A Unified Commitment to Supplier Diversity

Comcast NBCUniversal’s procurement team sees each business unit within the organization as a potential “client” and diverse suppliers as opportunities to serve the client.

To that end, supplier diversity is a win-win for us: it strengthens our business units’ purchasing power, builds value for our shareholders, and contributes to wealth-building in the communities where our employees, customers, and audiences live and work.

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Innovative Strategies, Enhanced Partnerships

Our Tier II program helps our primary (Tier I) vendor to secure diverse partnerships with diverse suppliers at the subcontracting level. When Tier II suppliers have access to capitals and can scale their business to meet our needs, Comcast will negotiate a direct partnership. This was the case with Telamon – an Asian-owned minority business enterprise that transitioned from subcontractor (Tier II) to a direct (Tier I) vendor.

Comcast was introduced to Telamon in 2012 at a national supplier diversity conference. At the time of the introduction, Telamon supported Comcast indirectly though our vendor relationship with Cisco. In 2014, Telamon became one of Comcast’s direct vendors – supplying cell backhaul and metro Ethernet business services equipment.

This equipment allows businesses to expand their network bandwidth to handle the increase in demand for smartphones, wireless air cards, and 3G/4G connections to their network. As a value-added reseller of cell backhaul and metro Ethernet equipment, Telamon has the ability to streamline logistics and provide Comcast with efficient equipment solutions.

"The Telamon partnership is special because the procurement team challenged a direct cell backhaul vendor to examine opportunities within our broader supply chain and help us to increase diverse spend," said Peter Kiriacoulacos, Chief Procurement Officer, Comcast NBCUniversal. "Other Comcast NBCUniversal teams are encouraged to work with their direct vendors to propose innovative strategies for enhanced partnerships with diverse vendors."

"Supplier diversity is extremely important to Telamon being a minority-owned company ourselves," said Kate Kittio-Alberts, Vice President of Sales for Telamon. "Our partnership with Comcast has flourished throughout the past few years, and we look forward to continuing our partnership and providing Comcast with efficient equipment solutions."