Thomas Udesen has become one of the best-known CPOs on the European scene in recent years, his reputation growing because of two linked strands of work. One is as CPO of giant global Life Science company Bayer, which he joined in 2013 after ten years with Johnson and Johnson. He leads a team of more than 1000 procurement staff and manages over €24 billion Euro across the company’s sites in over 70 countries, including driving the company’s effort to be a leader in sustainable and purposeful business. “Health for all, hunger for none” is the company’s powerful vision.
But in parallel, he is one of the co-founders (with Bertrand Conquéret of Henkel) of “The Sustainable Procurement Pledge” – an initiative to enrol procurement professionals into the cause of procurement with purpose. As he explains, ”we wanted to help the thousands of procurement professionals who don’t work for companies that really care about these issues – but who believe personally in the agenda”. Individuals can take The Sustainable Procurement Pledge and align themselves as “ambassadors” for the movement. (You can sign up here).
“The large corporates, NGOs and governments are pushing this agenda from the top down – we thought this was a way of developing a bottom up approach with our procurement ambassadors, who can help to drive and preserve this legacy for the next generations”, Udesen says.
Whilst this is independent from his day job, Bayer has seen his work as very much aligned to their own strong corporate goals around sustainability and the company has been supportive.
The community is increasing, “there is a passion to learn and share” and there are over 1000 ambassadors now. But many, particularly in smaller firms “just aren’t sure how to get going and how to transition towards a procurement function with purpose”, as it were. Many who have signed up aren’t getting support from their own CEOs or even CPOs (which is disappointing), but they want to make a difference personally, and see the wider community as a way of learning and getting more involved. “They are thinking of the impact they can have, giving back to society and what they can do for the next generation”.
He wants to “unleash the passion” he sees in many young professionals, but he believes that some people lack the mandate to drive action, whilst others are afraid to step into the unknown. So the idea with the Pledge is to create a collaborative platform, with smaller ”communities” forming around particular topics such as use of palm oil. He hopes to bring together practitioners, NGOs, academics, service providers – anyone with an interest in the subject. “If we can feature and promote success stories then that will help people build confidence”, he explains.
What effect does Udesen think the pandemic will have on sustainability and procurement with purpose? He believes that new businesses and even new industries will emerge, and “sustainability will be embedded in these businesses”. And he makes a great point – the companies that responded best to the crisis have been those that had invested in resilient supply chains, which in his opinion “equals sustainable supply chains”. Indeed, Bayer is a good example of that; the company has invested in risk management and every factory has continued running. “We are not being slowed down in our efforts to implement big changes – on the contrary, we get strong backing to continue driving these initiatives”.
But he acknowledges some wider post-pandemic risks. He hopes that the future global economy is not one based around nationalistic views. “We’re not going to compete on sustainability – collaboration and building relationships is the solution”, he says. And business will carry on, whichever politicians we have in charge. “Commerce can bridge short-term political sentiments”. The UN SDGs are not political, they are principles of good business.
It is however a challenge to measure the impact we are having in terms of these issues – whether we are talking about individuals, businesses, or The Sustainable Procurement Pledge movement. But as the evidence grows of the benefits of following a purposeful approach to business, he believes that CPOs must be able to explain the benefits to the CFO in particular – “they are usually logical people, so they get it”, he says.
Udesen gives a couple of examples of Bayer success stories. “We are seeing good collaboration in the chemical and pharmaceutical supply chains. Companies have for years worked together, sharing assessments and audits. And more specifically in Bayer, we are at the point now where for example I have just written to the CEO of a major shipping company to say we will drop them as a supplier as they won’t sign up to our code of conduct We would not have done that a few years ago”. He suspects once the shipping boss sees that letter, the intransigence lower down their organisation will be resolved quickly!
Clearly, The Sustainable Procurement Pledge is very aligned with our aims through the Procurement with Purpose movement. Udesen is a true visionary, as well as a highly capable CPO, and we wish him and Bertrand Conquéret luck, and look forward to working with them further to help spread the message.