Blog | IMPLAN

Bringing Volume to the Voices of Minority- and Women-Owned Businesses

Written by Phil Cheney | February 14, 2017

SupplierGATEWAY and IMPLAN form partnership to help big business promote economic growth across United States

Huntersville, NC – SupplierGATEWAY and IMPLAN have announced a new partnership.

Both groups expect the partnership to bring greater exposure to minority- and women-owned small businesses nationwide as it reveals their potential as diverse goods and services suppliers for large businesses.

Supplier Diversity strategies have been widely adopted by organizations across the country to demonstrate their commitment to actively promoting economic growth throughout smaller local communities. By alleviating some of the economic barriers that hinder a lot of minority- and women-owned businesses’ sustainability, like limited access to early capital or restricted networking opportunities, large businesses practicing supplier diversification offer an economic stimulant that works in the interests of all stakeholders.

“Since 2004, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has used SupplierGATEWAY’s powerful tools to grow and manage one of the largest Supplier Diversity programs in the world. Every month, more than 4,000 of our prime suppliers report millions of dollars of spend with diverse businesses” said Jennifer Good, Supplier Diversity Program Manager at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. She added, “We are pleased that SupplierGATEWAY’s new integrated solution promises to give us deeper insight into the economic impact of our Supplier Diversity initiatives. We anticipate that this new capability will help Fiat Chrysler Automobiles raise the bar on diversity and inclusion overall, and expand our tactical options for increasing inclusion throughout our supplier chain.”

Of the new partnership, Ade Solaru, CEO of SupplierGATEWAY said, “This is a very important relationship for SupplierGATEWAY. Our clients have an impact on almost every community in the United States, and through our partnership with IMPLAN, we now provide them with the easiest, fastest way to showcase their contributions to employment and economic growth. This partnership promises to raise the bar on how economic impact can be used as a key success factor in supplier diversity, inclusion, and supply chain management. By seamlessly combining the proven, robust capability of the SupplierGATEWAY portal system with sophisticated modeling techniques and tools from IMPLAN, we are changing the game for economic impact reporting by making it easier, faster and more affordable.”

Bill Ault, CEO of IMPLAN, said, "We're very excited about the partnership with Supplier Gateway. Organizations will finally have a way to demonstrate the total impact of their Supplier Diversity Program, including indirect and induced effects, not just the direct spend and jobs created. An impact analysis paints the complete picture."

With far-reaching communities of large businesses now gaining easy access to economic impact reports, both SupplierGATEWAY and IMPLAN hope the partnership ignites a level of growth in the number and variety of minority- and women-owned small businesses receiving attention, and subsequent business, from these communities unlike any experienced in years prior.