Paul Polizzotto is the CEO and Founder of Givewith, a Service-as-a-Software solution that generates social impact funding opportunities for nonprofits that can be embedded into transactions between buyers and suppliers. As a social entrepreneur, he brings his expertise as the former founder of EcoMedia, which directed more than $100 million in funding and resources to environmental, education and community health and wellness programs across the country, improving the quality of life for more than 60 million people. Here he talks about the role of ESG scores on a company's bottom line and ways that sourcing and procurement can initiate cultural change in their organizations.

Givewith is a social impact technology platform – what does that mean and how does it work?

Givewith is a social enterprise creating innovative solutions that bring together companies and nonprofits to generate real, measurable impact – while simultaneously driving unprecedented business value. Givewith Enterprise is a SaaS solution that generates business-relevant social impact funding opportunities that can be seamlessly embedded into any transaction between a buyer and a supplier.

Here’s how it works:

Our platform analyzes companies’ sustainability and CSR performance based on robust data that’s important to their customer base and the investor community – enabling their company to amplify its strengths and improve weaknesses. The Givewith algorithm aggregates these insights and identifies the most effective nonprofit programs, which the buyer can easily add into any of their RFPs.

2020 will be a big year for many reasons: it’s not only the start of a new decade, but the upcoming presidential election will have enormous impacts on businesses and economies across the world no matter who occupies the White House. As the world’s supply chains brace for more uncertainty and try to read the presidential candidates’ tea leaves, the best thing that you can do is prepare yourself to stay ahead of the competition.

SIG University Offers New Intelligent Automation Certification

Kick off the new year with a professional certification from SIG University! Now offering four certifications, SIG University has partnered with Virtual Operations to provide advanced training on Intelligent Process Automation. Ready to take your expertise to the next level with cutting-edge training? Check out the four certification programs offered below, classes begin January 20.

Jai Chinnakonda, co-founder of a provider technology start-up, enrolled in SIG University's Certified Third Party Risk Management Professional (C3PRMP) program to learn how he can better serve his clients by gaining a more thorough understanding of third-party risk management best practices.

In the C3PRMP program, students focus on best and emerging practices to identify, assess, manage and control third-party risk throughout the lifecycle of relationships, and learn how to align risk fundamentals and frameworks with risk culture to develop the essential tools and controls for effective governance.

The digital age is seeing an increased dependence on third-party service providers of varying sizes – including start-ups – to meet the challenges of technological innovation, cost, demand for service excellence and heightened competition. 

Organizations are often locked in a love-hate relationship with their vendors as they struggle to meet expectations, sometimes both ways. In today’s digital journey, no organization can thrive on its own. To create true value for your organization and help meet business objectives, your organization will need to build a lasting relationship with your third parties. Organizations will need to adopt the art and science of engagement.

The business ecosystem is experiencing a fundamental shift. Organizations are moving away from purely cost-savings partnerships to value-generating risk-sharing partnership models. As the third-party ecosystem grows, the ability to manage and govern third parties is becoming more critical to success.

As we settle into the holidays and celebrate with family and friends, we also look to a new decade. Absent a downturn economy, it’s hard for some to understand the importance of a strong procurement and sourcing organization. But we are so much more than just a cost-savings industry. While we are seen as an overhead, we really are the engine that keeps the company on course.

Rather than looking back at all the gains our industry has achieved this year, here are my thoughts on some of the exciting trends that I believe will pick up momentum in the next year.

1. Elevating the Role of Strategic Sourcing

Without strategic sourcing, we would not be able to improve cost, quality and service levels while guarding against third-party risk. Without the strength of our negotiations, contract development, business insights and supplier relationship management, we would fail on safeguarding our supply chains against human trafficking, conflict minerals and child labor.

I’m seeing more interest in third-party risk management from boards and company executives, and in my conversations with them, it’s clear that more resources will be devoted to supporting sustainability initiatives and the ability to act on business insights.

While enrolled in SIG University's Certified Supplier Management Professional (CSMP) program, Omar Khweiss was able to contribute his expertise to help his distributed team grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work and deliver results.

The CSMP program exposes students to leading-edge training on contract administration, compliance, risk mitigation, performance, governance operating models, talent management support, transformation and more to help companies put effective governance programs in place.

During a recent visit to my company’s headquarters, I met some of my fellow senior buyers for a team project that we are embarking upon together. We all come from various regions of North America and this was our first time working together. Coincidentally, the meeting took place during my last week of SIG University’s Certified Supplier Management Professional program. I took the initiative to implement Dr. Bruce Tuckman’s group development process discussed in Module 7 to help the team dynamic evolve. As prescribed, I utilized the forming, storming, norming and performing stages from his theory to take full advantage of this prime opportunity to all share collectively in real time.

Stage 1 - Forming

We started off with the initial stage of forming. On day one, we asked our manager why we were selected to be a part of this team as well as what was expected of us. Our manager presented his vision for the team but also gave us the sense that we’d work independently since we all hold seniority within the procurement division of our company.