Boosting Efficiency & Compliance: Value Chain Tips from Stephanie Forbes

CanadianSME-Stephanie Forbes

In a conversation with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Stephanie Forbes, nationally recognized value chain expert and Principal of the Forbes Group, shared her insights on the evolving challenges and opportunities in supply chain management. Drawing on her nearly 25 years of experience steering multi-billion-dollar projects, Stephanie discussed pressing issues such as labor disruptions, sustainability regulations, and procurement fraud. She highlighted strategies for building resilient supply chains, managing risks, and leveraging digital transformation to stay competitive in today’s dynamic market. Her forward-looking perspective offers a roadmap for businesses to embrace innovation, enhance transparency, and ensure long-term operational efficiency.

Stephanie Forbes is a nationally recognized value chain expert with nearly 25 years of experience steering multi-billion-dollar projects across Canada and the US. She leads the Forbes Group, a full-service consultancy focused on the value chain, sustainability, governance, best practices, reporting, and business optimization.

Previous Projects include:

Syncrude Aurora and Aurora 2 ($1 billion)

Albian Sands Expansion 1 ($11 billion) 

TC Energy Keystone Pipeline ($5.2 billion)

Syncrude ATM ($1 billion)

Husky Sunrise ($3.5 billion)

Stephanie’s value chain knowledge and expertise is as wide as it is deep. Throughout her career, Stephanie honed her considerable skills in supply chain management, vendor management, and procurement activities. Her expertise lies in contract negotiation, procurement fraud, claims, and construction dispute resolution. She has implemented ERPs, is comfortable negotiating nearly anything, and has vast major project capability.

Stephanie is passionate about and exceptionally skilled at complex problem solving and developing best-in-class programs such as:

  • Governance models
  • Vendor management
  • Supply chain risk and assurance
  • Continuous improvement

Stephanie loves to spend time in the kitchen, on the ski hill or lake, and at the barn.


With current global disruptions such as port strikes and natural disasters impacting value chains, what are the most pressing issues you see in supply chain management today, and how can businesses navigate these challenges?

Navigating the current landscape of supply chain management requires businesses to address labor disruptions, natural disasters, geopolitical tensions, and regulatory shifts. The recent port strikes, coupled with natural disasters, have created bottlenecks and delays, highlighting vulnerabilities within value chains. These events remind us that resilience and adaptability are no longer optional—they’re essential.

Another key issue is the shift towards more sustainable and ethical practices, especially with increasing pressure from consumers, investors, and regulators to reduce carbon footprints and enhance compliance. Developing a robust GHG Scope 3 reporting framework, for example, can help businesses track and reduce emissions across their entire value chain, turning compliance into a competitive advantage.


Government reporting for emissions is becoming more stringent across Canada. How are these new requirements affecting businesses, and what advice would you offer to help companies stay compliant while maintaining operational efficiency?

The increasing stringency of government reporting for emissions, particularly with requirements surrounding GHG Scope 3 emissions, creates challenges and opportunities for businesses. These regulations demand a higher level of transparency in tracking and reporting emissions, including those from supply chains and indirect activities, which many companies have found complex to manage.

For many businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the difficulty lies in gathering accurate data across their value chain, which can span various suppliers, regions, and processes. This challenge is compounded by the need to ensure data quality while managing the costs associated with new software, auditing, and potentially, operational adjustments.

To stay compliant without sacrificing operational efficiency, I recommend a few strategic approaches:

1. Invest in Digital Tools for Emissions Tracking: Leveraging digital solutions that automate data collection and reporting can significantly ease the compliance burden.

2. Engage with Suppliers: Given that Scope 3 emissions often involve data from upstream suppliers, building strong relationships with partners is critical.

3. Adopt a Phased Approach to Compliance: Rather than trying to achieve full compliance at once, businesses can focus on a phased approach, prioritizing the areas that are easiest to measure and most impactful.

4. Turn Compliance into Strategy: Instead of viewing regulatory changes as a burden, businesses should look for ways to use compliance to gain a competitive edge by positioning themselves as leaders in their industry. Companies can also explore funding opportunities, such as government grants or incentives for green initiatives, to offset some of the costs associated with compliance.


Managing multi-billion-dollar projects involves numerous complexities. What strategies and best practices have you found most effective in ensuring large-scale projects are completed on time and within budget?

Managing multi-billion-dollar projects comes with a unique set of complexities—ranging from aligning cross-functional teams and managing risks to maintaining stringent timelines and budget controls. Over the years, I’ve found several strategies and best practices particularly effective in navigating these challenges and ensuring successful project delivery:

1. Establish Clear Project Governance: A strong governance framework is essential for managing large-scale projects. This involves setting up a well-defined hierarchy of decision-making and accountability from the outset.

2. Focus on Detailed Planning and Scheduling: The complexity of multi-billion-dollar projects means that even minor delays can have significant cost implications. A robust project plan with detailed scheduling is key to keeping everything on track.

3. Prioritize Risk Management and Contingency Planning: Large projects are inherently risky, and it’s important to approach them with a proactive mindset towards risk. Conducting a thorough risk assessment at the beginning, and repeating it at regular intervals helps identify potential issues—such as supply chain disruptions, regulatory changes, or stakeholder resistance.

4. Engage in Effective Stakeholder Management: Regular updates, transparent reporting always, and seeking feedback throughout the project’s life cycle help keep everyone on the same page and prevent misunderstandings that can lead to additional costs, delays or reputational impacts.

5. Adopt an Agile Mindset: Best practices in large-scale projects utilize the traditional waterfall approach, incorporating where appropriate, elements of agile methodology.

6. Build a High-Performing Team and Foster a Collaborative Culture: Effective and timely cross-departmental communication and a shared sense of responsibility will significantly enhance efficiency and problem-solving capabilities which is directly tied to performance outcomes like safety, cost, quality, and schedule.


Procurement fraud is a significant risk for many organizations. Based on your experience investigating these cases, what are the key indicators of procurement fraud, and how can businesses safeguard themselves against both internal and external threats?

Procurement fraud is a critical risk for organizations, it is estimated that $4.2 trillion dollars are lost globally, annually to procurement fraud. Based on my experience investigating these cases, here are some key indicators and strategies to safeguard against it:

Key Indicators of Procurement Fraud:

1. Unusual Vendor Relationships:  This might appear as frequent use of a particular supplier, even when others offer better value or an unexplained preference for vendors with known connections to employees. Red flags include unclear selection criteria or bypassing standard tendering processes.

2. Issues in Vendor Master Data: Irregular updates or inconsistencies in vendor master data are significant red flags. This can include changes to vendor banking data, modified vendor information, or records of vendors with similar addresses or bank account details. Fraudsters may create “ghost vendors”—vendors that do not actually exist, yet look very similar to actual vendors—to process fraudulent payments.

3. Inflated or Duplicate Invoices: Fraudulent invoices involve vendors, or ghost vendors, submitting duplicate, inflated, or fake invoices.

Safeguarding Against Procurement Fraud:

1. Implement Strong Internal Controls: Establishing and enforcing good governance and associated internal controls is critical to preventing procurement fraud. This includes segregation of duties, and ensuring that no single individual has end-to-end control over purchasing, approving, and payment processes.

2. Conduct Thorough Vendor Due Diligence: Before engaging with new suppliers, conducting a thorough vetting process is essential. This includes verifying their business credentials, financial stability, ownership structure, and past performance. 3. Audit Procurement Processes Regularly: Independent audits of the procurement process help ensure that procedures are being followed correctly. Engaging third-party auditors can also bring a fresh perspective and identify risks that may have been overlooked internally. I personally am a huge fan of 3rd party audit programs, they are the most successful in driving results and will provide gap analysis as well when completed.


Looking ahead, what do you see as the future of value chain management, and what trends or innovations should businesses be aware of to remain competitive and resilient?

The future of value chain management is increasingly defined by a need for resilience, adaptation, transparency, and a focus on sustainability. Businesses that want to remain competitive must embrace both technological innovations and strategic shifts to respond effectively to global challenges. In my opinion, here are some of the key trends and innovations that will shape the next phase of value chain management:

1. End-to-End Digital Transformation:

The digitalization of value chains is no longer a trend—it’s a necessity. Real-time data, powered by IoT (Internet of Things) sensors, AI, and advanced analytics, allows businesses to gain a 360-degree view of their operations. This transparency is crucial for optimizing processes, predicting disruptions, and making faster, data-driven decisions.

2. Focus on Resilience Over Efficiency:

The disruptions of recent years, from pandemics to geopolitical tensions, have highlighted the importance of resilience in value chains. Many companies are shifting from just-in-time inventory models to just-in-case strategies, prioritizing resilience over pure efficiency. This involves diversifying supplier networks, holding strategic reserves, and investing in localized production capabilities.

3. Sustainability as a Competitive Advantage:

Sustainability has moved to the forefront of value chain strategies, driven by both regulatory pressure and shifting consumer preferences. Businesses must now manage and report on their entire environmental impact, including Scope 3 emissions, which account for upstream and downstream activities. This shift is pushing companies to reevaluate how they source materials, transport goods, and engage with suppliers.

Final Thoughts:

Looking ahead, value chain management will be defined by how well businesses can adapt to uncertainty while embracing innovation. The leaders of tomorrow will be those who invest in digital tools that provide end-to-end visibility, build resilience into their operations, and adopt sustainability as a central tenet of their strategies. By focusing on these trends, businesses can not only navigate the complexities of today’s global landscape but also position themselves for growth in a rapidly evolving market.

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CanadianSME
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