The concept of sustainable sourcing, also known as green purchasing or social sourcing, is nothing new. Sustainable sourcing is impacting nearly every area of corporate business and the consumer’s mindset. Everything from sourcing materials, talent attraction and consumer purchasing habits is changing because of sustainable sourcing growth. However, the term gets thrown around in the procurement industry quite often and is often misunderstood or misused. So, here’s a guide with all the basics you need to know about sustainable sourcing.
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE SOURCING
First and foremost, we have to define the term. Sustainable sourcing is the integration of social, ethical and environmental performance factors into the process of selecting suppliers. It includes purchasing sustainably preferable products and services (products made from recycled or remanufactured materials), as well as green purchasing guidelines that might pertain to certain products or commodities.
You know the saying…April showers bring May flowers, and May happens to be my favorite month of the year. With the flowers blooming, the humidity low (at least where I am in Mid-Atlantic US) and more hours of sunlight to enjoy, I can’t help but get excited for the start of May. If your April was full of showers (real or figurative), I hope you can seize the opportunity this month to make things bloom and reap the benefits of your hard work. Here are a few important things happening at SIG in May to give you a boost.
FUTURE OF SOURCING AWARDS NOMINATION DEADLINE IS MAY 15
Speaking of reaping the rewards of your work, have you considered submitting a nomination to win a Future of Sourcing Award? We are accepting nominations until May 15 to honor and celebrate individuals and organizations that show innovation, leadership and transformation in areas that are critical to the sourcing industry. The 2019 Awards will bring together some of the brightest minds in the industry to create a truly remarkable experience.
Has your team made a successful impact toward moving our industry forward? Consider submitting a nomination to recognize their achievements with a Future of Sourcing Award! The team awards recognize companies who are fundamentally influencing the world of sourcing in new and innovative ways. There are also individual award categories to honor the personal accomplishments of sourcing professionals.
Kelly Bengston is Senior Vice President, Chief Procurement Officer at Starbucks. Kelly is responsible for enhancing Starbucks enterprise-wide functional strategic sourcing and supplier relationships, creating consistent global sourcing processes, developing a sourcing talent management program and building a values-based approach to working with suppliers across all categories of the business.
Kelly has held numerous leadership positions during her 8-plus years with Starbucks. Most recently, Kelly served as Vice President of Starbucks Global Supply Chain’s Strategy & Deployment team, a new team created under Kelly to support Starbucks supply chain’s aspirations of becoming digitized, strategically aligning resources against priorities and building capabilities through long-term capacity planning and supply chain intelligence.
Prior to joining Starbucks, Kelly gained broad experience in packaging, product development, manufacturing, and project management at Macy’s, Bensussen Deutsch, Cranium and Hasbro. She enjoys running, traveling, and spending time with her family. Her favorite Starbucks beverage is Nitro Cold Brew.
Can you share a little more about your day-to-day role and responsibilities as the Chief Procurement Officer for Starbucks?
I am fortunate to have an amazing job, working for an amazing company. My day-to-day is filled with connecting with great partners and suppliers to deliver products and services to our stores and customers.
As a Director in SC&H Group’s Contract Compliance Audit Services practice, Patrick has a few key professional motivations with all of his clients: increasing third-party transparency, optimizing supplier relationships, and improving governance. He works with Fortune 100 companies to evaluate contract compliance in categories such as marketing and advertising, contingent staffing, facilities management, construction, computer hardware/software, MRO, security, events, and office supplies. Projects under Patrick’s leadership have resulted in client savings of over $150 million in addition to practical control developments, valuable process improvements, enhanced earnings, and proven cost-savings initiatives. He is very passionate about helping to influence the operations and cultures of global enterprises, and one of his greatest professional achievements was being able to hand over a $1 million recovery check to his client.
“April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks GO.” – Christopher Morley
April is the start of a new quarter and many teams are seeking ways to make maximum impact on their goals and ultimately their company’s bottom line. To help you put the pedal to the metal this month, SIG has opportunities for training, industry networking and a chance to get recognized for all of the hard work you’ve put in.
SPRING GLOBAL EXECUTIVE SUMMIT
The Spring Global Executive Summit takes place April 15-17 at the Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort in Amelia Island, FL. This Summit will connect you with other executives and industry experts, so come with an open mind, plenty of business cards and a sincere interest in becoming more strategic and influential.
At this Summit, all of the keynote sessions will bring remarkable stories and insights that will leave you feeling refreshed and inspired, with lots of great ideas to bring back to your team. Here's a look at two of our featured keynotes:
Clint Bruce -- Pursuing Elite: The Five Gifts of Elite Achievers
In any endeavor you can only have one of five outcomes: bad, average, good, excellent, and elite. If the endeavor is your passion or profession, the only acceptable result is somewhere between excellent and elite. Clint uses powerful stories and lessons learned as a highly decorated athlete and member of the elite SEAL Teams to share with the audience techniques to become an elite achiever in all aspects of life.
Sunil Gupta, Avinash Pemmaiah, Brad Killinger -- How do you Innovate to Buy Smart? Ask the Experts!
Jeanette Nyden is an internationally recognized contract negotiation expert. She’s written and co-authored three books to date. Jeanette provides tactical, customized contract drafting, negotiation and management training, coaching and mentoring programs to both sales and purchasing teams.
Jeanette has taught at major corporations, Seattle University and the University of Tennessee’s Center for Executive Education. While no longer practicing law in a traditional manner, she is a lawyer and holds a license to practice law in Washington.
Your presentation at the Western Regional SIGnature Event is about reducing value leakage in complex contracts--why is this such an important topic?
Industry studies demonstrate contract value leakage is from 17% to as high as 40%. Typically, value leakage comes from things like low adoption rates, non-value-added change orders, lack of innovation, etc. Performance- and outcome-based contracting best practices can dramatically reduce value leakage.
Additionally, businesses are seeking greater returns from their customer-supplier relationships at the same time many younger professionals are entering the field. This is a perfect time in the market to emphasize ways to implement performance- and outcome-based principles to reduce value leakage.
Can you talk about your background and education--how did you get involved in this field?
I am an attorney. I started in litigation, but I was frustrated at the vague, incomplete or inadequate provisions in contracts, so I started moving backwards in the contract chain. I moved from litigation to mediation, then to contract creation, and now I work with business units to draft the requirements before the contract template is even selected. I am really as close to the beginning of the contract as any lawyer can get.
Jane Zhang is the Co-Founder of ETCH Sourcing, a Canada based consultancy specializing in providing strategy and execution services in the sourcing, procurement and category management space. She loves people, solving problems, and has years of expertise working throughout the entire sourcing spectrum, from building and executing multi-million-dollar tactical strategies, to being entrusted with some of the most complex and strategic contractual negotiations on business-critical projects. Graduating from the Haskayne School of Business twice over with a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing and an MBA in Finance with a focus on Global Energy Management and Sustainability, she has returned to build and teach business contract negotiations with her Co-Founder as a part of giving back and elevating her alma mater.
Jane is passionate about education is a member for multiple boards, most notable is her role as Board Director and Chief Operating Officer of a non-profit designed to connect children aged 8-13 with industry learning and development through play.
Jane’s latest passion is to champion the role of sustainability in procurement and is celebrating the launch of ETCH’s sustainable procurement offering, which integrates the UN SDGs as a sustainability function into the procurement process from an end-to-end perspective.
November: the last month of autumn, but the beginning of a new adventure; time to take risks and do the unexpected.
Can you believe it? November is here! And with it comes the start of the holiday season and all the festivities that come with it. Whether this month is one you love or dread, it is a time for new adventures, and those can take shape in many different forms. Create an adventure at work this month by attending a networking event, listening to success stories of industry innovators and learning the latest trends in an online webinar. Here are highlights of the adventures that await you this month from SIG.
Regional Networking Events
This month, we have regional networking events in four different cities: Toronto, Denver, Columbus and New York. Take a day for yourself and/or your team to collaborate in person with industry peers and learn best practices. Discussion topics vary for each event so be sure to look on our website for the most up to date agendas.
SIG’s Fall 2018 Global Executive Summit in Rancho Mirage, California, is less than three weeks away! That means it’s time to kick things into high gear and prepare yourself and your team for the most innovative and thought-provoking sourcing event of the year.
With more than 350 delegates in attendance, numerous educational sessions and workshops, plus how-to labs, speed networking, a CPO Roundtable Program and a charity golf scramble, there is a lot to prepare for! Navigating such a vast event may seem overwhelming at first, but don’t fret. I’ve outlined four tips that will have you walking into the Summit like a seasoned vet.
1. Plan Your SIG Summit Agenda with the new SIG Events App
One thing you’ll want to do before you depart for Rancho Mirage is to create your Summit agenda. This fall, with 100+ speakers, 50+ educational sessions, panel discussions, networking receptions, keynote presentations, how-to labs and fun entertainment, there is a lot to do in just four days! Even if you’re a longtime Summit attendee, planning your agenda goes a long way. To make this easy on delegates, we have a new app with a built-in schedule planner tool.
There are multiple ways to download the SIG events app to your smart device:
What is the secret to a Fortune 500 brand’s success? Brands fail not because they lose market share, but because they lose competitive differentiation and profits. The conventional definition of a brand’s value in the provider-driven market used to be the price that the brand could command over a generic competitor. In today’s consumer-driven market, the power of the brand seems to have become separated from its origins: the ability to create and sustain a long-term flow of profit by making people want to buy the product or service, and be willing to pay a higher price for it.
This shift has caused sales and marketing teams to become fixated on driving sales without regard for profitability. We are no longer living in the provider-driven market of decades past, where the company held the power and the information, and could use that to sway the consumer toward purchasing. I can’t think of one industry today that is not impacted by the consumer-driven market that exists. Consumers now hold the power with more access to information, they are the ones driving the purchasing decision, and the providers are now at the mercy of the decisions they make.
Sustainable Sourcing 101
The concept of sustainable sourcing, also known as green purchasing or social sourcing, is nothing new. Sustainable sourcing is impacting nearly every area of corporate business and the consumer’s mindset. Everything from sourcing materials, talent attraction and consumer purchasing habits is changing because of sustainable sourcing growth. However, the term gets thrown around in the procurement industry quite often and is often misunderstood or misused. So, here’s a guide with all the basics you need to know about sustainable sourcing.
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE SOURCING
First and foremost, we have to define the term. Sustainable sourcing is the integration of social, ethical and environmental performance factors into the process of selecting suppliers. It includes purchasing sustainably preferable products and services (products made from recycled or remanufactured materials), as well as green purchasing guidelines that might pertain to certain products or commodities.