Sustainable sourcing & procurement: crucial steps on the path to a greener tomorrow

Apr 10, 2023

IT
operations
discrete manufacturing
SAP

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Sustainability is no longer a buzzword; it's becoming a necessity for companies to maintain a competitive edge...

It all starts with sustainable sourcing

As consumers become more environmentally conscious, companies must find ways to reduce their carbon footprint, minimise waste, and operate within a more sustainable parameter.

It is now crucial to adopt proactive supply chain sustainability strategies, with the capability to innovate being a precursor to a successful sustainable supply chain and managerial orientation. By leveraging SAP solutions and digital transformations, your business can build sustainability into its supply chain processes. SAP offer a comprehensive suite of tools and applications designed to build sustainability into your supply chain processes.

Sourcing and Procurement in S/4HANA is a comprehensive end-to-end solution, designed to optimise your procurement processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency whilst also having the capability to accommodate for your sustainability goals and initiatives.

Forging ethical relationships

One important factor for a resilient supply chain is long-term decision making. This can be catered for through strategic sourcing and fostering sustainable relationships with business stakeholders by starting upwards in your supply stream. Sourcing and Procurement will help you promote your ESG targets through improved supplier collaboration and support you in affording better communication streams with your partners. The solution enables you to improve management of your supplier contracts, helping you avoid contract value leakage and ensure leverage in your negotiations.

picture of plants growing in a greenhouse

Socially responsible sourcing

In addition, you can encourage sustainable practices throughout your contingent of vendors by incorporating supplier performance monitoring and scorecard evaluations.

With such measures, you can create socially responsible sourcing strategies and ensure green procurement procedures. By monitoring supplier performance and using the real-time data and analytics available to you in the solution, you can identify suppliers that are aligned with your organisational goals and values.

Better insights lead to informed decision making

Total visibility into your procurement processes enables you to maintain product origins, commodity codes and supplier information on a material level. Therefore, ensuring that your products are produced in a responsible and ethical manner, and allowing for effective compliance of customs regulations.

3 solutions to enhance your sustainable enterprise

We've aligned 3 key solutions to our sustainability offering that will help your business achieve its ESG goals and initiatives:

These solutions enable your organisation to track and monitor operations from sourcing and procurement to production and distribution. Using SAP S/4HANA, you can gain real-time visibility into your supply chain processes, ensure continuous improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimise your processes and enforce a circular supply chain.