Our services

For most organisations, third parties play a fundamental role in enabling them to operate effectively and achieve their objectives; consequently, they can present their clients with a broad range of potentially significant risks.

From successful strategic execution with joint venture partners, to operational disruption should a key supplier fail, as well as the legal and reputational risks associated with third parties representing you in the market place, your organisation's success and brand equity can be critically dependent on your third party ecosystem. Coupled with the ever increasing reliance being placed on supply chains across numerous industry sectors, procurement and supply chain management done well can be a robust source of competitive advantage and enhance organisational impact. As a result, the 'extended enterprise', and its careful, proactive and ongoing management by the organisation, is now firmly in focus for boards and regulators alike.

Due to the size of third party networks, which can consist of tens of thousands of entities for some organisations, as well as the breadth of risk exposures such networks face, we recognise management is no easy task. The way we support our clients is therefore based on pragmatic solutions to address these realties, deploying risk profiling techniques to validate which third parties the organisation has key dependencies on and vulnerabilities to and associated risk exposures. We then develop appropriate risk response strategies in order to prevent and mitigate potential value loss caused by third party under-performance, deployed throughout the third party management lifecycle, including initial procurement and due diligence, ongoing performance management, monitoring and audit, as well as termination and exit management

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How do we help?

The support MERC & CO provides is based on our experience successfully partnering with SMEs, FTSE 100 / Fortune 500 companies and large Public Sector departments and includes:

• Third party risk management / compliance framework design and implementation (including offshore outsourced services set-up and third party implementation support)

• Development of end-to-end procurement lifecycle management from strategy to contract management

• Third party risk profiling and stratification

• Deep-dive risk assessment / diligence on specific suppliers / partners

• Third party compliance risk assessment*

• Third party Key Risk Indicator (KRI) suite and dashboard / reporting development 

• Programme design and administration of third party compliance monitoring / auditing

• Third party management software selection and configuration

• Contract governance design

• Contract performance assurance 

• Integration of sustainability and social value in procurement and supply chain management

• Sustainability maturity assessment, implementation and reporting support throughout your value chain

• Staff / management / third party training

*common areas of compliance risk associated with third parties may include: anti-bribery and corruption; data privacy; anti-money laundering; sanctions; conflicts of interest; modern slavery; safeguarding and reputation; conflict minerals; and environmental and sustainability standards.