[February 29, 2024 Update: EventWatchAI 5.3 is Rolling Out!]
In EventWatchAI 5.3, we’re thrilled to roll out three exciting new updates over the coming months that empower seamless collaboration and enhance transparency between customers and their suppliers. These enhanced features—combined with EventWatchAI’s powerful capabilities—will help companies mitigate risks, ensure smoother operations, and strengthen supply chain resilience.
Out now, in February 2024, customers can share attachments and add notes with internal teams such as inventory levels, disruption images, reports, and more directly to the WarRoom—making it easier for both customers and suppliers to swiftly access information from one centralized location.
Releasing in Spring 2024, we’ll be adding a notes section to WarRooms. Customers can use the notes feature to document critical insights, observations, and decisions made during a supply chain event. These notes serve as a valuable resource to team members and stakeholders, facilitating post-event analysis and informing future planning.
Finally, launching Spring 2024 is WhatIf Supplier Impact Confirmation. In the event of a disruption, customers can now request supplier impact directly from suppliers with just a click. This will facilitate direct communication between customers and suppliers, enabling companies to address supply chain vulnerabilities promptly. Stay tuned!
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Supply chain disruptions are (unfortunately) here to stay. In 2022, Resilinc’s 24/7 supply chain disruption monitoring platform reported a 32% increase in disruptive supply chain events year over year: geopolitical events, bankruptcies, factory fires, extreme weather, and leadership transitions contributed to much of the chaos. Overall, EventWatchAI sent alerts for over 15,000 events – pulling data from 104 million news sources across 100 languages and countries. Of these events, nearly 60% impacted Resilinc’s customers and their suppliers which operate across major industries such as automotive, hi-tech, aerospace, and healthcare.
As risk events grow (Resilinc’s in-house analysts project close to 20,000 supply chain disruptions for 2023), companies are taking action. In the wake of the pandemic, increasing ESG legislation, and geopolitical concerns, companies are mapping their supply chains more than three tiers deep and onboarding newer use cases (e.g., monitoring indirect suppliers). To continue to support organizations on their resiliency journey, Resilinc has released significant updates to its 24/7 supply chain disruption monitoring platform: EventWatchAI.
Let’s dive into the exciting updates of EventWatchAI 5.0:
100M+ New Supply Chain Disruption Sources Added
EventWatchAI will now scan over 100 million new sources for news about potential disruptions or risk events, bringing the total amount of sources to 104.2 million. Many of these new sources are small, medium, and large news outlets from outside the US: over 200 countries in 108 languages. EventWatchAI always reports based on available news sources first. Thus, these country-specific outlets will give a faster, more reliable look at supply chain disruptions happening across the globe directly from the location’s source.
This new batch of sources also includes news released by both public and private sources. Examples of public sources include news outlets, company websites, press releases, social media (more on that below), citations, warnings, and fines from government sector agencies that manage and standardize manufacturing practices. Private sources include private forums, sources that report about commodities and sanctions, and sources that sell data.
As another upgrade, EventWatchAI will now monitor nine major social media platforms, globally. For example, any social media post that includes relevant terms such as “factory fire” or “cyber attack” will be captured and vetted for accuracy. Fun fact: in 2022, EventWatchAI analyzed news from over +75 million social media posts!
Rapid & Consolidated WarRooms Offer Ample Lead Time
If a customer or one of their suppliers is directly impacted following an EventWatchAI alert, a WarRoom is created. WarRooms are virtual dashboards where companies can quickly access an overview of a disruptive event and collaborate with suppliers to mitigate risk. In the previous version of EventWatchAI, WarRooms could take 2-3 hours to be created, but now with the update these WarRooms will be created within minutes of a disruption alert — giving organizations increased lead time to navigate disruptions.
WarRooms will also be consolidated in the update. In the past, a new WarRoom would be created for every update to an event. For example, if a hurricane changed trajectory, a new WarRoom would be created each time the hurricane impacted new regions. In version 5.0, updates will be added to the original WarRoom, ensuring there is only one dashboard for each disruption. These consolidated unified WarRooms make disruption management more efficient, allowing companies to manage a disruption end-to-end all in one place.
Monitoring of New Scenarios, Risks, and Industries
In the last iteration, EventWatchAI monitored and sent out alerts for dozens of risk events, such as Factory Disruptions, Mergers & Acquisitions, Factory Fires, Hurricanes, and Port Disruptions, to name a few. This update introduces two new event types to provide extra visibility into new trending disruptive scenarios: counterfeit and bribery.
This brings the number of risk events tracked by EventWatchAI to 41 in total. However, it is important to note that each event type includes different subcategories and scenarios. For example, under the event type “Factory Disruptions” some scenarios tracked include factory shutdowns, production cuts, production halts, evacuations, and industrial accidents. Taking that into consideration, there are 400+ disruptive scenarios total tracked by EventWatchAI 5.0.
Let’s take a closer look at the two new event watch types.
New Event Type #1: Counterfeit
This event type will cover any disruptions related to counterfeiting. Customers will be alerted if a supplier is involved in a ban, scandal, or legal action due to counterfeit products. For example, if the FDA announces a certain medicine has seen an increase in counterfeits or if a company is involved in illegal counterfeit products. Additionally, customs announcements about counterfeit products entering the supply chain will be tracked.
If a supplier is flagged as being involved in counterfeiting, Resilinc will automatically send a supplier impact confirmation. This confirmation will allow the supplier to directly confirm whether it has been impacted.
New Event Type #2: Bribery
This event type covers several forms and levels of bribery. At the most basic level, customers will be alerted if a supplier company executive is involved in a scandal or if a supplier has been found guilty of corruption or bribery (often from accounting and finance). If credit ratings fluctuate due to corruption or scandal, this will also be included. On top of that, customers will be alerted to general inspections and investigations where relevant companies are involved and if there are signs of poor practices that could potentially negatively impact the customer’s brand. Finally, these alerts do not stop at the supplier level; Resilinc will notify customers about state and country-level scandals that can potentially impact manufacturing and supply chains.
Additional Industries and Supplier Sites
As a final upgrade, EventWatchAI will now cover 26 industries in total, with two new industries: SaaS and Research & Development. Under the umbrella of these 26 industries, are 80+ verticals thanks to customer-mapped data. The number of suppliers monitored will increase by 800, leading to a 1.4 million increase in the number of mapped sites. These new sites include indirect sites, services suppliers, logistics nodes, self-owned sites, and competitor locations.
Updated Alert Branding in EventWatchAI 5.0
EventWatchAI emails are getting a refresh! “EventWatch Alerts” and “EventWatch Notifications” will now be merged as “EventWatch News.” Now, subscribers will only see two email types: EventWatch News and WarRoom notifications. There will still be tags at the bottom of emails, such as industries, companies, products, disruptions, sources, previous updates, guidelines, and what Resilinc is doing. Below is a look at the visual branding changes:
EventWatchAI 5.3: Tracking Supply Chain Disruptions in 2024
Resilinc is excited to announce these new updates to EventWatchAI, and we look forward to continuing to support companies on their journey to supply chain resilience. Want to get timely and critical supply chain alerts sent directly to you? Learn more about EventWatchAI here.
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