How Gilson mapped and certified the diversity of more than 3,000 active suppliers of Mondelez Brazil

Gilson Alencar is Procurement Manager at Mondelez Brazil. A few months ago, he received an important challenge: to implement the company's Supplier Diversity & Inclusion Program in Brazil.

Diverse suppliers are companies owned and controlled by minority groups. Ownership means that more than 51% of the shares belong to one or more individuals from the specific minority group. Control requires that these diverse individuals or groups do not have any restrictions and do not depend on any approval to perform administrative and business acts.

Because of this project, Gilson became the Leader of Supplier Diversity & Inclusion, and was tasked with the mission to identify and create spending goals with diverse, creative, and innovative companies that do not have access to large corporations like Mondelez Brazil due to social and economic barriers these groups face in our country.

With the Linkana Insights module, Gilson discovered that Mondelez Brazil currently spends over R$ 200 million of its annual expenses on diverse suppliers.

However, how was the process of identifying these suppliers? How to categorize them into different minority groups, in a base of thousands of active suppliers? And, after identifying them, how to certify them and ensure the legitimacy and proof of such information for Mondelez International's global audit?

The main challenges

Identification and classification of diverse suppliers according to their minority ownership and control group

How to define criteria to manually collect, analyze, and validate corporate, tax, and diversity information from more than 3,000 active suppliers?

Identification and classification of inclusive economy suppliers according to their activity, size, and revenue

The solution

Creating intelligence from Linkana Insights

In partnership with Mondelez Brazil, we created a methodology for identifying and certifying diverse and inclusive economy suppliers. We also brought good practices and international market benchmarking in legal and social aspects to the national market reality.

Automation for data collection and validation

With our own technology, the support of machine learning, and artificial intelligence, we automated the data collection process from suppliers to assess predefined D&I criteria. As a result, we generated intelligent data for identification and certification of over 3,000 analyzed companies.

Predefined evaluation criteria

The analyses and certifications were created using a methodology composed of certification levels. Data such as company registration status, legal nature, corporate composition, presumed gender, size, CNAE, self-declared data, and other supporting documents were used.

With the project, Linkana was approved by the global audit of Mondelez International as the official platform for identifying and certifying diverse and inclusive economy suppliers in Brazil. As a result, suppliers certified by Linkana officially count towards the company's global diverse spend goal, which aims to spend $1 billion per year with diverse suppliers by 2024.

Check below Gilson Alencar's account of how Linkana enabled him to map and certify his more than 3,000 suppliers with the Linkana Insights module: