Nandini Basuthakur is arguably the best-connected individual in the global procurement world. She has personally worked in many countries, and held some significant jobs, including her current role as Chief Executive Officer of Procurement Leaders (PL).
Nandini was finding the constraints of social distancing challenging when we spoke to her for this interview. “I’m a sociable person”, she said. At PL, the world’s largest procurement networking and intelligence platform, she is used to constant face to face contact with colleagues, as well as PL’s unrivalled network of global CPOs and their senior teams.
“We help our members make faster, more informed decisions to progress and transform their organisations – I like to think of it as identifying “next practice” rather than best practice”, is how Basuthakur describes the overarching PL goal.
Her interest in the procurement with purpose agenda started some years back when she worked with CEB and came across Paul Polman when he was at that time Unilever’s inspirational CFO. Now, at PL, she says there is tremendous interest in the agenda particularly from the more “advanced” members, as well as from academics and others in the field.
“It’s clear that people care”, she says. “Procurement has a unique 360-degree view of the organisation – and its suppliers - so is well-placed to drive the sustainability agenda and make it a central part of decision making”. PL helps firms build their programmes, providing opportunities to collaborate and learn from each other, through research reports, case studies, tools, and networking in various forums.
She believes the move towards a wider view of procurement is accelerating. “It was at our World Procurement Week last year that we really saw the big move, from firms having savings still as their top priority, to sustainable and purposeful procurement really being important”.
She also observes that there is considerable correlation between overall procurement sophistication – looking at areas such as capturing supplier innovation and collaboration – with “procurement with purpose” maturity. “Unilever, Ikea, Patagonia – these are firms who are leaders in how they work with their supply chain generally as well as in this area”.
We asked her whether the move to combine the CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer) role with the CPO is taking off? “Both roles report to the CFO in many organisations. Given that the supply chain is such a major element of the sustainability picture, and the CPO can have real impact, then it’s not surprising that often we are seeing that dual role. Post-pandemic, I think that might increase further as Boards question whether they need a separate CSO, who doesn’t have a P&L but has a critical monitoring and sensing role”.
That took the discussion into other questions around the post-pandemic world.
“I think we will see a move from global to regional supply chains. Does it really make sense to ship materials and products back and forwards across the oceans? Not only is it not a sustainable business practice, but it opens the supply chain out to increased risk. And there will be major changes in terms of office space or travel – firms are going to cut budgets in areas like that, as they have seen remote working being effective”.
She also makes the interesting point that it isn’t necessarily the (supposedly) most “developed” and larger nations that have responded best to Covid-19. Smaller, poorer countries have used different approaches to halt the spread effectively, showing the power of innovation and agility.
Organisations will need to push the boundaries, Basuthakur says, looking harder at innovation, long-term value and customer centricity. “There is a key role here for procurement”. There may also be a push-back against low-wage jobs and the flexibility of the gig-economy labour market, all of which adds to the challenges. But from a procurement with purpose point of view, there are hopeful signs. “We’re seeing large firms like Vodafone and Unilever looking to protect their own supply chains, particularly their smaller suppliers, in these tough times. We will emerge from this, there will be great new tools and technology to help us, and I think the best firms will see the 2030 United Nations sustainability goals (SDGs) as a north star to guide them”.
We can all hope that sustainability will become more central to how economies work, and Procurement Leaders with Nandini Basuthakur at the helm is certainly well placed to play an important role in that, as procurement with purpose messages and approaches become more embedded in business.