Identify Material Risk Before Your Next Sourcing Decision

CRU Risk Navigator was developed in response to a challenge we repeatedly heard from the market: understanding risk is often less about finding information and more about knowing what matters.

In this video, Matthew Perlman, Product Owner of CRU Risk Navigator and Senior Innovation Manager at CRU, reflects on the customer needs and market observations that helped shape the platform.

Get a concise overview of the CRU Risk Navigator, its coverage and how it brings CRU intelligence together to show changing supply and price risk.

Understand the Drivers Behind Material Risk

CRU Risk Navigator helps procurement teams identify where risk may be changing across tracked raw materials and understand the available drivers. This provides market context for sourcing, supplier and contract discussions, and helps teams consider where further investigation may be useful. It applies CRU’s connected intelligence across prices, supply-demand analysis, forecasts, asset data, market analysis, methodology and expert insight. 

How should procurement and category teams read an assessment?  

Start with the material you’re reviewing. The CRU Risk Navigator shows separate assessments for Price Risk and Supply Risk. These provide different views of potential price-related and material-availability concerns. Review them alongside the available drivers, trend, confidence and time horizon to understand the context and decide whether further investigation may be useful.  

What is driving the change? 

A Material Risk Profile brings together the available risk assessment and supporting market context for a tracked material. It helps users review the relevant drivers, trends and other available information to understand what may be influencing the assessment. 

Can this help prepare for a supplier discussion?  

The CRU Risk Navigator can provide independent commodity context for sourcing, contract and supplier conversations. You can use CRU Risk Navigator to identify raw materials that may need further attention. For a closer look at the market, relevant CRU prices, forecasts, analysis and analyst expertise can provide additional context for sourcing, contract and supplier discussions.

Prioritise the Raw Materials that Need Attention

Not every market development needs the same response. Reviewing assessments across relevant raw materials can help procurement teams focus attention on the issues that may matter before a sourcing gate, supplier conversation or purchasing decision. Review changing assessments and available drivers; build custom baskets around your supply chains, products, business units or strategic priorities to understand combined exposure across the materials that matter to your procurement decisions.

A shared view can support discussion across teams such as Procurement, Risk, Supply Chain, Market Intelligence and Finance. The CRU Risk Navigator complements our Prices, Monitors, Outlooks, internal reports and expert analysis, which can provide additional market detail where needed.

Preparing for a leadership update

When a senior stakeholder asks for a supply chain risk analysis or commodity-risk update at short notice, CRU Risk Navigator can help a team identify raw materials that may need attention and review available drivers and context. This can provide a clearer starting point for the update and any follow-up investigation.  

Bring Material Risk into Business Decisions

Procurement decisions can have implications for supply continuity, cost and margin. The CRU Risk Navigator brings changing material assessments and available market context into a structured view to support sourcing and leadership discussions.

Support a clearer leadership conversation

Teams can focus on the material or basket under discussion, summarise what appears to be changing, and review available drivers and the relevant time horizon. This can help frame the discussion and identify where more investigation may be needed.

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