Yesterday I chaired the first of four webinars organised by software firm Jaggaer around the theme of ESG/procurement with purpose. It was a very strong panel – no lengthy PowerPoint discussions, just four of us talking for an hour and answering delegate questions.
Sara Malconian, Dawn Andre from Jaggaer and the legendary Bertrand Maltaverne were the panellists. Bertrand has been both a procurement practitioner and has worked on the tech provider side over the years. I have always admired his thinking and writing about procurement and he’s now working with my old friends at Spend Matters. Dawn is one of the leaders at Jaggaer who is driving their focus on ESG, and whilst every software firm will tell you how much they care about this agenda, I get the sense it is genuinely felt at senior levels in Jaggaer.
I haven’t met Sara before, but she is CPO for Harvard University – an organisation that (to my surprise) spends some $5 billion a year with suppliers! She was a brilliant panellist – what I liked was the way she clearly gets the high-level strategic agenda, but also was able to speak about how you can drive change in a very direct way through multiple relatively small “procurement with purpose” actions.
Look at the food your organisation buys, she suggested – are you using small, local, environmentally- aware firms? Are you looking at your own energy use? Are you looking for, promoting and supporting smaller diverse business who might become great suppliers? We can all make a difference, and we shouldn’t think it has to be all about the mega-climate change issues, important thought they are.
Another key message was the need to work closely with internal stakeholders. Procurement can take the lead on many of these issues but ultimately budget holders must be involved in decisions. We had some interesting discussion too around whether ESG initiatives come with a cost attached (“sometimes” probably sums up the answer to that), but we must be clear about the difference between cost and value. And the value we gain from these initiatives comes from a range of benefits, from risk reduction to improved customer (and indeed staff) perception of our organisation.
We didn’t get round to answering all the delegate questions – we had several hundred people listening in – so to give you a flavour of the discussion, here are some of those that we are going to try and answer off-line.
· Who has been the hardest person to convince at your organization about the value of Procurement being more than cost savings?
· If executives are not supportive of this initiative, how do you go about convincing them?
· Ultimately, market forces being what they are, ESG strategy will still be beholden to (a) consumers and revenue growth and (b) cost management (both internal and supply chain). How can we understand the different forces at play when determining the optimal strategy around ESG (consumer pressures, government pressures, PR pressures)?
· Is positive purchasing 'priceless'? If not, how can supply chain management professionals understand how to prioritise and balance the needs of stakeholders and the needs of shareholders and investors?
· What would be the business value proposition for supplier diversity for ESG?
· How far down the supply chain tiers do you recommend looking at given there is less and less control further down the supply chain tiers?
· What technology should we leverage to assist in delivering an effective strategy and operationalizing It?
There are three more webinars to go in this series, with guests from Ecovadis, riskmethods, Hackett Group, TealBook, and the World Economic Forum, plus of course senior practitioners. You can book for the webinars here, and I suspect there will be a way to access yesterday’s session too if you keep an eye on the Jaggaer website.