Supplier discovery remains one of the least structured and least digitized elements of the sourcing process, even in organizations with mature procurement systems. Identifying the right suppliers continues to be a complex and opaque process, particularly when teams look beyond established networks and major sourcing hubs.
In this episode, host Jyothi Hartley speaks with Harald Nitschinger, co-founder and CEO of Prewave, to explore how their AI-enabled platform delivers supply chain transparency, resilience, and sustainability at scale.
Below is a Q&A recap of their conversation:
What does Prewave do today, and how has your solution evolved over time?
“We really do everything in supplier or supply chain risk management. We work with more than 250 global brands, many of which have tens of thousands of suppliers, and we help them understand what is happening at those suppliers in real time. But we also help them to understand the risks of those suppliers.
So, it's both the real-time visibility into what's happening, into the risk of the suppliers, ranging from disruption and operational risks all the way to ESG and sustainability and compliance risks, and we have to understand the deeper supply chain behind their suppliers. We put that into a holistic offering.”
What are your strongest areas of differentiation in the current market?
“One of the main things that sets us apart is this holistic offering. Holistic means that over the last couple of years, ESG and looking at the sustainability and human rights at the supply base have grown in importance and translated into many regulations.
But then there's also the resilience of the supply chain and understanding not whether a supplier is sustainable or has a good profile from a human rights perspective, but whether it's a stable supplier and whether you have security of supply within your supply chain.
We offer a unique ability for our customers to understand their deeper supply chain. Not just tier 1s or tier 2 suppliers, but we can drive the visibility into the deeper supply chain.”
Where does Prewave sit within the procurement tech landscape?
“Typically, when we work with customers, they have a core team reporting directly to the CPO that handles the core risk management strategy and processes. These are the power users sitting more centrally in the organization.
But then you also have the broader purchasing organization running the supplier lifecycle. Both of these have to have risk at their fingertips. The individual procurement manager is working in procurement systems like Coupa, Ariba, or Jaggaer. Here we have an integration strategy.
To reach the broader procurement team, we integrate our risk data into these procurement systems. They should not work in Prewave; they work in the procurement systems. But risk needs to be an important part of decision-making when we decide which supplier to award or which supplier to improve during the lifecycle.”
What capabilities are customers relying on most right now?
“Last year, it was the scenario planning module, which enables the core group of power users to understand the impacts of potential tariffs, potential trade barriers, and potential conflicts.
In the scenario planning module, you can model different worlds you think are likely by combining different risk factors. For instance, we model an increasing US-China conflict scenario, which then brings increased tariffs, retaliation, and maybe more likely conflict in Taiwan.
They run that against their supply chain, understanding if that scenario materializes, which of their suppliers are most heavily affected, and then they can drive a response towards that scenario.”
How do your customers measure ROI?
“It’s purely a measure of to which extent I can leverage AI to reduce manual engagement in the process. Without Prewave, I might be sending 5,000 surveys and need three or four people driving that process. With Prewave, I can make do with half a person driving a more targeted approach.
On the resilience side, it becomes more interesting because we're driving actual business outcomes. It’s about reacting fast to mitigate or prevent in advance. If an insolvency or factory fire happens, I can drive mitigation in a matter of hours.
That drives real monetary gains because the longer I wait, the more expensive it becomes to react.”
What advice would you give organizations implementing risk management capabilities?
“It’s important to have both a central team driving risk management and bringing risk into the broader procurement organization. What we’ve seen not working is purely driving it into the broad procurement organization without central oversight and putting too much of the process on individual purchasers.
The purchaser should not log into Prewave as another step in their workflow. Rather, the risk needs to be in the procurement system they’re already using. That’s the key operating model that we are following.”
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