Dun & Bradstreet releases report on impact of Coronavirus on global supply chain
As the novel coronavirus spreads outside of China and countries around the world try to protect their citizens from the outbreak, the full impact of the virus is becoming more apparent. In less than a month, there have been hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of people infected globally.
To assess the global business impact of the outbreak, Dun & Bradstreet has created a special briefing report: Business Impact of the Coronavirus. The purpose is to help companies with ties to the impacted regions assess the potential impacts to their businesses and supply chains, as well as the economy at large.
As a nerve center of businesses representing several industry verticals, it is not surprising that the impacted region has commercial ties throughout the globe. Dun & Bradstreet’s proprietary linkage information shows that although the majority of business have their corporate headquarters located in China, approximately 49,000 businesses operating in the region are branches or subsidiaries of companies headquartered elsewhere. Some countries with the highest dependency on the impacted region include the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, and Switzerland.
The report also includes recommendations on how to protect your supply chain. While the final impacts to companies with business operations in the affected regions is uncertain, Dun & Bradstreet recommends taking immediate steps to mitigate further risk to a company’s supply chain:
Near-term best practices
• Develop a risk-based assessment process that helps identify and continuously monitor a variety of risks that could impact the productivity of your supply chain.
• Complete an assessment of suppliers to ensure your suppliers’ suppliers are not going to negatively impact your business.
• Monitor your supply chain. Make sure that you are monitoring the risks associated with both your Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers to ensure your company has a complete view of the supply chain.
• Identify alternative suppliers in non-impacted regions of the world to diversify the supply chain and limit dependencies on any one supplier of geographic region.
Long-term best practices
• Build policies and contingency plans for your supply chain. Identify geographically diverse suppliers to onboard in the event of emergency. A company should also consider dual sourcing for critical components within your supply chain.
• Periodically test and revise your strategy to account for organizational growth and environmental change.
The complete report on The Global Business Impact of the Coronavirus analyzes:
The number of active businesses, including branches or subsidiaries of foreign companies and corporate headquarters, in the impacted Chinese region
The number of companies and Fortune 1000 companies globally that have one or more Tier 1 or Tier 2 suppliers in the impacted Chinese region
The percentage of affected industries within the impacted Chinese region
The economic effect of the coronavirus outbreak as compared to the effect of both the SARS and Zika virus outbreaks on global and local markets
Two different scenarios around containment and the predictive impact for both
The report also contains both near-term and long-term best practices for how companies can protect their supply chains during the outbreak. These practices can be applied to other unforeseen events, as well.
To get the full Business Impact of the Coronavirus report, including best practices for how to protect your supply chain, please click here.
