Assent Inc., a global leader in supply chain sustainability management, has announced the launch of Request Manager, an AI-native solution designed to streamline how suppliers handle and respond to customer compliance and sustainability requests.
Built on the Assent Sustainability Platform, Request Manager aims to enhance the speed and efficiency with which suppliers can provide accurate regulatory data, declarations, and supporting documentation. The solution achieves this through a single, centralized workflow, intended to minimize management effort, reduce compliance costs, and mitigate supply chain risk. Request Manager is slated for launch for new Assent customers in January 2026.
Request Manager consolidates all customer requests into one location, leveraging AI-powered parsing, matching, and reuse of verified data. It also features a proactive declaration sharing function, allowing suppliers to anticipate customer needs. Michael Southworth, CEO of Assent, stated, “Request Manager represents a breakthrough in how suppliers and distributors can stay ahead of escalating compliance expectations. It transforms a historically fragmented process by harnessing the data already embedded in the Assent Sustainability Platform to deliver speed, time savings, and scale.” He added that this development marks a pivotal moment for Assent as it extends its offering to the broader supply chain, setting a new standard for supplier engagement and enabling proactive compliance.
The regulatory landscape is continuously evolving, leading to increased complexity and an unsustainable volume of customer requests for manufacturers and distributors. Furthermore, supplier contracts now often include more stringent obligations, potentially disqualifying those who do not comply. Assent’s research indicates that 80% of businesses continue to use email and fragmented spreadsheets to manage these requests. The data also reveals that manufacturers typically receive around 350 requests annually, while distributors may face thousands. Each request can involve hundreds of part and regulation line items, and with an average completion time of three hours per request, many manufacturers dedicate over 1,000 hours per year to manual compliance and sustainability request management.
Elisa Morelo, Senior Analyst at Verdantix, emphasized the market need, stating, “The surge in the volume and complexity of compliance requests is putting intense pressure on suppliers to deliver high-quality data in a timely manner. We believe AI can play an extremely important role in this category in terms of helping suppliers manage the scale of requests and reducing supplier fatigue, as well as streamlining manual processes and improving data quality.”
With Request Manager, suppliers are expected to protect revenue by meeting customer expectations for rapid, accurate compliance data, thereby maintaining approved-supplier status. The solution aims to strengthen customer satisfaction through improved trust, responsiveness, and overall performance scores, and to unlock new revenue opportunities by facilitating responses to RFPs and customer bids that require quick access to compliance information. It also seeks to eliminate manual duplication by unifying all compliance and sustainability requests and data reuse, ensure higher accuracy and response consistency via AI-driven parsing and streamlined workflows, and improve reliability and on-time delivery by accelerating response times.
Jessica Adams, Quality Technician at Durex Industries, shared her experience: “My team depends on me to never miss a deadline or customer request, but with our previous process, the volume of requests we received each day was overwhelming. Quick and accurate responses are essential to maintaining our commercial relationships. Since implementing Assent’s Request Manager solution, all the information my team and I need is in one place. I can respond faster and with greater confidence, and I’m able to focus on other critical parts of my job.”
Assent, founded in 2010 in Ottawa, Ontario, provides supply chain sustainability management solutions with the goal of becoming the global platform of record for supply chain sustainability and compliance for manufacturers. The company integrates platform, personnel, and supplier intelligence to navigate supply chain disruptions, enabling faster, smarter compliance through AI-powered risk analysis and automated document review. Assent’s proprietary supplier engagement engine and regulatory expertise aim to help customers manage complexity, reduce risk, and accelerate growth.
