On May 6th, procurement professionals gathered in Gothenburg for a fully booked EBG | Xperience day focused on ‘Knowing Your Supply and Suppliers: Managing Risks, Resilience and Sustainability’.
A day centered on navigating the evolving risk, resilience, and sustainability landscape. Ahead of the event, attendees were asked what they most wanted to explore—and the answers were clear and urgent.
Procurement teams are grappling with how to gain multi-tier supplier visibility, proactively manage risks in a turbulent world, and embed sustainability beyond reporting checklists. They want to understand how others track risks—financial, ESG, or geopolitical—especially beyond tier 1, and how digital tools and AI are being applied in practice. From CSRD to Chinese supply chain exposure, from SRM platforms to sourcing risk alerts, the call for concrete tools, methods, and peer experiences was unanimous.
Throughout the day, these themes were brought to life through focused presentations and peer discussions—grounded in shared challenges and real-world progress.
Pre-Survey Reflections – In Brief
Ahead of the workshop, participants shared their current state and challenges managing risk, resilience, and sustainability in procurement. Their responses paint a clear picture of both the progress being made and the complexities still faced.
🔍 Limited Multi-Tier Visibility
Only 18% reported having full visibility beyond Tier 1 suppliers. Most operate with limited or no insight into sub-tier risk exposure—making it harder to detect disruptions and build supplier resilience across the chain.
⚠️ Risk Management Still Developing
While no respondents placed themselves at the lowest maturity level, the majority (68%) described their current approach as proactive but not yet predictive—suggesting that risk governance exists but is not yet digitally enabled. Only a small group said they are using AI or predictive tools.
📊 Top Challenges Shared
From the open-ended responses, several themes stood out:
- An overwhelming number of suppliers and lack of capacity to assess them.
- Data quality issues—both internally and with external risk providers.
- Difficulty translating risk signals into actionable insights.
- Struggles embedding sustainability into operational procurement, not just reporting.
💡 Digital Transformation In Motion
75% of respondents said they are still developing digital maturity within procurement. Just over 10% consider themselves advanced. When it comes to AI, most are either exploring or piloting, with full adoption still out of reach.
🧠 Operating Models Are Evolving
Many respondents noted a shift away from traditional function-based structures. Two-thirds are now emphasizing cross-functional collaboration (with finance, supply chain, and sustainability), and nearly half are adopting process-driven approaches. Yet, internal coordination—especially with IT, legal, and data privacy—remains a recurring challenge.
Speaker Highlights
Henrik Nyberg (Ivalua) & Carolina Koivisto (Prewave)
Henrik Nyberg opened with how Ivalua supports a systematic, scalable approach to supplier risk and ESG across the entire Source-to-Pay process. He outlined three critical stages: defining risk, collecting risk-relevant data from multiple sources (including operational, supplier-provided, and AI-scraped data), and operationalizing it through sourcing, contracting, onboarding, and reporting processes. The message was clear: a unified, modular platform helps procurement embed risk management without creating silos—offering both structure and flexibility to adapt to each organization’s needs.
Carolina Koivisto followed by showcasing how Prewave uses AI-powered tier-N transparency to enable truly end-to-end, risk-based supplier assessments. She illustrated the rising complexity facing companies—from black swan events to an accelerating list of global regulatory demands (e.g. CSDDD, CBAM, EU Forced Labour Ban). Prewave’s solution monitors 4.5+ million daily data points across more than 3 million supplier relationships, transforming unstructured external data into actionable alerts, risk scores, and compliance dashboards. Carolina emphasized how smart automation is essential to keep pace with rapidly evolving supply chain risks.
Together, their session highlighted the need to move from fragmented risk efforts to embedded, data-driven, and scalable practices—with AI and integrated technology playing a pivotal role.
Anna Stamborg (Essity) & Olof Brink (Autoliv)
Anna Stamborg shared how Essity is building a structured, data-driven risk and resilience framework across global procurement. By introducing a three-step process for risk identification, assessment, and response, and empowering Key Users embedded within each category team, Essity has increased transparency, alignment, and accountability. In 2024, almost all critical suppliers were assessed and close to all of identified risks had defined mitigation plans—results made possible through a digitalized, standardized approach to reporting and cross-functional governance.
Olof Brink gave an in-depth view of Autoliv’s comprehensive supply chain risk management strategy, highlighting a proactive, reactive, and strategic approach. He outlined how the company continuously monitors geopolitical, financial, and cybersecurity risks across a large and complex global supply base. By leveraging digital tools, Autoliv assesses and mitigates risks early—ensuring that both known and emerging threats are addressed before becoming crises. Special attention was paid to financial distress in the Tier X base and increasing cyber risks, which are now systematically prioritized using structured supplier segmentation.
Together, Anna and Olof demonstrated how risk management can move from an abstract concept to a core procurement discipline, combining governance, competence-building, and technology integration.
Aneesh Venkataraman (Dentsply Sirona)
Aneesh provided a concrete view into how Dentsply Sirona is operationalizing supplier risk management using a structured digital framework. He showcased a real-life governance model built on Microsoft tools—combining a Supplier Risk Action Tracker (MS Lists), Risk Mitigation Tracker (Power Apps), and integrated dashboards (Power BI).
The framework links internal supplier master and transactional data with external risk sources, enabling both classification and risk scoring. The key takeaway: turning supplier risk into measurable and actionable processes requires not only technology, but also consistent internal governance, cross-functional alignment, and clarity on risk classes and ratings.
Helena Knappe (Volvo Buses)
Closed the speaker sessions by illustrating how Volvo Buses is embedding sustainability into procurement’s risk and resilience strategies. In a highly project-based business where public tenders and fluctuating volumes demand agility, Helena outlined how they navigate increasing regulatory demands—such as the EU Battery Regulation, CSRD, and CSDDD—while maintaining cost efficiency and supply chain resilience.
She shared how Volvo Buses uses due diligence tools like Sustainability Self-Assessments and CSR audits to monitor human rights, environmental, and labor risks, especially in high-risk regions. Helena emphasized that clarity and prioritization are key when using multiple sustainability platforms—more data isn’t always better if it doesn’t lead to actionable insights.
She also discussed the critical role of KPIs that balance sustainability impact with resilience, the integration of battery traceability and conflict minerals tracking, and how procurement plays a central role in achieving long-term sustainability goals through supplier engagement and transparency.
What You Shared—and How We’ll Keep Building
The pre-survey responses ahead of EBG | Xperience GBG made one thing clear: procurement’s role in managing risk, resilience, and sustainability is only growing—faster and more complex than ever before.
Participants pointed to several interlinked challenges:
- Lower-tier supplier visibility and the ability to act on risks despite limited internal resources.
- Decentralized structures with varying maturity levels and unclear accountability.
- Overload of risk alerts and data inconsistency, both internal and across external platforms.
- Difficulty turning risk signals into prioritized, reportable actions, especially as geopolitical and regulatory demands evolve.
- The struggle to embed sustainability as a daily practice, not just for compliance.
These challenges were addressed throughout the day—via peer exchange, practical use cases, and mapping exercises that helped participants self-assess and reflect on where they are, and where they want to go.
💡 Speakers shared how their organizations are:
- Prioritizing high-materiality risks without drowning in audits (Autoliv, Essity).
- Using Key User networks and structured governance models to drive early risk action (Dentsply Sirona).
- Combining digital tools and GenAI to extract meaningful insights—without overwhelming teams (Volvo Buses, Ivalua, Prewave).
- Embedding risk management into operations without stalling agility (Essity, Autoliv).
But the conversation doesn’t stop here.
CPO Outlook 2025 will deepen the discussions
At CPO Outlook 2025 this October, we’ll take these insights further:
- How can we redesign procurement operating models to better manage uncertainty?
- What role will AI, automation, and supplier collaboration play in achieving true resilience?
- And how can procurement lead strategically—when the next disruption is always just around the corner?
Let’s keep connecting the dots between insight and action.
EBG | Xperience GBG Expert Organizations
They enable EBG to host such quality workshop days at no cost for you who attend. They also bring massive know how to the table!
About Prewave
At Prewave, we’re committed to enhancing supply chain transparency, resilience, and sustainability. As pioneers of an end-to-end and future-ready sustainability, risk, and compliance platform, we strengthen supply chains, safeguarding clients’ reputation and profitability. Our advanced AI and comprehensive platform future-proof supply chains, delivering remarkable results and ensuring compliance globally.
Learn more via prewave.com
About Ivalua
Ivalua is a leading provider of cloud-based Spend Management software. Our complete, unified platform empowers businesses to effectively manage all categories of spend and all suppliers, increasing profitability, improving ESG performance, lowering risk and improving employee productivity. We are trusted by hundreds of the world’s most admired brands and recognized as a leader by Gartner and other analysts.
Learn more at ivalua.com. Follow us at @Ivalua.