Aligning Sourcing Processes With Corporate Sustainability

The strategy for corporate sustainability focuses on resource management and is deployed for a number of reasons, including energy efficiency, legislation, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments to name a few. Sourcing does not set the sustainability agenda but plays a pivotal role in its implementation, ensuring that suppliers align to the business' sustainability objectives. To ensure that sourcing strategy connects to business requirements, smart executives must build sustainability targets into sourcing tools, processes, and procedures. For this strategy to move forward, clear sustainability objectives must exist — whether hedging against rising energy costs or preparing to meet upcoming climate-change legislation. New tools sanity-check corporate thinking while the request for proposal (RFP) morphs into the "green" RFP, pushing suppliers in the right direction. But sourcing's role does not stop at this — resource management objectives remain open ended, and sourcing needs to monitor suppliers for compliance.