OUR EXPERTISE
Today’s environment is wrought with new and evolving challenges for manufacturers, producers, and suppliers. ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles, evolving regulations, and consumer preference drive market trends that influence and impact the operations of businesses throughout the supply chain. How you navigate this landscape can be a key factor to success: understanding your specific risks, proactively implementing measures to mitigate potential liabilities, and preparing to respond to issues and events as they arise.
The Intelligence Group has decades of experience helping businesses confront and manage these challenges, in industries ranging from food, textiles, pharma and ag chem to tech, petrochemicals, heavy manufacturing, and waste management. We help clients turn risk into opportunity, and successfully navigate this new era of ESG and product stewardship.
Risk ID and Monitoring
Business risks are inherent in ongoing, legacy operations as well as new product development and introduction. Evolving regulations at federal, state and local levels, layered with market trends driven by consumer preference and ESG influences, create a shifting paradigm. Businesses that anticipate, monitor, and prepare can leverage such change to their advantage. The Intelligence Group helps businesses anticipate these potential impacts, analyze risks posed, and monitor for change over the long term. We assist clients with:
Live intelligence to monitor regulatory and marketplace issues
Client-facing dashboards to navigate and manage jurisdictional regulations and requirements
Monitoring of industry-specific issues, such as emerging contaminants, geographic prohibitions, etc.
Supply chain and competitive intelligence monitoring and investigations
Ingredients/Raw Materials Sourcing and Verification
The sourcing of raw materials and ingredients can pose risks to product manufacturers, and increased ESG emphasis on supply chains has resulted in tremendous focus on these issues. Manufacturers often need to understand and verify raw material attributes key to their products, such as geographic origin, composition, certifications, QA/QC claims, or the absence of residual contaminants. The risk of sourcing from protected or prohibited areas, or inadvertently making false claims about your product can result in compliance issues, product liability, and reputational damage. The Intelligence Group helps clients understand and verify these attributes through techniques including:
Supplier assessments and investigation
Geographic origin investigations and advanced isotopic analytics
Analysis of composition and monitoring for residual contaminants
Implementation of authentication and certification systems
Consumer Product Use and Waste Management
Extended Producer Responsibility, which shifts responsibility to manufacturers for post-consumer management of its products and packaging is one of the biggest agents of change in this new era of ESG. Consumer use and recyclability of products and packaging are now major strategic issues for manufacturers, and influence consumer preference, product sales, and market share. The Intelligence Group designs and implements solutions that allow clients to evaluate and monitor product impacts and use, as well as post-use disposition of products, packaging, and related waste streams. Clients in industries such as agrichemicals, electronics, food, and durable goods rely on us for assistance with:
Evaluation, monitoring and investigation of product use relative to manufacturer’s specifications
Carry-through or legacy impacts of product use on environmental receptors and other third parties
Product liability and toxic tort investigation
Waste management investigations and vendor audits/assessments
Supply Chain Risk Assessment
Supplier Responsibility requires businesses to ensure that all its vendors, suppliers and partners engage in responsible practices, adding to the risk burden already inherent to a business’s own manufacturing, production, and distribution environments. Each poses risk to organizations that can affect more than an ESG score: issues and events can impact company reputation, market share and financial valuation. Managed properly, businesses can turn such potential liabilities into an advantage over their competition. The Intelligence Group helps clients realize such opportunity, via:
Supply Chain Risk Assessment for initial baselining, ongoing monitoring, or ESG benchmarking
Focused VSP (vendors/suppliers/partners) investigation and Vendor Integrity Programs
Evaluation of supply chain risks for due diligence conducted on behalf of investors, purchasers, and third parties
Implementation of corrective actions and program support (i.e., KPI measurement, carbon emissions, etc.)
Response to Incidents
Regardless of how proactively you manage risk, you need to be prepared to respond. How a business responds to an issue can be critical from a regulatory, reputational and governance perspective. Successful outcomes result from thorough investigation of incident causation, and implementation of corrective actions to prevent recurrence. The Intelligence Group has extensive hands-on experience responding to and investigating incidents of all type, and helps businesses implement the appropriate controls and monitoring solutions to minimize the threat of recurrence. We have long been a trusted partner to businesses managing issues including:
Compliance excursions, accidents, and releases
Product tampering and supply chain contamination issues
Fraud, theft, IT breaches and IP loss
Product liability claims
