This feature is a paid add-on. If it's not included in your contract just yet, please reach out to your dedicated Customer Success Consultant or Account Executive.
What is an Exposure Analysis?
Exposure Analysis is a feature designed to help companies understand how their supply chain is impacted by specific risks such as high risk countries or companies affected by recent disruptions such as natural disasters. This analysis evaluates whether any of your direct suppliers have relationships with companies that pose disruption, compliance or reputational risks within your broader supply chain.
What Problem does the Exposure Analysis Solve?
Managing supply chain risk is complex, especially when dealing with multi-tiered networks. Often, companies do not have visibility beyond their direct suppliers, making it difficult to detect potential risks in lower-tiers. The Exposure Analysis address this challenge by:
Identifying which suppliers in your network have links to specific risks
Revealing which tiers of your supply chain these exposures occur
Providing detailed insights into how these exposures might affect your business
How Can You Benefit from an Exposure Analysis?
By using the Exposure Analysis, you gain:
Risk Visibility: You can see if your tier-1 suppliers are indirectly connected to high-risk entities, helping you proactively manage exposure.
Informed Decision-Making: With detailed data about the exposure, you can make more informed decisions regarding supplier relationships, ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards and avoiding disruptions.
Supply Chain Optimization: The ability to visualise how risks flow through your supply chain enables better prioritisation of risk mitigation efforts.
How to Use the Exposure Analysis
Accessing the Exposure Analysis
To begin, you can access the Exposure Analysis via the "Analysis" tab in the Prewave application's side bar.
Once in the Analysis, choose New Analysis and then Exposure Analysis.
From here, you can either start a new analysis or view an existing one.
Start a New Exposure Analysis
When you choose "Exposure Analysis", you will be taken through a two-step process:
Setup
Analysis Name & Date: Provide a name for the analysis and select a date. This will be stored as metadata for future reference.
Base Collection: This is the group of companies whose risk exposure you want to examine, typically your tier-1 suppliers. You can select multiple collections, allowing you to analyse several groups of suppliers within a single analysis. You can choose any collection you have added to "My Collections" in the network tab within Prewave.
Exposure Type: This defines what type of exposure you want to find. Currently supported types are:
Collection: This includes the group of high-risk or sanctioned companies you want to check for exposure within your supply chain. You can select any collection you have in My Collections in Prewave.
Country: Select this type if you're interested in your exposure to anything that is typically limited within a country's borders. Political risks are an example of this.
Target: An analysis based on a single target is useful, for example, when you want to know if a single company is present anywhere in your supply chain.
Scenario: Find your exposure to a scenario you have configured.
Alert ID, Exposed Collection, Exposed Countries & Exposed Target: Depending on which Exposure Type you select, this field will adapt accordingly. As an example, if you choose the Exposure Type: Collection, you will then have the field populated to add the specific Exposed Collections.
Tier-N Configuration: You can adjust this configuration, allowing you to create various scenarios for the same analysis.
Commodity Filter: A separate filter element, located below all other configuration fields, allows you to assign a commodity filter to each base collection individually. This narrows the analysis to specific components or products traded with each group of suppliers, and is required for component-level information to appear in your results.
Review
Overview
Once you have successfully defined the parameters and clicked "Create", the results screen will appear.
The page includes a graph showing how many base suppliers are exposed to risk companies per tier, along with a table providing more detail about each base supplier's exposures.
The table has the following columns:
Base Supplier indicates each base supplier from the base collection that has at least one exposure. Where there is more than one exposure, expanding the row reveals further details, such as which risk companies are found in the supply chain. Clicking a supplier's name takes you to their target profile.
Risk Suppliers displays how many risk suppliers were found in each base supplier's supply chain at the selected tier level. Clicking a risk supplier's name takes you to their target profile.
My Component and Risk Component show the components based on your commodity filter for both the base supplier and the risk supplier, giving you immediate visibility into which specific goods are creating the exposure. This column is visible when a commodity filter has been applied.
Shipments displays the number of recorded shipments for the risk supplier, helping you quickly prioritise which exposures are most significant.
Exposure Level indicates whether the base supplier in question is a site or a site group.
Reason for Exposure indicates why each base supplier is exposed. For example, in the case of Exposure Type: Country, the column shows in which country the identified risk suppliers are located.
You can also preview a specific supplier's exposure details by clicking the "Preview" button.
Graph
Once a base supplier is selected for "Preview", or the "Graph" tab is clicked, a Sankey diagram visualising the exposure is displayed.
This graph highlights supply chains with identified exposures. Each column represents a tier of the supply chain, with suppliers shown as blocks. Base suppliers appear in the leftmost column, while risk suppliers are highlighted in red.
The graph is sorted by the number of exposures: base suppliers with the most exposures are listed at the top of the first column, and risk suppliers with the most connections to base suppliers are listed at the top of each tier.
The thickness of the lines represents the number of shipments between suppliers: thicker lines indicate more shipments.
Clicking the lines between suppliers opens an edge popup with detailed information, including:
The products shipped between them.
The specific HS codes traded between those suppliers, filtered to show only the codes relevant to your active commodity filters.
A direct link to each supplier's target profile, allowing you to navigate there without leaving the graph view.
Suppliers in the graph are also clickable. Selecting a supplier highlights it along with all connected suppliers. For example, clicking an exposed supplier highlights all base suppliers that have that supplier in their supply chain, as well as the paths connecting them. Hovering over a supplier reveals additional details.
Search Bar for Base and Risk Suppliers
You can search for specific suppliers within both the base and risk suppliers. You can find this search option in the "Review" tab of the Exposure Analysis, on the upper right-hand side, just below the "Download Report" button.
Downloadable Reports
After reviewing the analysis, you can download a report by selecting "Download Report" in the top-right corner. Two export options are available:
Overview Exposure Export: The standard xlsx report summarising your exposure results. Available for all analyses regardless of configuration.
Component Exposure Export: A more detailed xlsx report that includes the full supply chains of your exposed base suppliers, with the relevant components listed per tier. This export is available when a commodity filter has been applied to the analysis, and is designed for sharing a comprehensive, component-level view of your exposure within your organisation.