SRM - Assurance Criteria — Setting Your Compliance Standards

ARIA QUICK SUMMARY

Assurance Criteria lets you define what 'compliant' means for your organisation by marking specific badges as critical.

Any supplier missing a critical badge is automatically flagged in the Assurance column of the SRM Console.

Criteria are organised by category. Within each category you select which badges are critical for your programme.

Assurance Criteria can be configured per supplier classification — allowing different compliance standards for different supplier types. Supplier classifications must be created and suppliers assigned to them separately before classification-level criteria can be applied.

Changes to Assurance Criteria take effect immediately across all relevant suppliers.

Best practice: start with 8 to 15 genuinely critical badges. Marking too many dilutes the signal. Review and update at least annually.

What Assurance Criteria Does

Assurance Criteria is the engine behind the Assurance column in your SRM Console. Define which badges your suppliers must hold, and SRM automatically flags any supplier that falls short. This turns compliance monitoring from a manual, periodic check into a continuous, automated process.

Setting Up Your Criteria

1. Navigate to Assurance Criteria in your SRM settings.
2. Select a category from the dropdown (e.g. General — 12 badges, Government Compliance, Certifications).
3. Mark any badge your organisation requires as Critical.
4. Review the selected critical badges in the right-hand panel before saving.
5. Select Save selections. Changes take effect immediately.

How many badges should I mark as critical?

Be selective. A well-configured setup typically has 8 to 15 critical badges — enough to be meaningful, focused enough to be actionable. If too many badges are marked critical, every supplier will be flagged and the signal becomes noise.

Assurance Criteria by Supplier Classification

SRM allows you to configure different Assurance Criteria for different supplier classifications — for example, applying stricter criteria to government-contract suppliers than to transactional ones.

To use this feature you must first create supplier classifications and assign your suppliers to them. This is done through a separate function in SRM settings. Once classifications are in place, you can configure independent Assurance Criteria for each classification.

Self-service setup

Full guidance on creating supplier classifications and assigning suppliers is available in the SupplierGateway Knowledge Base. Search for 'supplier classifications' for step-by-step instructions.

Reviewing and Updating Criteria

• Annually — as part of your supplier management programme review.
• When regulations change — new contracting requirements, updated ESG standards, sector-specific compliance changes.
• After an audit — if an auditor identifies a gap your criteria did not catch, update your criteria to prevent recurrence.
• When you add a new supplier category — new categories often bring new compliance requirements.

BEST PRACTICE — COMPLIANCE PROGRAMME DESIGN

• Map your badge requirements to the specific regulatory, contractual, and policy obligations they serve. This makes it much easier to defend your criteria selection in an audit.
• Section 889 (NDAA) prohibits federal contractors from using telecommunications equipment from certain Chinese manufacturers. If you hold government contracts, this badge should be marked critical.
• Assurance Criteria should be reviewed jointly by procurement and legal or compliance teams — procurement knows what is operationally important, legal knows what is legally required.
• An unresolved assurance gap is both a compliance risk and a sourcing risk. Suppliers with missing critical credentials may need to be replaced if the gap cannot be resolved before a contract deadline.

SupplierGateway SRM User Success Knowledge Base. For guidance purposes. Regulatory content should be validated with qualified advisors.