Amidst massive changes in the technological and geopolitical landscape, businesses are facing unprecedented challenges to thrive in the new normal. Organizations are looking out for new ways to navigate evolving economic, regulatory and operational demands while maintaining an intense focus on managing and mitigating risk.
Exiger is a leading SaaS company revolutionizing the way corporations, government agencies and banks manage supply chains.
Eli Cherkasky, COO, is a key member of Exiger’s executive team. His extensive experience and expertise as a business operator propelled the organization’s ability to scale and grow. The CEO Views team spoke with Eli to get a better understanding of how Exiger is deploying strategies and technologies to make the world a safe and transparent place to succeed.
The CEO Views: What led to the inception of the company that sparked your interest in this. space?
Eli Cherkasky: Of course, I have a personal connection to the inception of the business and its evolution, having been with Exiger for nearly a decade, but I’ve always been attracted to the idea of a company that was truly founded – from day one to advance safety and transparency in the world. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see the business grow and change over the years. while still holding steadfast to that original mission.
The CEO Views: Can you take us through the journey of Exiger right from its beginning to the point where it unwaveringly stands today?
Eli Cherkasky: Exiger’s original remit offered a broad array of services to multiple markets, notably including some of the largest and most complex monitorships in history. Advisory services made up a big component of our early offering, but as we’ve accelerated scaling and growth, we’ve refined our focus on the supply chain and third–party risk technology business.
We’ve witnessed, in a relatively short span of time, how our supply chain risk management technology has revolutionized the market and this has become our core driver in delivering purpose-built solutions.
The CEO Views: What have been the most significant milestones so far?
Eli Cherkasky: Early wins in Exiger’s history. played an important part in the organization’s trajectory, including the acquisition of OutsidelQ and its core Al technology DDIQ, which helped catapult our software business forward, and the acquisition of Convergent Solutions, which laid the foundation for our rapid expansion into federal markets.
We’ve seen that potential, evolution and collective work culminate in the past 18 months as Exiger has hit some of our most significant milestones.
In August 2022, we secured an unprecedented $74.5 million first–of–its–kind governmentwide supply chain and third–party risk management GSA contract. In that same month, we completed the acquisition of Supply Dynamics.
We further expanded our solutions with the acquisition of industry–leading software supply. chain and SBOM management platform lon Channel in May 2023. This September, we unveiled 1Exiger – a multimillion dollar investment and design process to integrate our suite of award–winning Al solutions into a centralized and simplified platform.
Finally, this October, Exiger was named one of Fast Company’s Brands that Matter a small list that honors brands that communicate and demonstrate brand purpose and a recognition of Exiger’s transformative impact on its customers, its industry and the world.
The CEO Views: What type of solutions does the company offer? How are you making your solutions and products more responsive to demand fluctuations?
Eli Cherkasky: Exiger develops and deploys cutting edge Al that reflects the scale and complexity of modern global supply chains.
Exiger’s customers are able to leverage this advanced Al to manage their risk and fix their supply chains in effect, stopping forced labor, speeding up product delivery, cutting costs, combatting security threats and decarbonizing manufacturing.
Exiger develops and deploys cutting edge Al that reflects the scale and complexity of modern global supply chains.
Delivered as a SaaS subscription, Exiger’s Al solutions allow vital decision makers to gain visibility into the risks hiding in the parts they use, the materials they source or the vendors they work with… within a matter of seconds.
The CEO Views: What kind of mindset and strategies does the company follow to transform the way global organizations manage risk?
Eli Cherkasky: At Exiger, we put our customers first. And when we look at supply chain and third–party risk management through the lens of our customers‘ day–to–day pain points and mandates, the priorities become very clear.
Procurement, supply chain, security and compliance stakeholders are overwhelmed by the complexity of the current risk landscape. They need to make sound decisions often in near–real time and the consequences of getting those decisions. wrong has never been higher.
This challenge was the inspiration behind the creation and launch of 1Exiger. The UX is designed to be accessible to everyone, regardless of experience or expertise. It enables more collaborative decision–making environments. And it’s creating a single, trusted operating picture, that surfaces only the highly relevant insights. and empowers users to make decisions within policy without fear of missing risk.
The CEO Views: What are some of the key challenges and opportunities that you are observing in the industry, and how are you approaching them?
Eli Cherkasky: Data represents, all at once, our customers’ biggest challenge and opportunity. Today’s supply chain stakeholders are inundated with more data than they could ever hope to decipher and action. And that’s where Exiger’s solutions come in. We realized that in building a supply chain technology business, the key was to get our customers closer to trustworthy, understandable and actionable insights rather than data.
The CEO Views: What major trends or developments are you observing in the sector? How does your company make use of technological developments to deliver the best outcome?
Eli Cherkasky: We’re seeing a convergence of complexity and a convergence of dependency and therefore a convergence of risk. Supply chains don’t exist in a vacuum; They’re value chains that touch an infinite number of industries, actors, suppliers and risks. We’ve seen this reality play out in so many different ways on the global stage from wheat shortages to the breach of private financial and medical data to geopolitical tensions. At Exiger, we’re meeting this complex, global supply chain challenge with a sophisticated, scalable solution that our customers can understand and apply sustainably across their ecosystem.
The CEO Views: What are the factors that differentiate Exiger from others in the industry?
Eli Cherkasky: Our biggest differentiators are our technology and our history. Our award–winning Al is unrivaled in the market as is our ability to make complex, advanced technology seamless and simple. All of our solutions are pulled through a single, integrated UX.
The other major differentiator is our history, both as an organization and as individual employees. We’re practitioners and because of that we understand the “how” and the “why” behind our technology. We’ve held our stakeholders‘ positions. We’ve walked in our customers‘ shoes. We’ve worked in their industries. We appreciate what they need from our technology and how they will apply it in their everyday jobs and have developed and delivered every capability from that perspective.
A lot of this ethos trickles down from our CEO Brandon Daniels. Brandon’s experience working across compliance, risk and technology over the years, his participation in the biggest regulatory and economic crises of recent decades, and his deep knowledge of Exiger’s product and market ensures that this practitioner mindset is upheld at every level of the organization.
The CEO Views: How would you characterize the working culture at your firm? How do you foster a culture of innovation?
Eli Cherkasky: Exiger’s culture is all about mission. From our budget to our technology to our processes to our people, our mission to make the world a safe and transparent place to succeed informs every decision.
We cultivate this mission–driven, innovative culture by aligning our spend to our mission – whether that means reinvesting in our people. through expanded benefits and bonuses or doubling down on technology through strategic acquisitions, continued investment in product development and, most recently, redesigning our UX.
The CEO Views: What do you see as the future of the industry? How do you plan to position your company to thrive in that future?
Eli Cherkasky: The future of our industry has to be simple and sustainable. The entire process. and experience has to be seamless for the customer. It has to be easy, trusted, repeatable and even intuitive. Today’s public and private stakeholders are dealing with too much risk, too much data and too many alerts. The future has to address this compounding challenge.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing with 1Exiger. The new supply chain platform and UX brings together the world’s largest corporate and supply chain dataset, data partner network, state-of–the–art mapping, industry–leading Al and Exiger’s entire expert community. The platform democratizes supply chain insights and is revolutionizing the way companies and governments decide who to do business with.
Exiger will build on 1Exiger as a foundation for continuous scaling and innovation. We mapped out a long-term roadmap to iterate and add new capabilities to 1 Exiger over the next decade as the supply chain, geopolitical, economic and risk landscape evolves.
