How can procurement digitalization and automation support sustainability and social responsibility goals?

In my experience we can benefit from A) Digitalizing and automating resource utilization in order to minimize waste and improve sustainability. B) Digital platforms can enhance transparency and collaboration with suppliers. Automation ensures real-time monitoring of supplier compliance with sustainability standards. C) Digital tools provide analytics for informed, sustainable decision-making. It assists in identifying and mitigating supply chain sustainability risks. D) Digitalization ensures transparency and supports ethical practices. Automation facilitates remote social audits, leading to cost savings and enhanced efficiency in sustainable initiatives.

Procurement digitalization and automation can significantly bolster sustainability and social responsibility goals. By enabling data-driven decision-making, these tools help identify eco-friendly and ethically responsible suppliers, ensuring adherence to sustainability standards. Automation streamlines processes, reducing paper use and waste. Digital platforms facilitate transparent supply chain tracking, enhancing accountability in environmental and social practices. They also enable efficient management of sustainable sourcing policies and compliance monitoring. This integration of technology in procurement not only optimizes operations but also aligns purchasing practices with broader environmental

A digitaliza??o e automa??o de compras apoiam metas de sustentabilidade e responsabilidade social ao proporcionar visibilidade e transparência na cadeia de suprimentos, facilitar a avalia??o de fornecedores sustentáveis, promover a rastreabilidade e certifica??es, e otimizar a eficiência na gest?o de estoques. Além disso, essas tecnologias contribuem para práticas sustentáveis ao fornecer acesso a dados em tempo real, automatizar processos de aprova??o, aumentar a eficiência energética na logística, assegurar conformidade regulatória e monitorar o impacto social de fornecedores. A integra??o dessas ferramentas nas opera??es de compras fortalece o compromisso com práticas éticas e sustentáveis.

Digitalization and automation offer a spectrum of benefits to organizations. Streamlining processes through these technologies results in increased efficiency and substantial cost savings, as manual efforts are minimized. The precision of automated systems significantly reduces the likelihood of errors, ensuring accuracy in tasks such as data handling and decision-making. Enhanced productivity is a direct outcome, allowing employees to redirect their focus from routine tasks to more strategic and value-added activities. Furthermore, the availability of real-time data insights fosters data-driven decision-making, enabling organizations to adapt swiftly to dynamic business landscapes.

Many organizations experience wastage and/or unsustainable resource utilization across their respective departmental units. The benefits of digitalization and automation are paramount to sustaining operational excellence across the interrelated domains of sustainable development, social responsibility, enhancing security/regulatory awareness, etc. As an example, think of the supply chain and green logistics. Many supplier networks are being heavily scrutinized to ensure alignment with green and socially/environmentally sustainable practices. The increased digitization of supply chain activities from cradle to grace can uncover new performance areas for green improvements (i.e., from manufacturing, purchasing, warehousing, etc).

Procurement digitalization and automation brings in transparency, accuracy, accountability,ease in data storage and retrieval thereby minimizing time taken to execute any task and eventually saving money and labour!

In my experience, working with e-procurement and e-sourcing platforms has proven to be the most effective way to save time in procurement. These platforms allow us to streamline processes, enabling a greater focus on strategic decisions.

??Hosting corporate-run events for community engagement is one such way that an organization can help amplify their commitment toward social responsibility. This can take many forms (e.g., charity drives, marathon runs for health awareness campaigns, cooking warm meals for those who are not fortunate enough to have a roof over their heads, etc). An organization is built upon the pillars of its workforce. If a company simply has a one-sided view of profits and financial gain without at the very least acknowledging their labour force and/or intellectual capital in the slightest, then it is not a very socially impactful nor humane thing to do. ??Evaluate the social needs of your community and tailor your corporate giving events as such.

It’s all about tracking. At the end of the day, goals are only as good as they are measurable. Even now, we still struggle with measurement within sustainability. Most of the time, organizations don’t understand the full supply chain impacts on their sustainability goals. To transition to digitalization, organizations will need to dedicate a lot of man hours into training. Currently there are a lot of barriers for entry because of the time and resources required. For organizations that want to effectively input digitalization and automation, they need to make sure that they have SMART goals so that processes are much more efficient to set.

Procurement digitalization and automation can support sustainability and social responsibility goals by enabling greater supply chain transparency. Digital tools can track and trace products, ensuring compliance with ethical and sustainable sourcing practices. This transparency helps organizations identify and address any social or environmental risks within their supply chains.

While it's undeniable that solutions contributing to efficiency and reduced paper processes align with sustainability goals, I think it's crucial to consider the broader role of procurement in supporting corporate objectives such as social responsibility, diversity, or sustainability. Procurement, as a function, holds significant potential to contribute to these goals. Automation acts as a lever, systematically enforcing corporate policies and facilitating data measurement and analysis. However, the effectiveness of automation and digitization hinges on the prior commitment to specific social responsibility, diversity, or sustainability goals by corporate management.

I can't agree more. It's a great pillars to start with. Keeping in mind change management, buy-in of your main internal stakeholders, alignment with your country's strategies and close support of your partners.

Ultimately procurement is in a volume game. Our ability to reduce the number of things we have to focus on by leveraging automation will allow us as practitioners the ability to focus on delivering more value. If you can take the review of basic contract terms from a 1-2 hour exercise into a 5 minute review of automation proposed redlines, that gives you >90 minutes to focus on how you can morph the relationship into greater value. In this case, augmenting the pursuit of ESG metrics your company has established. The creativity of practitioners is what we were hired for, but the ability to manage throughput is what we wind up doing most often.

All these are valid points but based on my experience I would emphasize the importance of effective change management. Resistance to change, often due to poor communication and inadequate technology adoption strategies, is one of the main factors that can derail a digitisation and automation project. I would also highlight the importance of having a proper business case (unfortunately very often missing or lacking substance) that identifies and quantifies the intended benefits of the solution and can be used to manage expectations, control the project, and assess its outcome.