The Suppliers tab allows you to organize supplier information and connect suppliers to the specific growing locations they source from. By linking suppliers to locations, Helios can surface climate risk, economic risk, and critical events in the context of your actual supply base, rather than showing only global or country-level averages.
In addition to tracking real suppliers, this tab can be used to create custom groupings of growing locations for internal analysis, scenario planning, or comparisons.
The Suppliers tab is especially useful when you want to:
Monitor climate or economic risk across your suppliers
Identify which suppliers are exposed to current events
Compare sourcing strategies across regions or groups
Move from global analysis to supply-chain-specific insights
Once suppliers are set up and linked to locations:
Climate risk, economic risk, and critical events are surfaced at the supplier level
The Locations tab can be filtered by supplier
Supplier-specific risk views help prioritize monitoring and action
This enables a more targeted view of risk based on your actual supply chain.
Accessing the Suppliers Tab
To access the Suppliers tab:
Start from the Commodity Tracker home page.
Use the left-hand navigation menu.
Click the Suppliers icon, represented by a person symbol.
This opens the Suppliers workspace and displays a list of all suppliers or groups you have created.
Suppliers List View
The main Suppliers page shows all suppliers currently in your account.
For each supplier, you can see:
Supplier name
Number of linked growing locations
Suppliers are listed in a collapsible format. Expanding a supplier reveals all the growing locations associated with it.
When you expand a supplier, you see a detailed table of linked locations. Each row represents one growing location and includes:
Commodity grown at that location
Country where the location is situated
Location name
Critical event indicator
If red, this means there was a recent natural disaster that affected the location.
If grey, this means there was a natural disaster in the past.
If there is nothing, then the location has not had a natural disaster in the past 10 years.
Current seasonal climate risk
This is the individual location's seasonal risk rating.
Economic risk level
With the options of high, medium, or low, this is looking at how currency exchange rates, oil and fertilizer prices could be affecting this location.
This view allows you to quickly understand where a supplier’s exposure is concentrated and whether any locations are currently facing elevated risk.
Editing Supplier Information
You can edit supplier details at any time to keep information up to date. To edit supplier information, you would click on the pencil icon off to the right of the row in the table.
Editable fields include:
Supplier name
Primary contact name
Email address
Phone number
Manufacturing or processing facility information
Internal notes or descriptions
These fields help centralize supplier knowledge within the platform and make it easier to reference key details alongside risk data.
Linking Growing Locations to a Supplier
Linking locations determines which risks and metrics appear under a supplier.
To link locations:
Select the option to link locations for the supplier. This is the pinpoint icon next to the pencil and trash icon off to the right of the row. This icon matches the "locations" icon on the left side navigation.
Browse all available growing locations across:
All commodities
All countries
Use the search function to find specific locations by name. You can also filter by commodity and country specifically. There are no rules on which locations you can pick here - you can mix and match commodities and countries.
Select one or more locations to associate with the supplier.
Once linked, those locations appear immediately under the supplier and are included in risk views and summaries.
Adding a New Supplier
To create a new supplier:
Click the Add Supplier button in the top-right corner of the Suppliers page.
Enter supplier details, including:
Supplier name
Main contact information
Email and phone number
Manufacturing or facility details
Notes or descriptions
Optionally link growing locations during creation or after saving.
Save the supplier.
New suppliers appear in the list immediately and can be edited or expanded at any time.
Using Suppliers as Custom Groups
The Suppliers tab is not limited to actual suppliers. You can also use it to create custom groupings of growing locations.
Examples include:
Grouping locations for different sourcing strategies
Comparing two sets of locations (A/B analysis)
Organizing locations by internal business units
Creating regional or experimental groupings
These groups behave the same way as suppliers in the platform and allow you to analyze risk and exposure in flexible ways.
Best Practices for Using the Suppliers Tab
Link suppliers only to the locations you actively source from.
Keep contact and facility information updated for reference.
Use custom groups for comparisons or internal analysis.
Regularly review linked locations to ensure they reflect current sourcing.