- Sustainability strategy
Procurement is well placed to drive sustainability by embedding environmental, social and ethical criteria into sourcing and supplier selection. By doing this, procurement leaders can help lower their organisation’s emissions and reduce the demand on overstretched natural resources. Establishing a sustainable procurement plan is a sensible way of future-proofing an organisation against potential shortages in supply while also helping protect against ever-increasing geopolitical challenges.
- Champion local and diverse suppliers
Supplier diversity is a core pillar of procurement as it helps companies to drive innovation, while also expanding the talent pool, improving supplier competition and harnessing a more inclusive economy. In addition, supplier diversity is also key for enabling underrepresented groups to have an opportunity to compete for contracts. These groups include the likes of SMEs, women-owned businesses, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, among others.
- Support ethical sourcing and human rights
Procurement can create policies that mandate suppliers to follow ethical standards, such as fair wages, safe working conditions and prohibit child labour. Procurement teams should hold suppliers accountable to meet international labour standards via supplier codes of conduct, due diligence frameworks and transparent auditing. Procurement plays a crucial role in ensuring supply chains run correctly and prevent human rights from being violated across industries, borders and cultures.
- Promote innovation
The procurement function is not only about cutting costs any longer – today’s procurement leaders are responsible for value creation too. Today’s Chief Procurement Officers should be in the C-suite helping make major organisational decisions, while also bringing deeper insights via new technology tools that can unlock greater efficiency and cost savings. In the midst of procurement and supply chain’s most transformative era ever given the automation and next-level digital tools available, the procurement leaders of today can deliver exponential and unprecedented value to their companies.
- Build supply chain resilience
As mentioned, while on one hand there has never been a more exciting time to be in procurement and supply chain, there has equally never been a more tumultuous and disruptive time too. Take the past decade, there has been a global pandemic, multiple wars, inflation issues and tariff changes to contend with, just to name a few. These ‘black swan’ events have highlighted the fragility of supply networks globally and also underlined the importance of possessing a back-up plan. The organisations that can show resilience and still thrive in times of crisis are the real winners, not only to their own bottom line but to their people too. Ensuring essential goods and services remain available while keeping people in jobs in times of trouble is fundamental and procurement can play an influential role in helping accomplish that.