Most organisations don’t really know who is working for them – and that’s a bigger problem that it sounds.

Ask a business to name every active third-party in their supply chain right now – with full details, current compliance status, and an up-to-date risk profile – and you'll usually get a pause, followed by "let me check a few spreadsheets." Probably one that was last updated 12 months ago.

That's not a vendor management problem. That's a visibility crisis. And in industries like construction, mining, utilities, and infrastructure – where most of the real work is done by subcontractors, not employees – flying blind on your supply chain isn't just inefficient. It's a serious risk to your business, your reputation, and in some cases, your legal standing.

We've just released a new guide – Managing Your Extended Enterprise: Why Vendor Management Matters – and it tackles a question most procurement and risk leaders don't ask often enough: is vendor management actually getting the attention it deserves in your organisation, or is it something you revisit only when something goes wrong?

Here's a preview of what's inside.

What is Vendor Management?

It's often treated as a process – onboard a supplier, tick the compliance boxes, move on. But the organisations that get it right treat it as a discipline: something continuous, that needs ongoing attention rather than a checkbox ticked once at the start of a contract.

Think of it through two lenses – a trust-building side ("can we count on you?") focused on qualification and risk, and a collaborative side ("how do we win together?") focused on getting the most out of supplier relationships rather than just managing them.

That collaborative shift matters more than most procurement teams realise. The best vendors have capacity constraints too – they allocate their best people, most competitive pricing, and fastest turnaround times to the clients they most want to work with. The question worth asking isn't just "can we count on our suppliers?" but "would our suppliers count us as a client worth prioritising?"

When it goes wrong: one falls, many fail

We use the Australian construction sector as a case study – and the insolvency numbers are genuinely staggering. Insolvencies rarely happen in isolation either: when a major contractor collapses, it often takes subcontractors and small suppliers down with it.

Realistic domino-effect scenarios show what this looks like in practice – a key vendor going under mid-project, a raw material supplier hit by a natural disaster – and what separates organisations that recover quickly from those that don't. Unsurprisingly, it comes down to visibility. Most procurement leaders have limited insight beyond their tier-one suppliers, and very few can claim full transparency of their entire supply chain.

ESG is now a vendor management issue

Not long ago, ESG sat mostly with investor relations – something addressed in the annual report, kept separate from procurement. That's changed, and fast. Today, organisations are expected to understand and manage ESG risk across their entire supplier ecosystem: carbon footprints, labour practices, diversity, and governance standards included.

"Knowing your supplier" isn't optional anymore

In financial services, "Know Your Customer" is a regulatory requirement. The same standard is fast becoming expected in supply chain management – and it's not just about compliance. Institutional investors increasingly treat ESG performance as a critical part of investment decision-making, which means how well you know your suppliers reflect on how your own organisation is judged.

The fix isn't complicated, but it does take commitment: a single, organisation-wide source of truth for vendor data, where risk profiles, compliance status, and interaction history live in one place – not scattered across spreadsheets, inboxes, and disconnected systems.

So, where does your organisation sit?

The gap between organisations that manage their extended enterprise well and those that don't is growing – but the window to close it is still open. The organisations leading in this space tend to share a few things in common: centralised visibility of their supplier base, technology that automates the administrative burden, suppliers treated as strategic partners rather than transactions, and ESG built into how they evaluate and engage third parties.

The question worth sitting with is a simple one: where does your organisation sit right now – and what are you going to do about it?

Download the full guide

 A Guide to Managing Your Extended Enterprise: Why Vendor Management Matters covers all of this in more detail – the data, the real-world scenarios, and a practical view of what good vendor management looks like in high-risk, high-compliance industries.