legitimacy of the supplier, then AP knows that a detailed manual investigation should be undertaken before the supplier is authorized to submit invoices, and that such authorization should require at least two sign-offs by high-level personnel. This simple process, which is yet another example of the value of supply chain visibility, would prevent fraudulent invoices from non-legitimate suppliers from ever getting in the system and greatly decrease the organization’s exposure to fraud.
And this is only one example of the many types of savings opportunities that good Supply Chain Visibility can bring your organization. For a deeper insight into the other ways in which Supply Chain Visibility can bring your organization recurring year-over-year savings, download SI’s latest white-paper on The ROI of Supply Chain Resiliency: It’s More Than You Think, sponsored by Resilinc. You might be surprised at just how much hidden value you can extract from your Supply Management operations with good visibility and resiliency.