Supplier Organizations: SME (PI9495)

This metric is intended to capture information about the small and medium-sized enterprises that supply goods or services to the reporting organization. Organizations can themselves determine the precise threshold at which they report suppliers. In most cases, organizations should include only those enterprises supplying goods and services that are fundamental to the operations of the reporting organization.

Organizations should not include subcontractors as part of this metric; subcontractors can be reported under Temporary Employees (OI9028) and its related submetrics.

This metric is multi-dimensional with regard to the five dimensions of impact: it may help describe the WHO dimension when the stakeholder group represented by the metric is the stakeholder group targeted by the investment or organization. It may also help measure the HOW MUCH Scale dimension, which helps estimate the number of the targeted stakeholders experiencing the outcome. For more on the alignment of IRIS metrics to the five dimensions of impact, see IRIS+ and the Five Dimensions of Impact (https://iris.thegiin.org/document/iris-and-the-five-dimensions/). No single metric is sufficient to understand an impact; rather, metrics are selected as a set across all dimensions of impact. When possible, the selection of metrics to measure and describe the five dimensions should be based on best practice and evidence.