External Exposure & Supply Chain Risk

Which Suppliers Are Truly Critical?

Most organisations have a supplier list – but no clear answer to: who is truly critical and why? This use case builds a practical supplier landscape with criticality (data, access, dependencies, impact). Goal: within 60 days, clear priorities rather than “everyone is important”.

If you’d like, we’ll show you an example setup in a short demo, together with our technology partner.

Best for

  • You have many suppliers and no clean prioritisation
  • Criticality is “felt”, not substantiated
  • Ownership is unclear (who manages which supplier?)

Outcome

  • Clear tiering approach (critical / important / normal)
  • Visibility of access, data flows and dependencies
  • Focus: real risk reduction starts with a few suppliers

What you get

  • Supplier landscape (register) incl. criticality
  • Criteria model (short, traceable)
  • “Top 10” list with next steps
  • Ownership setup: who manages, who decides, how often to review

Brief explanation

Your Challenge

Suppliers accumulate over years: SaaS, outsourcing, agencies, IT operations, logistics. Eventually nobody knows: who has access, who processes sensitive data, where does operations depend on them? Without tiering, everything is treated equally – and as a result, nothing is managed properly.

Our Solution

We define simple criteria, collect the minimum necessary information and build a landscape with criticality. The result isn’t a “spreadsheet for the shelf”, but a working instrument: top suppliers, clear owners, clear next steps.
Typical timeframe: 2–4 weeks until tiering + top priorities.

Flow

1

Define criteria & scope

2

Capture/normalise suppliers (minimal, pragmatic)

3

Determine criticality (tiering)

4

Prioritise top suppliers

5

Define review cadence (e.g. quarterly)

Frequently asked questions

Do we need a big tool project for this?
No. We start pragmatically and only scale once the logic is solid.

How many suppliers do we need to touch?
To start, the top 10–20 by impact is often enough.

Is this just compliance?
No – it’s the foundation for real prioritisation (access, exposure, incident risk).

How does it stay current?
Through a fixed review cadence and clear ownership.

Without prioritisation, supply chain risk remains a gut feeling.

Let’s make critical suppliers clearly visible – and start real governance from there.