Last week, Sourcing Champions held a workshop in collaboration with EcoVadis titled “Procurement Unshaken: Mastering Risk Management with EcoVadis Solutions.” In this two-part workshop, we explored how combining the 15M Risk Management Framework with EcoVadis’s cutting-edge technology can help procurement build resilience and stay “unshaken” in times of disruption.
The 15M Risk Management Framework
Drawing on both academic research and hands-on procurement experience, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Hess and Sourcing Champions developed the 15M Risk Management Framework as a best-practice guide for navigating today’s age of disruption.
Building on the 15M Procurement Transformation Framework, which examines procurement decisions and strategies across five strategic areas, we believe that risk flows through all of them, from strategic direction all the way to supplier engagement. To give procurement teams a comprehensive view of risk management, the 15M Risk Management Framework is structured as a “Risk cube” with three dimensions, decision-making level, risk type, and risk management approach.
The framework is further broken down into 7 “Building Blocks,” each representing a component of risk management in procurement that can be implemented independently. In this workshop, we focused on three of them: Cause-oriented risk management, Impact-oriented risk management, and Supplier risk management
Get your copy of 15M Risk management white paperThe Three Lenses of Risk Management
Targeting top risks starts with defining where to look for them. That is the value of the first three Building Blocks of the 15M Risk Management Framework, which form the focus of the first part of the workshop: Cause-Oriented Risk Management, Impact-Oriented Risk Management, and Resilience in Crisis.
Cause-Oriented Risk Management focuses on identifying and assessing critical procurement risks using tools such as the Risk Map. Procurement teams must identify top risks, for example, geopolitical tensions, freight line disruptions, or regulatory changes, weighing both impact and probability.
Impact-Oriented Risk Management, on the other hand, starts from a different point. Rather than beginning with an identified risk, it looks at materials or suppliers with potentially high or existential impact, for example, through a bill of materials analysis. Even without a specific threat on the horizon, this approach assesses whether dependencies can be economically reduced.
Lastly, Resilience in Crisis measures a procurement team’s capacity to strengthen its capabilities to manage disruptions effectively, across dimensions such as leadership and culture, or transparency. This can be combined with the 15M Maturity Assessment, which uses the 15M Framework to assess your team’s readiness.
In the workshop, participants got hands-on with both the cause-oriented and impact-oriented approaches, plotting a risk heatmap and examining material and supplier risk. This was paired with EcoVadis’s solution capabilities, which combine multiple risk views into a single dashboard showing supplier risk levels, supplier concentration, geographic exposure, and ESG performance scores, helping participants easily identify and prioritize the risks that matter most.
Supplier Risk Scoring
Combining cause-oriented and impact-oriented risk management with a focus on supplier strategies is the heart of Building Block 6: Supplier Risk Management, and the focus of our second workshop. In this building block, industry-specific risk categories are defined, and risks are evaluated based on expected damage (probability of occurrence × extent of damage) for each risk type at the supplier level. These aggregated, quantified values result in a risk score, which serves as the key risk indicator.
In the workshop, participants engaged in quantifying supplier risk into a scoring system, making it easier to form strategies to mitigate risk. Across multiple risk types including ESG & sustainability risk, financial risk, supply disruption risk, and quality risk, we demonstrated how to identify data sources and calculate a risk score. Participants then used the scoring system to determine the greatest risks a given company is facing.
With the help of EcoVadis data, the scoring system becomes even more robust. Participants learned to apply regulatory lenses, such as the LkSG, to pinpoint top regulatory risks, and to layer in EcoVadis’s ESG risk ratings, sanctions and watchlist screening, and country- and sector-level risk benchmarks. This gave participants a full, data-driven picture of supplier risk, moving beyond internal assessments alone to incorporate independently verified, third-party risk intelligence.
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Conclusion: Building Resilience, Together
This workshop is the latest chapter in a long-standing partnership between Sourcing Champions and EcoVadis, one built on a shared belief that resilient procurement starts with the right combination of methodology and data. The 15M Risk Management Framework gives procurement teams a structured way to think about risk, from identifying its root causes to understanding its potential impact and quantifying it at the supplier level. EcoVadis’s technology and data bring that structure to life, turning frameworks into dashboards, scores, and decisions teams can act on with confidence.
As disruption continues to be the norm rather than the exception, we’re proud to keep equipping procurement professionals with the tools, frameworks, and insights they need to stay ahead of risk, making your procurement function truly “unshaken”.
