Are you confused by compliance? What rules apply to whom and when, and what must you do to comply? You’re certainly not alone. We work with businesses, especially in industries like retail, which must navigate a plethora of regulations, while ensuring their suppliers, products, and operations align with ethical and legal standards. To make matters more challenging, these regulations and technologies are continually evolving.
In this article we simplify the concept of supply chain compliance by:
Defining what supply chain compliance means and breaking it down into three key areas:
Showing how supply chain compliance software (like Segura’s) streamlines and ensures compliance across all areas of the supply chain.
Making sense of compliance, one step at a time.
Supplier compliance ensures that suppliers and vendors adhere to a company’s standards, including contractual obligations, regulatory requirements, and ethical business practices. This requires suppliers staying up-to-date with the latest documentation, policies, and terms set by your business.
Key aspects of supplier compliance include adhering to regulatory requirements—like the UK Modern Slavery Act—while also upholding ethical and social responsibilities, including fair wages and reasonable working hours.
Additionally, it may require suppliers to adhere to established environmental standards, ensuring alignment with company policies on sustainable sourcing (e.g. FSC-certified wood, organic cotton, or conflict-free minerals), minimising carbon footprints, and enhancing waste management practices.
To ensure compliance, businesses often implement third-party audits, corrective action plans, and certification programmes that verify supplier adherence to these standards.
Compliance software helps businesses monitor, assess and improve supplier performance more efficiently.
For example, Segura’s compliance software allows businesses to:
A configurable traffic light system provides a clear visual overview of supplier compliance across different locations. For audits requiring corrective action plans, suppliers can submit evidence of improvement, which can then be reviewed, accepted, or rejected by your team.
As suppliers address compliance issues and provide verified evidence, their ratings automatically update, ensuring continuous improvement.
Legislative compliance ensures that business activities throughout the supply chain align with relevant national and international legislation governing trade, labour, the environment, and overall business operations
British companies must stay informed about evolving UK, EU and other international legislation, such as The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) which was enacted by the US Government in 2023, or with the eco-labelling requirements for businesses trading in France since 2024.
Companies first need to know whether they are impacted by legislation as it can apply differently to companies based on size, turnover, and point of sale locales. Then they must ensure these updates are reflected in company documentation, including terms and conditions and policies.
Legislative compliance often involves making due diligence disclosures and filing reports to the relevant authorities, as with CSDDD and EPR. (We have prepared a number of valuable factsheets to help you achieve compliance with the most pressing legislation on our Insights page.)
Compliance software helps businesses set up specific and robust reports in order to prove compliance to legislation.
For example, Segura’s compliance software allows businesses to:
Product compliance is making sure that products meet safety, quality, and legal standards before reaching consumers. Achieving product compliance involves input from across the supply chain.
Some key elements of product compliance includes:
Companies must comply with labelling and packaging requirements in each country they sell their products. There are many examples of legislation that must be followed to ensure compliance. For example, France has made environmental labelling a necessity since 2023.
Over the next few years labelling of products will require a digital product passport (DPP) as part of EU law. A DPP is an electronic record containing essential information about a product’s materials, origin, and production processes. This initiative will enhance compliance by improving transparency, traceability, and regulatory adherence throughout the supply chain.
In terms of packaging, many countries including the EU and the UK have recently brought in Extended Producer Responsibility legislation transfering the responsibility of packaging in the post consumer stage to the producers.
Businesses must ensure that all products comply with regional and international safety regulations such as those regarding flammability, toxicity, and durability testing. They must also make sure that certain products have the required certification for product safety.
As environmental concerns regarding climate change and other issues grow, product sustainability is increasingly demanded by both consumers and global legislation.
To help with this, many businesses are considering product Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) to assist with compliance regarding evolving environmental regulations like the EU Deforestation Regulation" or "EUDR” which came into force in December 2024. LCAs can also help meet the growing consumer demand for sustainable sourcing and circular design.
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic method used to evaluate the environmental impact of a product, process, or service throughout its entire life cycle. It helps businesses and policymakers understand the environmental footprint of their operations and make more sustainable decisions. For example businesses may use an LCA to look at the materials they’re using in order to switch to a more sustainable option.
Compliance software helps businesses set up reports on their products that enable fashion retailers and brands to benchmark and monitor progress on their targets and regulatory measures.
For example, Segura’s compliance software allows businesses to:
In our recent Retail Supply Chain Sustainability Conference our speaker, Denby Royal, from Peftrust, introduced their automated, data driven LCAs. Working with a platform like Segura, Peftrust can overcome the challenges of tradictional Life Cycle Assessments, which are slow and costly to calculate. By capturing specific data points from design through the supply, calculating sustainability data from design, manufacture and supply becomes scalable and affordable.
Managing supplier, legislative, and product compliance in retail can be a complex and time-consuming process, but Segura’s supply chain compliance software simplifies it by providing automated tools for monitoring and enforcing compliance standards.
By using Segura, retailers can gain greater transparency, reduce compliance risks, and build a more responsible and sustainable supply chain—all while saving time and resources.
If you’d like to have a free exploratory call, get in touch with us today: info@segura.co.uk