Interos launches i-Score to guide corporate boards struggling with global supply chain risks

Interos has released updated scoring technology, the i-Score, to help procurement leaders quickly assess the overall health of their suppliers’ extended supply chains amid escalating recessionary fears, inflation, geopolitical turmoil, ESG violations and other paralyzing supply chain threats.

The AI-powered i-Score scores extended supply chains against multiple risk factors using thousands of proprietary data points.

“The i-Score revolutionizes an industry mired in manual processes and one-dimensional risk reporting,” says Interos Founder and CEO, Jennifer Bisceglie. “Gone are the days of relying on legacy data providers to reveal information only on direct suppliers because companies are being held accountable by consumers for risk at all levels. Leaders need to understand how regulations, natural disasters, modern slavery and other vulnerabilities threaten suppliers across their entire ecosystem. The i-Score™ achieves that through continuous multi-factor risk monitoring. It’s competitive advantage for customers in a volatile world.”

With disruption, uncertainty and inflation as the new normal, procurement officers are rapidly transforming the maturity of their risk programs – evolving from basic financial and cyber risk reporting to fully-dimensioned data-driven risk analysis. These next generation assessments deliver a more actionable and comprehensive view of operational threats, including geopolitical flashpoints such as Russia and China.

In the case of China, the Interos Operational Resilience Cloud maximizes supply chain transparency across multiple factors to provide a holistic view of operating in the country:

• Restrictions – Monitoring for compliance with the UFLPA and other forced labor restrictions.
• Financial – Monitoring for over-reliance on China as a leading supplier of lithium and other rare metals. As tensions with the U.S. mount on a host of issues, companies could see supply lines for vital raw materials cut or compromised.
• Geopolitical – Monitoring for political fallout related to China’s claim to Taiwan. Military actions or blockades would cut off the island territory as the world’s leading source of semi-conductors, crippling the already-strained supply chain for automotives, computers, and other goods.
• Cyber – Monitoring for digital supply chain attacks or state-sponsored espionage originating within China, as part of a shadow cyber war between the world’s largest economies.
• Operational – Monitoring for ongoing covid shutdown or natural disasters including earthquakes or blackouts in Chinese manufacturing provinces.
• ESG – Monitoring for threats related to climate change. Heatwaves that recently shut down Chinese power plants can affect companies globally. Interos data identified more than half a million global organizations whose suppliers are at risk from Chinese droughts.

The i-Score is the latest in a series of industry firsts. Earlier this year Interos released the patented Supplier Buyer View, delivering an unprecedented network-based map of an organization’s entire digital and physical ecosystem. The company simultaneously released tailored alerts, enabling customers with 24×7 monitoring to receive pre-emptive warnings of critical risk exposure within their supply chain.