🔄 How BRAND Works – Process Overview
A Structured Path from Supplier Data to Verified Compliance
BRAND combines powerful automation with expert oversight to give you a complete, defensible compliance process. From supply chain onboarding to regulatory reporting, every step is structured, traceable, and adaptable—ensuring your company stays ahead of evolving laws, standards, and stakeholder expectations.
Step-by-Step Process Flow
Step 1: Supplier Onboarding & KYC Collection
- Invite or import suppliers via forms, spreadsheets, or integrations
- Collect KYC documentation (registration, UBO, sanctions data)
- Verify identity and set up supplier profiles with geographic and operational tags
🛠 Tools: KYC & Verification | Document Uploads | Sanctions Screening
Step 2: Supply Chain Mapping
- Map suppliers across tiers and visualize by country, product, or risk zone
- Identify indirect suppliers and link them to direct relationships
- Highlight locations tied to CAHRAs, UFLPA zones, or other high-risk regions
🛠 Tools: Supply Chain Mapping | Geographic Risk Overlays
Step 3: Automated Risk Evaluation
- System-generated risk scores based on:
- Geography
- Sector
- Documentation completeness
- Audit and grievance history
- Automated alerts for red flags or missing data
🛠 Tools: Risk Engine | Red Flag Alerts | Custom Thresholds
Step 4: Due Diligence & Monitoring
- Upload third-party audits and internal assessments
- Record findings, assign corrective actions, and track remediation
- Link all evidence to specific legal or standard clauses
🛠 Tools: Due Diligence Repository | CAPA Tracker | Clause-Level Linking
Step 5: Legal & Standards Alignment
- Apply frameworks such as:
- EU CSDDD
- SA8000:2025/6
- RJC COP/COC
- ISO 37301
- Use workflows and checklists tailored to each regulation
- Track compliance gaps and reporting status
🛠 Tools: Regulatory Compliance Module | Clause Alignment Engine
Step 6: ESG Performance Monitoring
- Collect environmental, social, and governance data from suppliers
- Score performance using branded or framework-aligned KPIs
- Track alignment with GRI, SASB, SDGs, and internal ESG targets
🛠 Tools: ESG Scorecards | Data Collection Forms | SDG Mapping
Step 7: Benchmarking & Reporting
- Build and export:
- Audit bundles
- ESG dashboards
- Due diligence statements
- Supplier performance summaries
- Schedule recurring reports or generate stakeholder-ready exports
🛠 Tools: Benchmarking Tools | Report Builder | Evidence Packs
Step-by-Step Process Flow
Step 1: Foundational Onboarding & KYC Verification
The integrity of your supply chain begins with knowing who you’re working with. Our process starts with a secure and flexible onboarding system designed to eliminate administrative burdens and establish a foundation of trust. We move beyond basic data collection to perform critical Know-Your-Supplier (KYS/KYC) verification from day one. Whether importing your existing supplier lists or inviting new partners, we ensure every entity is properly vetted and profiled in our centralized system.
Key Features of this Stage:
Flexible Data Import: Easily invite or import suppliers through customized forms, bulk spreadsheet uploads, or seamless API integrations with your existing systems.
Comprehensive KYC Collection : Securely collect and manage critical documentation, including business registration details, Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) information, and other essential legal entity data.
Automated Sanctions Screening: We automatically screen every supplier against global sanctions lists, watchlists, and Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) databases to ensure immediate compliance and mitigate regulatory risk.
Intelligent Profiling : Once verified, each supplier profile is enriched with geographic and operational tags, creating a structured and searchable database ready for the next stage of analysis.
Client Benefit: You gain a fully verified, compliant, and organized supplier database from the outset, reducing risk and saving hundreds of hours of manual verification work.
Step 2: Dynamic Multi-Tier Supply Chain Mapping
A simple list of suppliers isn’t enough. To truly understand your exposure and ensure compliance, you need to see the entire network. Our platform transforms your supplier data into an interactive, multi-tier map, giving you unprecedented visibility into the relationships, dependencies, and geographical footprint of your supply chain. We help you connect the dots from your direct partners to their suppliers, uncovering the hidden layers of your global operations.
Key Features of this Stage:
Multi-Dimensional Visualization : Go beyond a flat list. We map your suppliers across multiple tiers and allow you to visualize the entire network by country, product line, or custom risk zones, providing tailored insights at a glance.
Uncover Sub-Tier Relationships : Our system actively identifies and links your indirect (Tier 2 and beyond) suppliers to your direct (Tier 1) partners. This critical visibility is essential for tracing material origins and understanding deep-seated dependencies you never knew you had.
Integrated Geographic Risk Overlays: Proactively identify location-based risks before they become disruptions. Our platform automatically overlays your supply chain map with intelligence on Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas (CAHRAs), regions implicated by the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), and other hotspots for social or environmental risk.
Client Benefit: You replace guesswork with a clear, data-driven view of your entire supply chain, instantly highlighting concentration risks, sub-tier dependencies, and compliance hotspots.
Step 3: Automated Risk Intelligence & Evaluation
With a complete map of your supply chain, the next challenge is to identify and prioritize risk at scale. Manually assessing thousands of suppliers is inefficient and prone to inconsistency. Our intelligent Risk Engine automates this critical step, applying a consistent, data-driven methodology to score every supplier in your network. This provides an immediate, objective baseline of your risk landscape.
Key Features of this Stage:
- Multi-Factor Risk Engine: Our system automatically generates a risk score for each supplier based on a holistic set of indicators, including:
- Inherent Risk: Country of operation, industry sector, and commodity risk.
- Performance Risk: Completeness of KYC documentation, historical audit performance, and any recorded grievances.
- Proactive Red Flag Alerts: The platform acts as a 24/7 watchdog. We configure automated alerts to notify you instantly of critical red flags, such as a supplier appearing on a new sanctions list, negative media reports, or failure to provide essential information.
- Customizable Risk Thresholds: Your risk appetite is unique. We allow you to define and customize your own risk thresholds (e.g., Low, Medium, High), ensuring that the system’s categorization aligns perfectly with your internal policies and compliance requirements.
Client Benefit: You instantly transform raw data into actionable intelligence. This automated evaluation allows you to segment your supply chain by risk, prioritize your resources effectively, and focus your due diligence efforts where they will have the most impact.
Step 4: Centralized Supplier Assessments & Data Compilation
Inherent risk scoring tells you where to look; direct supplier assessment tells you what to find. We move beyond basic data to gather deep, specific insights on your suppliers’ ESG, compliance, and operational performance. Our platform replaces inefficient, manual data requests with a dynamic and user-friendly online assessment process. This allows you to collect, validate, and analyse critical information at scale, directly from the source.
Key Features of this Stage:
- Fully Customizable Questionnaires: One size doesn’t fit all. Deploy assessments based on our pre-built, expert templates or create your own custom questionnaires from scratch. Whether you’re aligning with specific standards like SA8000, RJC, ISO, CTPAT, or your own corporate code of conduct, our platform adapts to your needs.
- Targeted & Dynamic Campaigns: Send the right questions to the right suppliers. Our system allows you to segment your supply base and deploy different assessments based on their risk score, industry, geography, or any other tag, ensuring the data you collect is always relevant.
- Supplier-Friendly Experience: We believe in partnership, not policing. The platform is multilingual and designed to be intuitive for your suppliers. Automated reminders and access to our dedicated supplier support desk ensure high completion rates and accurate data submission.
- Automated Scoring & Profile Updates: As suppliers complete their assessments, their responses are automatically scored against your defined criteria. This data flows directly into their central profile, dynamically updating their overall risk score and providing you with a real-time view of their performance.
Client Benefit: You gain a verifiable, in-depth understanding of your suppliers’ practices without the administrative nightmare. This creates a scalable, consistent process for measuring performance and driving continuous improvement across your entire supply chain.
Step 5: Expert Review & Enhanced Due Diligence
Automation provides speed and scale, but critical decisions require human intelligence. For suppliers flagged as high-risk, or for cases requiring deeper investigation, our process moves into an enhanced due diligence phase. This step adds a crucial layer of expert analysis to validate the data, understand the nuances, and provide you with the confidence to act. You can leverage our internal team of analysts or empower your own experts with the tools on our platform.
Key Features of this Stage:
- Flexible Review Model: Choose the approach that fits your resources. Our internal team can conduct the manual reviews for you as a managed service, or your own compliance team can use the BRAND platform’s powerful toolset to perform their own in-depth due diligence.
- Intelligent Triggers: Manual reviews are targeted and efficient, initiated when:
- A supplier’s automated risk score exceeds a pre-defined threshold.
- Specific “red flag” answers are detected in their self-assessment questionnaire.
- Your team flags any supplier for a discretionary in-depth review.
- Contextual Analysis & Clarification: During the review, our analysts (or your team) will:
- Cross-reference supplier-submitted information against our proprietary data and other external sources.
- Analyze responses for inconsistencies and seek deeper context.
- Communicate directly with suppliers through the platform to request clarification or additional documentation.
- Actionable Due Diligence Reports: The outcome is a clear, concise summary of the findings, including an adjusted risk score that reflects the human-led analysis and a concrete recommendation for the next course of action.
Client Benefit: You can confidently make informed decisions on your most critical and high-risk suppliers, backed by a thorough, documented, and auditable due diligence process.
Step 6: Legal & ESG Alignment and Corrective Action Management
Visibility is the first step; driving change is the goal. In this crucial stage, we bridge the gap between insight and action. All findings from our assessments and reviews are systematically aligned with your specific legal requirements, corporate Code of Conduct, and ESG commitments. For any supplier that falls short of these standards, we initiate a structured, collaborative process to foster improvement and ensure compliance.
Key Features of this Stage:
- Centralized Policy Mapping: We enable you to upload your unique corporate policies directly into the BRAND platform. This allows for a direct mapping of non-conformance issues to the specific clauses and standards you are legally and ethically bound to uphold.
- Integrated Corrective Action Plans (CAPs): When an issue is identified, you can create and manage a time-bound CAP directly within the supplier’s profile. No more chasing emails or tracking progress in spreadsheets.
- Collaborative Task Management: Assign specific improvement tasks to both the supplier and your internal teams. Set clear deadlines, request evidence of completion (like new certifications or policy documents), and monitor progress in real-time through a shared dashboard.
- Streamlined Communication: All communication regarding non-compliance and corrective actions is handled and documented securely within the platform, creating a fully auditable trail of your efforts to mitigate risk and drive positive change.
Client Benefit: You move beyond simply identifying risk to actively managing and mitigating it. This transforms your compliance program from a reactive, “check-the-box” exercise into a proactive, collaborative, and improvement-oriented partnership with your suppliers.
Step 7: Advanced Analytics & Stakeholder Reporting
Data is only valuable when you can use it to make decisions, demonstrate progress, and meet your obligations. Our platform transforms your complex supply chain data into clear, actionable insights. We provide a comprehensive suite of reporting and analytics tools that allow you to monitor performance, prove compliance, and communicate your story to any stakeholder—from your internal teams to your board of directors and regulators.
Key Features of this Stage:
- Customizable, Real-Time Dashboards: Get a 360-degree view of your supply chain at a glance. Our fully customizable dashboards provide a real-time overview of key performance indicators, including risk distribution, assessment completion rates, ESG performance trends, and the status of all active Corrective Action Plans.
- Flexible, Presentation-Ready Reports: Generate detailed reports in both PDF and Excel formats with just a few clicks. Use our pre-built templates designed for common regulatory frameworks or customize reports to fit your specific needs, ensuring you always have the right data in the right format.
- Tailored for Every Audience: The platform is designed to serve all your stakeholders:
- For Management: High-level executive summaries to track strategic ESG goals.
- For Compliance Teams: Granular data to prepare for audits and regulatory submissions.
- For Public Reporting: Aggregated, anonymized data for your annual sustainability reports.
- Demonstrate ROI and Progress: Move beyond simple compliance. Use historical data to track supplier improvement over time, benchmark performance across your supply base, and clearly demonstrate the tangible progress and risk reduction achieved through your due diligence program.
Client Benefit: You save hundreds of hours on manual data aggregation and report creation. More importantly, you gain the ability to tell a powerful, data-backed story of risk management and sustainable improvement to investors, customers, and regulators with confidence and clarity.
Step 8: Risk-Based On-Site Audits & Physical Verification
For situations where digital data isn’t enough, we close the loop with “boots-on-the-ground” verification. As the ultimate step in our due diligence process, we leverage the global reach of our parent company, International Associates Limited, to conduct targeted on-site audits. This provides indisputable, physical validation of a supplier’s operations, ensuring what’s reported on paper is a true reflection of reality.
Key Features of this Stage:
- Global Audit Network: Through our parent company, we provide access to a worldwide network of experienced, in-market auditors. This global presence allows us to conduct audits efficiently and with crucial local context, wherever your suppliers are located.
- Data-Driven Selection: On-site audits are a strategic investment, not a random check. Suppliers are selected for an audit based on intelligent triggers from the platform, including:
- Persistently high-risk scores.
- Failure to complete a critical Corrective Action Plan (CAP).
- Suspicious or unverifiable documentation.
- Direct client request for strategic assurance.
- Seamless Digital-to-Physical Workflow: The entire audit process is managed through the BRAND platform. From scheduling and assigning auditors to using digital checklists on-site, all findings, photographic evidence, and non-conformance reports are captured and uploaded directly into the supplier’s central profile.
- Flexible & Conclusive Outcomes: The results of the audit are tailored to your business needs. Outcomes can range from a simple pass/fail verification to the generation of a detailed, post-audit CAP. Ultimately, the audit provides the definitive evidence you need to make critical business decisions—whether that’s continuing a partnership, demanding specific improvements, or beginning a responsible off-boarding process.
Client Benefit: You gain the highest possible level of assurance for your most critical suppliers. This integrates the scalability of a digital platform with the indisputable credibility of in-person, expert verification, creating a truly defensible due diligence process.
Step 9: From Data to Decision: Your End-to-End Partner
Our nine-step process is a comprehensive, integrated loop—not just a linear path. From seamless onboarding and automated risk assessment to expert review and on-site verification, we provide the tools and intelligence you need at every stage of the supplier management lifecycle. The result is a more resilient, transparent, and sustainable supply chain that becomes a competitive advantage for your business.
🔍 Manual Oversight & Expert Review
While BRAND is built for automation, compliance can’t be left entirely to algorithms.
- Human reviewers validate key supplier responses and flagged risks
- High-risk supplier data is escalated for manual analysis
- Audit evidence and ESG claims can be reviewed before inclusion in reports
Client-specific thresholds or sensitivities can trigger manual verification workflows
This layer of expert intervention ensures accuracy, accountability, and audit defensibility—especially in high-stakes areas like forced labor, material traceability, or grievance resolution.
🔄 Ongoing Monitoring & System Intelligence
- Document expiry tracking and renewal prompts
- Real-time updates on legislation or sanctions changes
- Continuous risk re-evaluation as new data is submitted
- Secure activity logs for traceability and version control
Process Flow Summary
Automation where it helps. Oversight where it matters.
Automation where it helps. Oversight where it matters.
That’s how BRAND delivers real-world compliance that holds up under scrutiny.