Have you ever wondered how a procurement team can utilize sustainable procurement and sourcing solutions to enhance a company’s social impacts? Across all industries, Chief Procurement Officers oversee dealing with the sustainability and social impact objectives. They also need to find the best price, suppliers, and value for each transaction.
Some businesses struggle against the pressure from investors, employees, and customers to enjoy a great shared value and deal with the societal challenges prevailing in the world, such as climate change, inequality, etc. A procurement team is responsible for addressing all these issues. Some movements are creating a buzz in the world of trade and commerce, such as purpose-specific procurement. According to a report, commitments to preserving sustainable procurement escalated up to 81% in the 2016 to 2019 session. Further, executive-level support has amplified this hike. Only 13% of respondents in the 2019 Sustainable Procurement Barometer stated leadership buy-in as a challenge to sustainable procurement, in comparison to the stats found in 2013 – 50%.
Modern-day businesses should utilize sustainable procurement and follow a sustainable sourcing approach to gain more productive results. In this context, it is important to note that not all social impact initiatives can be incorporated overnight. If you want to deploy effective and long-term sustainable procurement solutions, read on.
How to Implement Sustainable Procurement Solutions
Immediate Impact
Renowned procurement companies try to ensure that their clients’ sustainable procurement strategies are aligned with their sustainability goals. Nowadays, most businesses prefer hiring these companies for procurement to make the process faster. Experts in this profession can easily identify the issues and problem areas that seem to be financially destructive to the organization. Next, the service provider or in-house procurement team needs to prepare and implement realistic social impact programs. Sometimes, businesses request their suppliers to allocate a percentage of the deal for a social cause. This way, the businesses can please the Chief Financial Officers and CSR leads by continuous social advancement and drives cross-company value.
A Bunch of Opportunities
Along with social impact sourcing, effective procurement solutions should always look for ways to enhance supply chain diversity, transparency, and sustainability through sustainable sourcing. Sometimes businesses embrace software solutions for procurement to identify the unethical suppliers, indulged in slavery, inequality, or poverty.
Moreover, some procurement companies rely on ongoing monitoring to avert vetting. Also, they measure the performance of the suppliers, which has a huge impact on the sustainability outcomes. Every business needs tracking and measuring operations for mitigating possible risks and improving its operations.
Long-Term Strategies
Growing and forward-looking businesses should follow the footsteps of global frameworks, such as UN Sustainable Development Goals. It can immensely help the procurement department of their organizations. Procurement strategists can work closely with other departments including the finance and management team of a company.
A Final Takeaway
As most businesses are perpetually under the pressure of addressing social issues nowadays, sustainable procurement solutions and ethical practices are becoming more important. That is the reason procurement leaders should seriously think about sustainable and ethical social impact sourcing strategies.