Just 12% of organisations hold data on the majority of their second-tier suppliers, according to a Sedex member survey released alongside the platform's overhaul of beyond-Tier 1 mapping tools.

Sedex has rolled out tier-labelled upstream connections that allow suppliers to tag each trading partner by tier and attach them to a specific worksite, rather than to the corporate entity alone. Each upstream supplier must confirm the relationship before downstream buyers can read the connection in their dashboard.

What does the data gap look like?

KPMG research cited by Sedex put the second-tier visibility rate at 28% across the wider business population. Sedex's own survey surfaces a further upstream problem: 15% of supply-chain worksites have no measures at all to ensure that their own suppliers or subcontractors meet required labour standards.

Sedex frames the release against tightening regulation. The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is ratcheting up compliance expectations on sourcing teams, the company says, making beyond-Tier 1 mapping an urgent priority.

How does the platform change work?

The streamlined workflow replaces Sedex's older corporate-link approach. Suppliers add upstream partners, label them by tier, and tie each entry to an individual worksite. Upstream suppliers verify the link before the data passes downstream — a gate Sedex positions as an accuracy and trust control between trading partners.

Sedex CEO Jon Hancock framed the change as a shift away from network-wide abstraction. "Leaders are being asked to make increasingly important sourcing decisions in an environment that is less predictable than ever," Hancock said. "That requires more than broad network models and head-office information — it requires data that distinguishes between every individual facility."

He added that pairing site-level data with deeper risk insight lets corporate teams "prioritise resources to target the most significant gaps, risks or impacts across their supply chains."

What risk data backs the rebuild?

Sedex has expanded its risk-assessment capabilities in parallel. More precise risk scores now cover 15 topics across more than 120,000 registered worksites.

• Audit Risk pillar draws on non-compliance patterns across more than 250,000 SMETA audits at 115,000 sites in 106 countries, incorporating the latest SMETA 7.0 data.
• Wages Risk pillar integrates wage-related information from over 70,000 site-level SMETA audits with expert external sources, producing what Sedex calls more robust inherent-risk calculations for sites likely to fall below legal wage requirements.
• Environmental risk feature consolidates environmental data at worksite level to help teams scope due-diligence and environmental-management priorities across their supplier base.

Duncan Ellis, Sedex chief product and technology officer, tied the technical upgrade to a single use case. "The hardest part of supply chain sustainability risk management is knowing where to act first," Ellis said. "By combining authoritative global sources with site-level audit data across multiple sourcing tiers, we've built a platform that turns that question into a clear, evidence-based answer."

What does the upgrade force on sourcing?

Buying organisations get a sharper baseline for second-tier mapping requests, with worksite data now tied to each upstream tier. Auditing teams can recalibrate site-level risk prioritisation using the 15-topic scoring, with SMETA 7.0 findings feeding the Audit Risk pillar across 115,000 sites.

Sedex's mapping and risk upgrades follow the recent launch of a self-serve interactive tool that helps users identify which major supply-chain and sustainability regulations apply to their operations. Taken together, the two rollouts combine tier-labelled mapping with audit-driven risk scoring, giving sourcing managers one workflow for reaching past first-tier suppliers.