For years, decades even, supplier diversity was seen as only a social responsibility issue. A means for corporations to address social injustice through increased opportunities for minority and underrepresented business owners.

We are living in a golden era of women entrepreneurs. Women are launching businesses at a faster rate than ever before in history, outpacing men by 114 percent.

According to the latest American Express State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, the number of women-owned businesses (WBEs) increased from 402,000 (4.6 percent of all firms) in 1972 to 12.3 million (40 percent of all firms) in 2018. Employment surged from 230,000 to 9.2 million. Revenues rose from $8.1 billion (representing 0.3 percent of all firms’ revenue) in 1972 to $1.8 trillion (4.3 percent of total firms’ revenue) in 2018.

To continue to improve and expand your supplier diversity program, you need C-suite buy-in on supplier diversity initiatives. If you don’t have the right metrics or reporting strategy on your side, getting those few, but important, votes can feel like an uphill battle.

For the second year in a row, we surveyed supplier diversity professionals and diverse suppliers to gain insight into the supplier diversity industry from both sides. Our 2018 State of Supplier Diversity reports include the results of more than 500 survey responses, giving us an overview of supplier diversity in the United States. Today, we want to dig deeper into the data and take a closer look at what's happening with supplier diversity in the manufacturing sector.

It’s no secret that tracking data is the key to improving your supplier diversity program. In order to understand what’s working and what’s not, you need objective feedback to work from. As an added benefit, reporting on supplier diversity metrics is one of the most effective ways to gain C-suite buy-in on new initiatives and locate new growth opportunities.