BNY Mellon wants its suppliers to work with each other

The global company is looking within and beyond its own organization, and working with external networks to find and develop diverse suppliers

BNY Mellon’s Claire P. Scanlon: “Making our position on supplier diversity very clear, it adds value to everything.”

Claire P. Scanlon is VP and supplier development program manager at BNY Mellon Corp (New York, NY). BNY Mellon is a large asset management and securities services company offering global financial services to institutional clients: pension funds, other financial services firms, corporations and the like. It’s the product of a 2007 merger between the Bank of New York Co (New York, NY) and Mellon Financial Corp (Pittsburgh, PA).

Scanlon has worked at the Bank of New York, and now BNY Mellon, for seventeen years, and in general services, where the company’s supplier diversity activities are housed, since 2001.

“When we started the supplier development program,” Scanlon says, “we reached out to all our suppliers to see if they would fit in. We set up an internal advisory committee representing the various areas of the company that would be involved, and met with the division heads and their staffs to develop a relationship. They helped identify suppliers for us in the beginning, and now when they need something done they call us and ask ‘Do you have anyone who does this?’”

Scanlon’s internal awareness campaign includes posters, Q&A sessions and face-to-face meetings with chief administrative officers from all areas of the company. It’s designed to create discussions and make managers aware of the vendors available to them. She also meets with employee networks, including the Women’s Initiative Network (WIN) and Impact, which promotes diversity and inclusion for people of color.

Networking connections in the company
“We wanted to network within our own company,” Scanlon explains. It’s been effective: WIN, through its work with the Dress for Success organization, discovered a number of people who wanted to start their own businesses, “So we invited some of our successful women-owned suppliers and representatives from the Workshops in Business Opportunity (WIBO) group to put on a program to advise them.”

WIBO is a sixteen-week program, and “If you do your homework, when you finish you have a complete business plan,” Scanlon says. BNY Mellon sponsors the program twice a year in the New York Metro area, and “There are close to 400 attendees at each session,” Scanlon notes with pride. Other BNY Mellon internal networks have made similar connections.

Supporting supplier networks
“When we started the program we worked with local minority purchasing councils and networks: participated with them in training programs, provided space, helped with their printing needs. Right now we’re working with thirteen local groups,” Scanlon reveals.

For example, the company helps Asian Women in Business. It supports their events and provides space for their annual opportunity conference, which includes an expo and matchmaking.

BNY Mellon recently helped the Empire State Development Corp, New York State’s small-business organization, by hosting its first green forum. “We had about 600 people here and it was absolutely fabulous,” Scanlon recalls with pleasure. “Everybody was buzzing. They got a lot of helpful information on how small businesses can apply for the stimulus money that’s related to environmental initiatives.”

Three years ago BNY Mellon hosted the first expo and opportunity fair put on by the New York City Department of Small Business, another certifying agency. “It was in June, and by August they had fifty contracts signed!” Scanlon says. “Next year we’ll do it again.”

What’s the motivation for all this? “It’s making our position on supplier diversity very clear,” Scanlon explains. “It adds value to everything and makes the staff and management feel good that we’re able to do this for the community. The stockholders also like what the company does for the community.”

Finding suppliers
And, of course, these events help BNY Mellon find diverse suppliers of its own. “We have really good ones,” Scanlon notes with pride. “Our property management group works with a small electrical company that did over half a million dollars with us last year, and a women-owned construction company does more than a million dollars with us.”

Working with the NMBC
BNY Mellon hosts the National Minority Business Council (NMBC, New York, NY) in its building. “We built out the space for them and provided a five-year lease as an in-kind contribution,” says Scanlon. “This is the seventh year we’ve hosted and sponsored their annual women’s business conference.”

NMBC helps small, minority, women, veteran-owned and other disadvantaged businesses succeed. It offers business assistance, educational seminars and purchasing listings throughout the tri-state area and across the U.S., and includes a women’s business committee, vets’ business affairs group, an entrepreneurship boot camp and more, all hosted from its BNY Mellon HQ.

“The organization is thirty-seven years old, a 501(c)3 not for profit, and has nearly 400 members in the U.S., 70 percent of them based on the eastern seaboard,” explains John Robinson, NMBC president. “The companies are manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, construction contractors and professional firms.”

The group does not get involved in certification. “We focus on education, procurement, training and advocacy for business development,” says Robinson. “BNY Mellon is staying committed and even trying to find ways to do more in supplier diversity,” he adds. “It is to be saluted!”

Working together
Clearly, what BNY Mellon is doing goes far beyond its own purchasing desires and commitments. “It’s not just corporate purchases,” Scanlon says, “but also getting them to work with each other. In the New York and New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council, for example, we encourage the MBE members to spend time with each other and buy and sell from each other.”

Recently four of BNY Mellon’s diverse protégés bid together on a proposal for a corporate trust project. “It worked out very well,” Scanlon notes. “We are very pleased with them and now we are introducing them to other areas.

“We keep emphasizing that ‘You have to keep working with each other. As corporations get bigger and bigger, you have to be able to work together as a group.’”

Way over goal
BNY Mellon, with locations in thirty-four countries, accepts all certifications: national, local and city. Its spending on diverse suppliers is “way over goal,” Scanlon notes with pride. “In 2008 we did 17.5 percent of our competitive spend with diverse suppliers, although our official goal is just 12 percent.

“For us, diverse suppliers include minorities, women, people with disabilities, employers of people with disabilities, disabled vets, Vietnam era vets and small businesses.”

Some 9.7 percent of the total was spent with minority-owned and women-owned companies.

Meet Laurel C. Thomas, CEO and president of MTI Computer Services
“We want to increase our footprint in the BNY Mellon area, declares Laurel C. Thomas of MTI Computer Services (Beachwood, OH), “even though they are in NYC and we are based in Ohio.”

MTI started in 1968 as an early value-added distributor and service provider for Digital Equipment Corp products. It became part of Arrow Electronics in the 1980s.

When Arrow wanted to drop the service side of the business in 1992, Thomas’ husband, who was working as international service director for the company, bought out the service component. Laurel C. Thomas joined him on the sales side. “Then my husband passed away suddenly, and I had to jump into finance and work with that side of the business. But I’m still the face of MTI to BNY Mellon,” she explains.

Today some 80 percent of the MTI business is involved in IT staffing, and Thomas has been working with BNY Mellon on IT issues, software and hardware service, special projects, staffing and procurement. “With the merger between the Bank of New York and Mellon, we’re now into staffing migration. We are a national service company, so we may contract with a third party for some services,” she explains.

Certifications
In 2007-08 MTI won the NMBC’s best technology company award. It also has a 2009 top ten women business owners award from the Northeast Ohio chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, and more. MTI recently became WBENC-certified.

Growing up with BNY Mellon
MTI, says Thomas, “has really grown up with BNY Mellon. It has been a huge education process and a valuable asset to us, and many of its people are like part of my family. We went through 9/11 with them and helped them move their technicians to twenty-one different offices. It was devastating but it deepened the relationship.

“We take our work extremely seriously,” Thomas adds. “When there is a problem it gets resolved quickly. This is one of our strong attributes.”

Today, Thomas and her VP Sheri Wilmoth attend as many BNY Mellon supplier diversity events as they can. “Everyone is very friendly and the conversations open doors for us,” Wilmoth notes. One such door, Thomas adds, is a new digital signage company she’s just started. “We are installing and servicing flat-screen panels for the digital signage world. We’ve done 500 major installations across the U.S., even some for BNY Mellon conference rooms.”