Chief procurement officers play a crucial role in the implementation of sustainability. Most fundamentally, they need to work out how to translate the organization’s high-level goals on sustainability into concrete buying decisions without losing their competitive edge on cost.
However, leading chief procurement officers are discovering that a deeper engagement on this unlocks other benefits too, such as the ability to work more closely with both old and new partners to innovate and discover new efficiencies. In turn, this is opening up opportunities for the procurement role to take on surprising new guises, such as that of venture capitalist.
Some of the specific questions this report seeks to answer include:
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Once the basics of sustainable procurement are in place, what are the next steps for leading chief procurement officers, in terms of core systems and processes?
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What scope is there to use the buying power of an organization to drive social and economic development, and to do so to the direct advantage of the business?
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What new kinds of collaborations, both internal and external, are emerging for the procurement function, as they strive to achieve specific sustainability goals?
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What new approaches to risk and opportunity management, supplier auditing and verification are emerging?