Supplier Discovery Intelligence: The New Competitive Advantage for 2026 

How Supplier Discovery transforms the way procurement finds, evaluates, and onboards the right suppliers, before disruption hits. 

Over the past five years, procurement teams have operated in a world increasingly shaped by overlapping and unrelenting shocks: geopolitical conflict, cyberattacks, climate-driven disruption, logistics fragility, energy volatility, banking instability, and now generative AI radically reshaping workflows. Supplier risk is no longer episodic, it’s systemic. 

Against this backdrop, one capability has emerged as a genuine step-change for CPOs: 

AI-powered Supplier Discovery Intelligence. 

With Beroe’s acquisition of Forestreet, we’ve integrated advanced discovery capabilities directly into the Beroe platform – giving procurement teams a way to instantly surface alternatives, spot innovations, expand into new markets, and build far more resilient supply bases. Not in weeks or months, but minutes. 

Below are some of the key use cases where Supplier Discovery Intelligence is already transforming outcomes for our customers. 

1. Rapid Alternative Supplier Identification During Disruptions 

Shorten supply chains. Eliminate single points of failure. Avoid production stoppages. 

When disruption hits, the biggest cost isn’t paid in premiums – it’s paid in time. Every hour lost searching for viable alternative suppliers widens the gap between impact and response. 

With Forestreet integrated into Beroe, teams can now: 

• Identify adjacent or compatible suppliers instantly 

• Map alternatives before the competition acts 

• Bring options directly into sourcing workflows 

• Protect continuity in the face of unexpected shocks 

Example: 
A well-known US bourbon manufacturer suddenly lost access to sugar maple charcoal, an essential input for its signature process – one traditionally produced in-house and notoriously hard to source. A production shutdown appeared unavoidable. 

Using Forestreet, the procurement team identified external suppliers – none of whom had previously served the bourbon industry. The crisis was averted. 

So what? 
The annual Forestreet subscription cost less than 1% of the shutdown it helped avoid. 

2. Geographic Expansion & Innovation Scouting 

Bring innovation into sourcing before your competitors do. 

Innovation is rarely found by searching for what you already know. Forestreet’s AI doesn’t rely on narrow keyword matches; it interprets use-cases, uncovering adjacent capabilities, new technologies, and emerging suppliers that traditional tools overlook. 

Example: 
A luxury handbag brand wanted to launch a product line using advanced materials – not leather. But their category teams had minimal exposure to this space. Forestreet scanned the global advanced materials landscape and produced a shortlist of suppliers offering next-generation fabrics and composites. 

So what? 
Category teams can now explore “white-space” far faster – compressing research cycles and accelerating time-to-market. 

3. Market Entry & New Product Development 

Remove sourcing bottlenecks as brands scale into new regions or categories. 

Expanding into new markets or product ranges often stalls because sourcing teams lack local supplier knowledge or category expertise. 

Forestreet solves this by: 

• Pre-populating local, compliant suppliers 

• Enabling iterative discovery as specifications evolve 

• Giving category managers context-rich guidance for unfamiliar categories 

Example: 
A rapidly growing brewer needed new types of malt and hops for craft beer innovation and enough capacity to sustain demand for breakout products. Forestreet helped them find both: 

1. Specialty ingredient suppliers for new recipes 

2. High-capacity partners to support scaling

So what? 
Procurement contributes meaningfully to product planning much earlier than before. 

4. Increasing Supplier Diversity Without Slowing Down Sourcing 

Meet diversity goals without sacrificing speed or quality. 

Most diversity solutions do one of two things – not both: 

• Provide ESG attributes tied to specific companies 

• Categorize suppliers by what they do 

Forestreet fuses both dimensions. The sourcing team can search for a specific capability and specific ESG or diversity credentials simultaneously. The platform can even suggest diverse alternatives to current suppliers. 

So what? 
Diversity becomes an upfront requirement built directly into the sourcing workflow – not an after-the-fact compliance check. 

Why Supplier Discovery Intelligence Matters Now 

Supplier Intelligence is one of procurement’s last true step-change opportunities, and one of the only AI applications already delivering measurable returns. 

Today’s discovery challenge is structural, not simply operational: 

• 29% of procurement time on average is spent on supplier management. 

• 3 months is the average time required to complete a supplier search. 

• 40 hours is the average time to find one new supplier. 

• 69% of companies struggle to discover suppliers in new geographies. 

• And most teams can only vet a few dozen suppliers out of thousands. 

Beroe fundamentally changes this equation – turning supplier discovery into a fast, intelligence-led process that scales with complexity, not against it. 

The Future: Decision Intelligence for Supplier Strategy 

CPOs aren’t looking for longer supplier lists, they’re looking for better decisions at speed: 

• Which alternatives are viable today? 

• Where is hidden single-source risk? 

• Which emerging suppliers offer real innovation? 

• How does geography, capacity, or ESG performance impact the choice? 

• And which suppliers help us move faster than the market? 

By combining Beroe’s deep category intelligence with Forestreet’s dynamic discovery engine, procurement teams finally get a unified system that connects insights directly to action. 

This is Supplier Discovery Intelligence. 
And it’s becoming the new competitive advantage.