The report of a study conducted by BPM Forum and E2open earlier this year entitled “Acceleration of ECO-Operation: Achieving Success & Sustainability in the Supply Chain” (read it here: http://www.eco-opscenter.com/report.php ) makes for interesting reading and highlights the difference between the perception and reality of the actions of the great and the good.

The greatest single weakness that emerges from the report is the lack of visibility that most organisations have of the actions either of their own people, typical of many organisations with a distributed network, or of their supply chain partners; so you may think that you are buying sustainably, based on the agreed terms at the outset of a contract or agreement, but as business settles into a routine pattern and employees buy ‘off-plan’, the reality of may vary greatly from the perception.

Lack of leadership is further identified as a weakness and has been discussed in this column on more than occasion. And all this despite the fact that visibility and control deliver not only measurable and significant cost reductions (which should drive the agenda of any growth focused organisation, irrespective of the economic climate) but also heads the sustainability principles of ‘REDUCE, reuse, recycle’.

Now, this weakness in the organisation’s ability to manage its operations is sometimes down to a cost issue; if you are running any of the major accounting systems, it can be prohibitively expensive to pay for annual desk/user licences which can often be more that the user actually procures in any one year.

However, this can not be the only reason; Biz4Green actually provides SaaS e-procurement software which links into, or with, all the major packages for FREE, eradicating the cost argument with one stroke of the sustainability brush, and yet not all clients or prospects make use of the technology, despite ease of implementation and use.

So the argument must go deeper. The study report also identifies that, of the 125 respondents, 76% stated that their customers had not yet required them to divulge their carbon footprint, though two thirds felt that they would do so in the next year.

Perhaps, therefore, we are back at the starting blocks, dealing with companies who ignore the simple business sense of ensuring that they have full visibility and control of spend and thus suffering leakage from every weak link in the supply chain because the ‘sustainability’ word has been transformed into a ‘green’ term and the customer drive is not there for them to apply effort to it. Surely any company that follows a wholly customer-driven focus is riding for a fall, since what the customer may demand may not be what the company can deliver and any business that does not use its marketing machine to set customer expectations and actually create, form and drive customer demand has a limited shelf life?

Most companies employ good people who study the future of their market and create strategic plans accordingly, so there is no excuse for being reactive instead of proactive.

… And if the only reason you don’t have full visibility and control of your supply chain and your users’ procurement habits is a cost one, I look forward to hearing from you!

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