Avetta Honors 11 Companies for Global Achievement in Safety, Sustainability and Innovation
Avetta Award winners, announced at the 2023 Avetta Summit in Houston, include two individuals who created meaningful cultural change at their companies
June 28, 2023, OREM, Utah, and HOUSTON — Avetta®, the leading provider of supply chain risk management software, announced the winners of the 2023 Avetta Awards, chosen from a list of 36 finalists across six categories. These companies and individuals represent global leaders that have prioritized a culture of safety and sustainability across multiple operating sites in numerous countries.
The Avetta Awards are based on a set of objective criteria and judged by Avetta safety and compliance experts in addition to a rotating panel of industry executives, entrepreneurs, innovators, and compliance experts. This year’s industry judges included Adele Abrams, President, Law Office of Adele L. Abrams P.C.; Brian Fielkow, EVP of Risk, Acrisure; and Subena Colligan, EHS Coach & Consultant and principal of S. Colligan Coaching.
“Risk, safety, and sustainability innovation is at the heart of our offerings and our clients’ programs. These awards recognize excellence in program execution,” said Arshad Martin, Avetta CEO. “These companies and individuals are true champions of their industries and are making a significant impact on supply chains worldwide.”
Award winners represent companies that have significantly reduced global incident rates, including one winner that reduced vendor incident rates by 38% and another that improved compliance rates by 33% in just four months. Other winners include companies that have automated risk compliance through API integrations, and early adopters of new ESG and GHG solutions.
Winners received the awards on June 27 at the 2023 Avetta Client Summit in Houston. The following companies and change makers won in the following categories.
Health & Safety Leader: Companies and programs that have proven safety leadership on a global scale with best-in-class KPIs.
• Black Hills Energy
• Gamuda® Australia
Digital Transformation Innovator: Through API integrations and innovative technology automation, these organizations have led their industries in digital transformation on a global scale.
• Cushman & Wakefield
• Verizon®
Operational Excellence Leader: Organizations that have demonstrated the ability to drive operational excellence in supply chain risk management.
• Antea® Group
• NorthWestern® Energy
• BGIS (Asia Pacific)
Risk & Compliance Excellence: Companies that have expanded their compliance programs to multiple risk disciplines such as ESG, sustainability, financial risk and cybersecurity.
• Pacific National
Premier Partner: These companies have shown great collaboration and co-innovation in their partnership with Avetta.
• Honeywell® (Australia & New Zealand)
• APM Terminals
• Arkema®
Change Makers: Individuals within large and complex organizations who have created meaningful change within their companies through culture transformations, compliance evangelism, and thought leadership.
• Phil Varney, WHS Program Manager, EU | Amazon®
• Kenneth “Trey” Walker, EHS Manager | Quantix®
The Avetta Summit featured the awards ceremony, case studies, client panels, product updates, best practice sessions and meetings with Avetta’s senior leadership. To learn more about Avetta, visit https://www.avetta.com/.
About Avetta
The Avetta supply chain risk management SaaS platform helps clients manage supply chain risk and their contractors to become more qualified for jobs. For hiring clients in our network, we offer the world’s largest supply chain multi-risk management network to manage contractor safety, sustainability, worker competency and performance, and business and financial risk. We perform contractor prequalification and worker competency management across major industries, all over the globe, including construction, energy, facilities, high tech, manufacturing, mining and telecom.
For contractors in our network, our audit and verification services help lower their safety incidents rate by 47%. As a result, nearly 50% of members find additional job opportunities within the first year of joining. In addition, our contractors receive privileged access to the Avetta Marketplace, where dozens of partners offer special discounts for business services like insurance and work gear. Avetta serves 500+ enterprise companies and 125,000+ contractors across 120+ countries.
Visit https://www.avetta.com/ for more information.
Just 29% of supply chain organizations have the competitive characteristics they’ll need for future readiness, according to a Gartner survey released Tuesday. The survey focused on how organizations are preparing for future challenges and to keep their supply chains competitive.
Gartner surveyed 579 supply chain practitioners to determine the capabilities needed to manage the “future drivers of influence” on supply chains, which include artificial intelligence (AI) achievement and the ability to navigate new trade policies. According to the survey, the five competitive characteristics are: agility, resilience, regionalization, integrated ecosystems, and integrated enterprise strategy.
The survey analysis identified “leaders” among the respondents as supply chain organizations that have already developed at least three of the five competitive characteristics necessary to address the top five drivers of supply chain’s future.
Less than a third have met that threshold.
“Leaders shared a commitment to preparation through long-term, deliberate strategies, while non-leaders were more often focused on short-term priorities,” Pierfrancesco Manenti, vice president analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a statement announcing the survey results.
“Most leaders have yet to invest in the most advanced technologies (e.g. real-time visibility, digital supply chain twin), but plan to do so in the next three-to-five years,” Manenti also said in the statement. “Leaders see technology as an enabler to their overall business strategies, while non-leaders more often invest in technology first, without having fully established their foundational capabilities.”
As part of the survey, respondents were asked to identify the future drivers of influence on supply chain performance over the next three to five years. The top five drivers are: achievement capability of AI (74%); the amount of new ESG regulations and trade policies being released (67%); geopolitical fight/transition for power (65%); control over data (62%); and talent scarcity (59%).
The analysis also identified four unique profiles of supply chain organizations, based on what their leaders deem as the most crucial capabilities for empowering their organizations over the next three to five years.
First, 54% of retailers are looking for ways to increase their financial recovery from returns. That’s because the cost to return a purchase averages 27% of the purchase price, which erases as much as 50% of the sales margin. But consumers have their own interests in mind: 76% of shoppers admit they’ve embellished or exaggerated the return reason to avoid a fee, a 39% increase from 2023 to 204.
Second, return experiences matter to consumers. A whopping 80% of shoppers stopped shopping at a retailer because of changes to the return policy—a 34% increase YoY.
Third, returns fraud and abuse is top-of-mind-for retailers, with wardrobing rising 38% in 2024. In fact, over two thirds (69%) of shoppers admit to wardrobing, which is the practice of buying an item for a specific reason or event and returning it after use. Shoppers also practice bracketing, or purchasing an item in a variety of colors or sizes and then returning all the unwanted options.
Fourth, returns come with a steep cost in terms of sustainability, with returns amounting to 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste in 2023 alone.
“As returns have become an integral part of the shopper experience, retailers must balance meeting sky-high expectations with rising costs, environmental impact, and fraudulent behaviors,” Amena Ali, CEO of Optoro, said in the firm’s “2024 Returns Unwrapped” report. “By understanding shoppers’ behaviors and preferences around returns, retailers can create returns experiences that embrace their needs while driving deeper loyalty and protecting their bottom line.”
Facing an evolving supply chain landscape in 2025, companies are being forced to rethink their distribution strategies to cope with challenges like rising cost pressures, persistent labor shortages, and the complexities of managing SKU proliferation.
1. Optimize labor productivity and costs. Forward-thinking businesses are leveraging technology to get more done with fewer resources through approaches like slotting optimization, automation and robotics, and inventory visibility.
2. Maximize capacity with smart solutions. With e-commerce volumes rising, facilities need to handle more SKUs and orders without expanding their physical footprint. That can be achieved through high-density storage and dynamic throughput.
3. Streamline returns management. Returns are a growing challenge, thanks to the continued growth of e-commerce and the consumer practice of bracketing. Businesses can handle that with smarter reverse logistics processes like automated returns processing and reverse logistics visibility.
4. Accelerate order fulfillment with robotics. Robotic solutions are transforming the way orders are fulfilled, helping businesses meet customer expectations faster and more accurately than ever before by using autonomous mobile robots (AMRs and robotic picking.
5. Enhance end-of-line packaging. The final step in the supply chain is often the most visible to customers. So optimizing packaging processes can reduce costs, improve efficiency, and support sustainability goals through automated packaging systems and sustainability initiatives.
That clash has come as retailers have been hustling to adjust to pandemic swings like a renewed focus on e-commerce, then swiftly reimagining store experiences as foot traffic returned. But even as the dust settles from those changes, retailers are now facing renewed questions about how best to define their omnichannel strategy in a world where customers have increasing power and information.
The answer may come from a five-part strategy using integrated components to fortify omnichannel retail, EY said. The approach can unlock value and customer trust through great experiences, but only when implemented cohesively, not individually, EY warns.
The steps include:
1. Functional integration: Is your operating model and data infrastructure siloed between e-commerce and physical stores, or have you developed a cohesive unit centered around delivering seamless customer experience?
2. Customer insights: With consumer centricity at the heart of operations, are you analyzing all touch points to build a holistic view of preferences, behaviors, and buying patterns?
3. Next-generation inventory: Given the right customer insights, how are you utilizing advanced analytics to ensure inventory is optimized to meet demand precisely where and when it’s needed?
4. Distribution partnerships: Having ensured your customers find what they want where they want it, how are your distribution strategies adapting to deliver these choices to them swiftly and efficiently?
5. Real estate strategy: How is your real estate strategy interconnected with insights, inventory and distribution to enhance experience and maximize your footprint?
When approached cohesively, these efforts all build toward one overarching differentiator for retailers: a better customer experience that reaches from brand engagement and order placement through delivery and return, the EY study said. Amid continued volatility and an economy driven by complex customer demands, the retailers best set up to win are those that are striving to gain real-time visibility into stock levels, offer flexible fulfillment options and modernize merchandising through personalized and dynamic customer experiences.
Geopolitical rivalries, alliances, and aspirations are rewiring the global economy—and the imposition of new tariffs on foreign imports by the U.S. will accelerate that process, according to an analysis by Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Without a broad increase in tariffs, world trade in goods will keep growing at an average of 2.9% annually for the next eight years, the firm forecasts in its report, “Great Powers, Geopolitics, and the Future of Trade.” But the routes goods travel will change markedly as North America reduces its dependence on China and China builds up its links with the Global South, which is cementing its power in the global trade map.
“Global trade is set to top $29 trillion by 2033, but the routes these goods will travel is changing at a remarkable pace,” Aparna Bharadwaj, managing director and partner at BCG, said in a release. “Trade lanes were already shifting from historical patterns and looming US tariffs will accelerate this. Navigating these new dynamics will be critical for any global business.”
To understand those changes, BCG modeled the direct impact of the 60/25/20 scenario (60% tariff on Chinese goods, a 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico, and a 20% on imports from all other countries). The results show that the tariffs would add $640 billion to the cost of importing goods from the top ten U.S. import nations, based on 2023 levels, unless alternative sources or suppliers are found.
In terms of product categories imported by the U.S., the greatest impact would be on imported auto parts and automotive vehicles, which would primarily affect trade with Mexico, the EU, and Japan. Consumer electronics, electrical machinery, and fashion goods would be most affected by higher tariffs on Chinese goods. Specifically, the report forecasts that a 60% tariff rate would add $61 billion to cost of importing consumer electronics products from China into the U.S.