Alison Smith’s interest in and commitment to conservation issues was sparked by a lifetime of international travel (her parents served with the UK Air Force in various countries) and a love of ocean diving. Visiting wonderful locations such as the Galapagos and Madagascar made her realise how fragile elements of our natural world really are. “You see it with island ecologies – they are a barometer for our effect on nature. They are particularly vulnerable to the way in which humans can change the ecosystem, and they will be amongst the first hit by rising sea levels”.
Her other long-standing interest has been leading-edge technology and how it supports procurement and supply chain issues. Early in her career, she worked for Digital Union, which was a pioneering firm in the early days of eCommerce, but she has been with IBM for 13 years, and is now a senior manager in the AI Applications business. That role cuts across quite a range of products and business sectors as AI moves from a futuristic technology into the mainstream. She now lives in Surrey and admits that she is looking forward to getting back to warm-water diving post Covid – “the attractions of practicing my diving skills in a freezing reservoir near Staines are limited” she says!
She admits to having some internal conflicts in the past between her personal conservation philosophy and her business career. eCommerce could be perceived as being all about getting people to buy more, which can have a negative impact on the environment. But as she says, “supply chains drive what goes on behind the scenes of customer choice. So working in the area, we can both reflect changes in customer needs and help to influence those choices” – the drive for more sustainable supply chains being a good example of that.
Smith’s view is that IBM has historically been one of the better large firms in terms of these purpose-related issues, with a positive track record even before the topics were as high-profile as they are today.
“We were ahead of the game in employing and supporting female staff, and in 1899, Richard Macgregor was IBM’s first black employee. In 1953, a decade before the Civil Rights Act, IBM took a stand in favour of Equal Opportunity. In terms of our manufacturing heritage, we were always a firm that cleaned up after itself in terms of pollution. We’re in 170 countries, many in the developing world, and it is important that we can show appropriate stewardship”.
She sees a key part of her role as helping IBM’s clients use technology and AI in particular to manage supply chains more effectively, including the emerging focus on the “triple bottom line” (profit, people and planet) rather than purely focusing on the annual financial results.
“I think almost everyone realises we have to take real action over climate and the environment or we’re in trouble”, Smith says. She wants to be positive about the outlook but when she attended the Conservation Optimism Summit in Oxford last year, she was shocked to find herself the only business person amongst the 400 delegates! The rest were conservationists plus a few policy makers, media folk and academics, and yet “business can contribute so much more to these debates, and this is where the money is”, as she puts it.
That sums up our wider “procurement with purpose” argument, of course - how organisations spend their money with suppliers can hugely impact this whole agenda in a very positive manner. So perhaps we need to get out and explain that to a wider audience? In any case, although most people want to move forwards with the sustainability agenda, Smith feels many don’t know how to make progress. But this is where she believes technology can play a key role.
“Data collection is often the hardest part of the process – you can’t drive positive change if you don’t have the right data”. Technology can reduce the need for physical reporting- for instance, using the Internet of Things to obtain real-time data which can be interrogated, with AI looking for patterns, trends or concerns amongst the data. “That doesn’t answer every challenge of course – AI won’t stop firms employing children in factories – but data can be powerful in many cases”.
Blockchain is another emerging technology with interesting possibilities. Having that immutable record can support knowledge around the provenance of products, which helps ensure for example that minerals or rare metals come from a sustainable source. “We’re seeing a lot of activity in the automotive sector around that sort of initiative”.
In a different sector, IBM is working with Maersk on “TradeLens”, an interconnected ecosystem of supply chain partners, working together to digitize the shipping supply chain (using blockchain technology) and increase the efficiency around container shipping, customs clearance and so on. The firm is also involved with the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, a fascinating initiative led by marine research organisation ProMare, supported by IBM and a global consortium of partners. The unmanned vessel will be able to spend long durations at sea collecting critical data about the ocean, such as global warming, ocean plastic pollution and marine mammal conservation.
“I do believe we can use technology for positive purposes; generally, the democratisation of information and data will have positive outcomes”, Smith asserts. But technology is neutral, she points out, and we have seen for example how social media can be used in positive or negative ways. “It is the intent that matters”.