- The overwhelming reason why customers choose a 12-month grace period is to avoid unnecessary variations in diverse spend that is being tracked due to a diverse supplier appearing to be uncertified for a period, only to have the spend returned to ‘certified’ status later. The 12-month grace period smooths this out. There are times when a supplier does not recertify, but our “12-month grace period” prefer taking this risk to having frequent unnecessary variations in spend. A common best practice by many organizations with long-time, mature supplier diversity programs recognize suppliers who are actively diverse at any time during their fiscal year, regardless of whether they may have expired sometime during that fiscal year.
- Many certification agencies are many months behind in completing the recertification process, and suppliers with ‘expired’ certifications will eventually become certified again. The average renewal takes 3-6 months after the expiration date.
- Even in instances where the agency doesn’t have a significant backlog, the renewal process often extends beyond certification expiration dates. Sometimes the supplier is late, sometime the agency review process takes longer than expected, especially for complex ownership structures.
- Certification information in supplier.io’s database is updated on a monthly basis. However, the ‘refresh’ schedule for each agency varies based on how often the agency updates its information. There are times when a supplier that completes the recertification process on time - but before the certification agency updates their files available for public use, so there may be a lag time between when the supplier renewed versus when the certification agency updated their public data.