WEConnect and SAP BTP Help Women-Owned Businesses Level Up in the Global Marketplace

Worldwide, women-owned businesses foster equality and economic development that helps lift communities, reduce poverty, improve environmental sustainability, elevate diversified consumer choices and voices, and contribute to more balanced, equitable, and holistic decision-making on broader issues.

It has been challenging, though, for women entrepreneurs and their businesses to be visible in the global marketplace. Equally, it had been difficult for buyers dedicated to diversity and inclusion to identify best-in-class women-owned suppliers.

Not-for-profit WEConnect International, with help from SAP partner Premikati Inc. and SAP experts, worked to develop a solution to expedite and simplify connecting member-buyers with member-suppliers and vice versa while reducing barriers and opening doors for women entrepreneurs to the international value chains.

Connecting US$4 Trillion in Purchasing Power with Women-Owned Businesses

Women own 33% of all privately held businesses worldwide but earn only 1% of the total spend. Many organizations have a clear mandate and mission to seek out women-owned companies. Still, organizations have no easy means of discovering qualified women-owned suppliers in the vast international marketplace. Similarly, women-owned businesses have no clear path to a seat at the table in the conventional system dominated by legacy corporate giants and complex, often rigid government agencies.

WEConnect, helmed by CEO and co-founder Elizabeth Vazquez, stepped in with a vision to bridge the gap with a solution connecting a formidable member-buyer network with a collective annual purchasing power of $4 trillion with women-owned businesses in 135 countries.

A Solution to Lower the Barriers to Supplier Onboarding

Vazquez realized the original WEConnect solution did not allow suppliers and buyers to find each other easily, it was cumbersome for suppliers to apply for certification, and the staff had problems registering and certifying global businesses because the solution only supported one language, English. A new solution had to eliminate those barriers and provide targeted, comprehensive, user-friendly searching for buyers while integrating seamlessly with buyers’ existing technology.

As a lean nonprofit with no IT department, WEConnect relied on the expertise of Premikati, a wholly women-owned business, and SAP, a member-buyer, to design and build WECommunity, the organization’s new, mobile-enabled solution, which helps deliver on its mission to drive revenue to women-owned suppliers around the world. “We wanted to go straight to, what platform is the most commonly used amongst our member buyers for managing their suppliers?” Vazquez recounts. “And it was an obvious decision that SAP was the go-to platform for most of our member-buyers. They use some form of SAP or multiple SAP offerings.”

Improved Search Increases Supplier Onboarding

WECommunity is a trusted self-service solution that allows “buyers and suppliers to find each other efficiently and effectively,” Vazquez explains. In addition to accomplishing that essential goal, WECommunity makes the organization’s robust network of worldwide member-buyers available in 10 of the most common languages among members. The mobile-optimized solution also includes a portal that enables women supplier members to easily register their businesses and initiate requests for certification using just their smartphones.

All the improvements, including added security features, have driven a 95% increase in certified and registered women-owned businesses in the WEConnect database. WECommunity’s streamlined, user-friendly functionality has also made WEConnect more appealing to buyers, and the organization has seen a 91% increase in membership.

100% Increase in Spending on Women-Owned Businesses

Since the launch, WECommunity-tracked spending with women-owned businesses outside the U.S. has doubled, from $4 billion to $8 billion, and the impact of those dollars has rippled far beyond the pockets of business owners. “I am obsessed with moving as much money into the hands of women as quickly as possible because of how they reinvest in their employees, families, and communities,” Vazquez says. Proving her point: in 2021 alone, the certified women-owned businesses in WEConnect’s network created 24,000 new jobs.

Preparing for a Future of Innovation

WEConnect, a 2023 SAP Innovation Award winner, looks forward to scaling its solution to accommodate more suppliers and buyers while continuing to leverage data analytics to empower women-owned businesses. But WEConnect won’t stop there – AI and machine learning are next for added efficiencies, accuracy, and automation as the organization and its membership expand. Vazquez explains that the organization is actively conversing with SAP and other member-buyers: “How do we all collaborate? How do we use AI and machine learning to find the women suppliers of the world, get them up to speed on what it takes to compete for larger contracts, and make it easier for them to connect with buyers?”

With boundless ambition and limitless imagination, the future is bright for women-owned businesses and the families and communities they support.

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Timo Elliott is vice president and global innovation advocate for SAP BTP at SAP.