Supplier selection is one of the most consequential processes procurement teams support. Despite this fact, many organizations have spent decades relying primarily on internal scorecards, certifications, and financial checks when evaluating suppliers. What’s missing is real operational insight into how suppliers perform in production environments.
In this Startup of the Week conversation, Jyothi Hartley speaks with Matthew Spencer, Founder of FlockScore, about how their platform introduces a collective intelligence layer for supplier performance, helping procurement teams make faster, more confident supplier decisions using real-world peer insights.
What does FlockScore do?
“We're building a collective intelligence layer for supplier decisions. What that really means is we aggregate anonymized real-world performance data across manufacturers, and the result is that it helps procurement teams make faster, better, and lower risk supplier decisions.”
What inspired you to start FlockScore?
“This seems obvious for us in procurement, but when you really think about it, it's not… we make multi-million euro decisions today with very little operational foresight. We validate certifications, financials, and technical capability checks, but we have very little information on how a supplier is actually going to perform when we start real production.
Is that supplier going to deliver to you on time consistently? What happens if there's an issue? When you don't see these operational issues upfront, it introduces a lot of risk. In the end, you end up wasting time and money.
For me, the trigger was when we reached the point where I expected the market to offer something like this, and nothing existed. That was the moment I thought, somebody needs to build it.”
How did you validate that this was truly a gap in the market?
“I spent the first months connecting with senior procurement leaders across different industries to understand if what I saw as this gap was something they also experienced. It was a resounding ‘yes.’
The real aha moment came when my co-founder started having those same conversations independently. Even in industries we’re not focusing on today, the same feedback came back. That’s when you realize this is a repeatable problem. What made me think we were on the right path is that the challenges people raised were also consistently the same ones, and they are exactly the ones we’re tackling.”
Why is a solution like FlockScore especially relevant right now?
“There are two main drivers. The first is the geopolitical situation we’re in. Procurement teams need to be more agile and change suppliers faster, but qualification processes haven’t evolved anywhere near the speed of risk. We need to be able to be more agile but keep the same level of confidence.
The second driver is around AI. We’ve moved from pilots to implementation, but what keeps coming back is data.
AI doesn’t work well with intuition, and today, procurement is still working with quite a lot of intuition. FlockScore brings a data point that can help teams leverage agentic AI capabilities further than they are able to today.”
What friction point does FlockScore solve first for procurement teams?
“The first friction point we solve is speed and certainty in decision-making.
If you’re trying to find an alternative supplier, for example, because of a geopolitical reason, FlockScore gives you the data to have confidence very early in the process.
You can move ahead faster and reduce the chance that you waste time validating a supplier technically only to discover later that operationally it doesn’t work out.
I’m able to suggest a new supplier for an important component quite quickly and with confidence that it will actually perform.”
What ROI or impact are procurement teams looking for when they adopt FlockScore?
“There are three main levers: The first is faster decision cycles, which help organizations become more agile. The second is the cost of poor quality, which is often much larger than organizations realize. But the biggest bucket is disruption. Individual supply chain disruptions can cost millions.
The main piece is reducing potential disruptions caused by operational issues. Ultimately, the end ROI is higher supply chain resilience.”
What is the most overlooked capability in FlockScore today?
“One key signal we track is delivery and capacity-related issues. If you can spot a capacity issue impacting another customer before it impacts you, you can proactively go to the supplier and solve the issue when it’s cheapest to solve.
The most overlooked capability today is actually what you can build on top of that data.
For example, if a supplier is facing capacity issues, the platform can recommend alternative suppliers with similar capabilities but stronger performance on the factors that matter most to you.” As supply chains grow more complex and disruption becomes more frequent, procurement teams are under increasing pressure to make faster supplier decisions without sacrificing confidence. Expanding visibility into supplier performance beyond a single organization’s internal experience may become an important piece of how procurement leaders balance speed, resilience, and risk in the years ahead. To learn more about FlockScore, visit their profile page in the AOP Provider Directory.
