Who is this article for?

Suppliers who want to learn to set up their company profile and contacts.

No elevated permissions are required.

This article provides a step‑by‑step guide to help suppliers get started with the Supply Chain platform.

1. Introduction

Welcome to Supply Chain, the global leader in supply chain transparency and collaboration for the food industry.

The Supply Chain platform securely connects customers and suppliers, enabling them to share information and reduce the cost of compliance.

As a supplier, Supply Chain enables you to respond to customer requests and maintain core information about your business and products that you can share with multiple customers.

Before we start, it is useful to define a few concepts.

1.1. Company profile

Every business on the Supply Chain platform has a company profile. This contains basic public domain information such as the company address, your company’s operating sites (these are owned by your company and not your suppliers), key contacts, and certification details.

Do not add your suppliers to your company profile. Suppliers should be added when you are mapping your supply chains.

Your company profile can be seen by any user of the Supply Chain platform and should be kept up to date, but it should only contain information that you are happy to be shared publicly.

1.2. Supply chain maps

You may have received product links and mapping requests from one or more of your customers. Product mapping is the way that Supply Chain creates visibility of a supply chain. The customer specifies their tier 1 suppliers that provide a product. Tier 1 suppliers then specify any tier 2 suppliers and so on. The end customer can see the full supply chain map. Members of the supply chain can only see the level above and the level below them. Supply chains are never public and only customers with whom you share product information can see the supply chain.

When you are mapping a supply chain, you can search the Supply Chain directory to find and add suppliers to your product supply chains. If you cannot find a specific supplier on our directory, at that point you will be able to create them.

Do not add suppliers to your company profile. To add suppliers, you can click the respond link as part of a customer request from the homepage. As part of accepting the link request, you can follow the steps to select or create your product and then map to add your suppliers at the same time. If you are not responding to a customer request, you can navigate to your product catalogue, create a product if one does not exist, and from the product supply chain page you can add suppliers.

1.3. Assessments

Customers may send you assessments to complete. Like physical audits, assessments are a series of questions you need to respond to. Answers to assessments can only be seen by the company requesting the assessment from you.

1.4. Tasks

A task is a request that has been sent to your company by another company. For example, your customer may have sent you a product link request for you to accept and map your supply chain, or they may have sent you an assessment to complete. These requests appear as tasks on your homepage for you to action. To see the options that are available to you, click the link on the right of the task to respond accordingly.

1.5. Supplier Manager

Separate from supply chain maps, Supplier Manager allows you to manage your own suppliers. By building custom supplier lists, you can check certification status, send assessments, and set risk scores. You can do all this and more. Once you are registered on the platform, you can try Supplier Manager for free.

2. First login steps

2.1. Complete your basic company profile

Your company profile is information about your company and operating sites that are owned by your company. It is important that you complete your company profile and keep it up to date. This means customers will need to ask you for less information.

Follow these steps to complete your company profile.

1. Navigate to your company profile from the left navigation in the Supply Chain area.
2. Click the Edit profile link to edit your company information.
3. Complete all the relevant details for your business and click Save.
4. Add site details. You now need to fill in the details for your sites. One site will have been created automatically when your company profile was created. You can edit this site to add more details, or you can add new sites for each of your operational facilities.
   • Your suppliers must not be added to your company profile. Suppliers should be added when you are mapping your supply chains.
5. After you click Edit site or Add site, fill in the relevant information. If the site you are adding is not a manufacturing site, make sure you tick “this is a non-production site.” If you are an agent or broker, do not tick this box for sites that you wish your customers to be able to link to.

2.2. Adding contacts

The final step of building your profile is to add public contacts for your company. This is important so that if any customer wants to contact you, they know who to contact.

Your contacts are created as users, and you can choose whether they have access to log on. In order to protect people’s data, their information will only be shown in the profile if you explicitly make them “visible on Supply Chain.”

Follow these steps to add contacts.

1. Select the Contacts tab in your company profile and then select Manage.
2. Select Add new user and enter the details for the contact.
   • If you do not want the user to have access to Supply Chain, select No next to User can login. Otherwise, select Yes and set roles for them.
   • For the contact to be public on your company profile, make sure you select Yes next to Visible on Supply Chain.

Contacts are shown in a business card-style view on the company profile. Please repeat the process for each contact that you want to be seen.

Remember to review your public contacts regularly and ensure that they are kept up to date.

3. Global directory

Your completed profile is visible in the global directory of over 35,000 food businesses. Remember to keep your profile up to date with any changes to sites, certifications, or contact details.

You can find the directory on the main menu. Feel free to browse around.

Your profile is seen by other members of Supply Chain, including your customers, so it is important that the data is accurate.

4. What to do next

Now that you have completed your profile, you will probably have some requests from your customers on your homepage to map products or complete assessments. Go to the Getting started with assessments article for more information.